Classroom Theme Ideas
You can spark your students' creativity and curiosity about study units or educational topics with classroom themes. Choosing coordinating classroom decorations that require student participation adds visual interest to the room and encourages the imagination. Change the theme each month, letting students select a new theme from a list of ideas that will intrigue and challenge them.
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Display Study Concepts
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Create themes that stimulate discussion on classroom subjects. If a younger class is learning addition, for example, make displays with different manipulative objects or charts that reinforce the concept. Older kids can learn more about scientific topics such as electricity, geology or life cycles, with posters, experiment stations and diagrams that promote critical thinking. If you teach upper grades, however, ensure that classroom decorations don't provide answers that students can use when taking tests.
Promote Physical Fitness
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Encourage kids to stay active by creating a classroom sports theme that examines athletic pastimes. Divide the classroom into four sections to represent the seasons. Ask students to gather rules, pictures, profiles of famous athletes and sporting equipment to represent sports typically played during each season. In addition to such high-profile sports as football, baseball and hockey, also cover such activities as diving, curling and archery.
Celebrate Holidays
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Design classroom decor that not only features festive shapes and colors, but also analyzes the origins and meaning behind each holiday. Ask students to make photo-covered posters, write stories or bring items from home to create displays that reveal how different cultures celebrate the special day. Before switching the class theme to reflect the next holiday on the calendar, have a small party for the current one by playing games and making snacks that represent international traditions.
Discuss Special Events
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Foster a sense of involvement and community service by designing classroom themes around upcoming school, city or state events and milestones. As your school commemorates the Red Ribbon Week anti-drug campaign, for example, let students adorn the classroom with red ribbons and posters featuring sobering facts to serve as reminders of the harmful effects of drugs and alcohol.
Honor Notable Books
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When your class is covering a book for a reading unit, design a theme based on the novel's setting, characters and message. If you're studying a book about the California gold rush, for example, have students find historic pictures of miners, make paper wagons to hang from the ceiling or decorate paper gold nuggets with facts about the era. Also, consider a classroom theme that honors famous authors. Get younger students ready for the March 2 birthday of Dr. Seuss, for instance, by decorating the classroom with character cut outs and quotes from his prominent books.
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