Bright Teachers

In the last couple of weeks of the summer holidays most teachers turn their thoughts to getting the classroom ready for the pupils to return to school. Hopefully before the holiday the classroom walls will have been cleared of the previous terms work and the backing paper will have been put up ready for the new term. The topics for the autumn term will have already been decided on the school’s long term curriculum plan so it is a good idea to put up some of the titles on the boards and perhaps a few questions that could spark the children’s imagination. For example, if the topic is Space questions such as which planet is the largest/smallest, how far away is the sun and why is the sky blue could all prompt children to seek out the answers. Another useful thing to do at the start of a topic is to introduce topic words and have them displayed in the classroom so for a space topic words such as universe, galaxy, planet and solar system could be used.

It is a valuable resource to have a mathematics display board set up in the classroom with prompts that the pupils will find useful such as number bonds and multiplication facts. This should be updated regularly to tie in with the mathematics topic that the pupils are working on at that time.