Classroom Decoration: A Means to Boost Learning

Education is instrumental in helping kids learn and grow, shaping their personalities early on and preparing them for adulthood. What many fail to notice, however, is besides the importance of educational programs in how successful the outcome will be, the environment where students learn is also just as crucial. This is exactly what Maria Montessori, a famous Italian pedagogue who established the Montessori Method, focused on by placing classrooms at the forefront of learning.

One way of making classrooms better in this aspect is to count on the help of décor, much like using it as the means to make a home pleasant. Luckily, teachers don’t even have to go through much trouble in trying to figure out how to best go about this as there are resourceful shops that offer plenty of options of classroom window decorations, wall stickers and magnets that would do the trick.

Regardless of whether you’ve got a career in childcare or work in a primary or high school, along with having fun with the shopping and decorating experiences, you’d get to truly appreciate the painstaking effort in doing so. Especially once you see the positive results and feedback from students!

How to Decorate the Classroom?

While there’s no recipe on how to exactly go with this kind of project, there are some do’s and don’ts on what you can and can’t use as part of the décor.

The Do’s

Positive reinforcement is always welcome, and you can achieve this by making up wall posters with inspirational quotes and stories of some role models to decorate the walls. Apart from adding a pop of colour and interest to the room, they can help motivate students.

Be sure to make them as inclusive as possible, looking for people of various backgrounds and professions, and make the important bits of the quotes and the borders striking with some colourful classroom decoration such as strips and border trims.

Student work is ideal as wall decoration too. No matter whether it’s art class projects, or photos of students with other projects, you can rely on vibrant picture frames to showcase them. This way they’d feel proud of their work, as well as the responsibility that comes with learning.

To boost the learning, you could also make use of anything that’s related to specific lessons. For instance, the addition of a cardboard solar system incorporated into a poster or diorama would be ideal if they’re getting to know things about the galaxy, and the order of planets and their proximity to the sun. Other charts, diagrams, and maps that are crucial for geography, vocabulary, chemistry, biology or maths are highly appreciated too.

On a bigger scale, you could use the help of an accent wall that would be great in a colour different from the rest; for example, one bright, in a combination with the rest in muted colours. The bright would be the one where you could use all the classroom decorations, and better yet, ask students to participate in the decisions on what they’d like to have that wall decorated with.

The Don’ts

Nobody likes clutter. What’s said about it being a disruptor of sleep refers to the classroom too as it has an impact on students’ learning. The more clutter there is, the more struggle to master the lessons. Luckily, it’s easy to avoid such issues, using colourful boxes to your advantage.
They’re perfect in pre-school facilities where there are lots of storybooks, toys for quality playtime, and stationery like markers and pens to sort out and store. They can also serve their purpose in schools when you want to neatly sort out the separate lesson books, student cards and assignments for projects.

While eye-catching classroom window decorations are a must for giving the classroom a nice facelift, it’s essential not to overdo it. Instead of decorating each and every window on a large scale, choose one or two, or keep it minimal only covering up the borders if you decide to still incorporate them all. This would help you make the most of the project without blocking out natural light that’s essential for studying.

While it’s a great idea to display students’ work, it’s not okay to use their grades. Sure, it can be even more motivating for the excellent students, seeing their great work pay off, but it could have the opposite effect on students who find themselves struggling to keep up the pace.

Benefits of Decorating the Classroom

You might be wondering whether there’s any practical benefit that results from the otherwise stylish benefit. The great news is there are more, and here are two of the main ones:

It Helps Establish a Learning Environment

All of those wall and classroom window decorations in the forms of stickers, pictures, posters, charts, diagrams serve as reminders that actually passively teach the students the important lessons, or rather bits of lessons. In other words, they create an environment that’s engaging as it motivates everyone to participate.

It Can Improve Concentration

One of the problems most students, and even teachers and professors, face today is lack of concentration. Creating an environment that’s got all the inspiration and motivation needed by effectively using the wall and window spaces would certainly be of help in curbing the problem as it lets both groups stay focused on the dynamic that goes on in the classroom. That is, when you plan it well and don’t overdo it.