Papel Picado makes a colorful wall decoration for the back of your classroom. Keep your teaching aids in the front of the room.
Your classroom walls are valuable teaching space - striking the right balance between decoration and teaching tools is crucial. I like to hang a combination of cultural items and teaching posters that help my students communicate. Most decorations should go in the back of the room while teaching aids should go in the front, the space that your students are actually viewing during class.
My room has a back corner with a Guatemalan Huipil and carved masks. Since they are in the back of the room, they are one of the first things my students see when they enter class. It’s colorful, interesting and sets the stage for an cultural Spanish experience.
The front of my room is reserved posters with question words, numbers, and Spanish mnemonics that I can easily point to during a lesson. If I can find a poster with cultural content that also demonstrates vocabulary or a grammatical structure, then I know I’ve hit the jackpot.
Counting is one of the first things we teach our children! Why not do it in another language?
I needed a nice set of posters for my beginning students to teach the Spanish numbers 1-10. I wanted a set of posters that was fun, functional and also highlighted Mexican culture. I made this set of posters for the classroom.
With the big, bold words, students can easily reference the numbers in class. They have the added benefit of teaching the verb HAY (there is / there are) and a number of fun animals, colors, artifacts and places you may find in Mexico. When you are coming up to the Day of the Dead celebrations, it’s easy to find the Calavera masks and the papel picado on the posters. If you are talking about the Aztecs or Mayans, you can point out the pyramids.
These are available in our store here.
Fun grammar posters also have a place in the language classroom. Remember to put these in the front of the room where students can see them easily. I hang my three page Mr. V. Peach DVD poster to remind my upper level students of the irregular participles when teaching the present and past perfect tenses.
I made up this character to help students easily learn these tricky participles and students love to reference the PEACH. See our previous blog post here to download the poster for free!
It’s fun and memorable!
How do you decorate your classroom?
Leave us a comment below and let us know!