Years ago a good friend of mine took a teaching position in England. At the end of the summer, she went to the school to begin decorating her classroom before students arrived. Imagine her surprise when she discovered the school norm was no wall decorations at all to begin the year. Even the desks were heaped in the center of each classroom when the children entered. The idea was that students and teachers would create the room environment together, truly from scratch.

I don't know if this is the norm throughout England or the world, but my friend found it so powerfully effective in building community at the start of the school year that she continued the practice when she returned to the U.S. It isn't easy to overcome cultural norms, and teaching norms can be especially ingrained, passed down from generation to generation. Taking pride in our wall displays, and spending a good chunk of late summer creating them, is one of those norms.

But before you cover every available foot of wall space with back to school finery, consider the lessons from brain researchers. We learn and retain information when it is anchored somehow in our experience. (We don't call all those big pieces of paper tacked up in the classroom meeting area "anchor charts" for nothing!) Starting with bare walls, and then building the content on the walls gradually through the class community's shared experiences, and especially through shared experiences with texts, almost guarantees students will retain and refer to far more of the information on the classroom walls than the materials placed there by teachers in advance.

An easy principle to agree with perhaps, but not so easy to put in practice if you have the Martha Stewart of Bulletin Boards gilding and hot-gluing her borders in the classroom next door at this very moment. To overcome the pressure to compete with colleagues, to swim against cultural norms, or even just to resist the urge to pick up a few more posters at the local teacher supply store requires a strong sense of purpose.

When I visited Max Brand's 5th grade classroom a few years ago in Dublin, Ohio, I was struck by all the colorful words, phrases, and drafts on the walls. I spent hours browsing the walls, and noticed students were continually adding to them, referring to them, or pointing out something on a wall during class discussions. Max described the walls as the class community's "Collective Writer's Notebook," and I loved the phrase. It set a standard for the walls, and gave students and Max some criteria for judging what should go on them, based on what was in their individual writer's notebooks.

What's your standard for your walls? How bare are you willing to go this August? This week we've pulled up a feature on the "All About Us" board from our archives that can move you from a bare wall to a community hub quickly, at least on one classroom wall. Plus more as always. Enjoy!

Brenda Power

Editor, Choice Literacy

www.choiceliteracy.com

Free for All

From the Choice Literacy Archives, Suzy Kaback creates the "All About Me" board with her middle school students at the start of the year, and finds it's a display that can easily change with the seasons and curriculum all year long. This is a wall display that works well with any age or grade level:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/227.cfm

Looking for a research base on school wall displays to support more of a student-centered approach? "Consider the Walls" by Patricia Tarr from NAEYC is a short, practical article rich in research detailing how too much "visual noise" can inhibit student learning. Tarr also includes a brief list of seven questions to consider in creating wall displays that might be helpful in a staff discussion on learning environments:

http://www.journal.naeyc.org/btj/200405/walls.asp

Inspired by Shari Frost's list of first-day read-alouds in the last newsletter, Mary Ann Reilly compiles her favorite back-to-school read-alouds with strong multicultural and global perspectives:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/410.cfm

For Members Only

Franki Sibberson finds whole-class interviews in writing workshop at the start of the year are helpful in building community and home-school connections. She shares a template of interview questions:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/411.cfm

Jennifer Jones has compiled "Writing Workshop Teacherisms" - a list of the key phrases we use with students at the start of the year and throughout every workshop to begin conversations, as well as promote reflection, independence, and self-assessment. This is a nifty little article to share with a colleague or study group to generate more of your own favorite "teacherisms" in any content area:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/406.cfm

The Sisters (Gail Boushey and Joan Moser) help a colleague frame up and set off a wall display area early in the year that is not yet ready for student art or work displays in this four-minute video:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/408.cfm

That's all for this week!