I was thinking about how I labeled things during the year to help reinforce science content. With social media’s heavy focus lately on classroom aesthetics, I wanted to share how you can easily add purposeful “decor” with Label & Learn.⠀
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Label for Back to School or during the year when you reach new concepts or your class is inspired with a new idea.
I wouldn’t label EVERYTHING because that’s just too much. A few items, though, can reinforce vocabulary and content!⠀
What items in your classroom can you label with scientific concepts? Here are 10 ideas to get started. ⠀
1. Open and closed circuits: light switches ⠀
2. Magnetism: items that are magnetic and what they are made of⠀
3. Transfer of energy: lamp, pencil sharpener, TV⠀
4. Photosynthesis: classroom plant⠀
5. Natural resources: whether items are natural or human-made⠀
6. Uses of energy: the form of energy used to accomplish an object’s purpose⠀
7. Light: mirror reflects light, projector refracts light, window transmits light, or transparent, translucent, and opaque items⠀
8. Inherited traits and learned behaviors: classroom pet’s habitat⠀
9. Electrical conductivity: *carefully* labeling the insulating wire⠀
10. Mixtures: containers of items that are mixtures and how they might be separated
5 thoughts on “Classroom Decor {with a purpose}”
More ideas please. I love this but I’m teaching science for the first time and I’m not creative. I’m am excellent copier though
I love this idea! I knew labeling is a great way to help ELL students, but this will help all students make real-world connections with vocabulary words and concepts that might be a harder to grasp. Thanks for sharing!
This is a really great idea! What a fantastic way to really reinforce and contextualize these concepts! The more real-world experiential stimuli you can tie to a memory, the stronger that memory will be and the easier it will be to recall. By doing this sort of labeling decor you are really helping students to retain the information!
Previous to reading your post, I had never considered using content and terms as decor around my classroom. Of course I have decor such as number and letter charts hung up around elementary classrooms, but never the sticky note labels. This is a wonderful idea for teachers to use in order to help their students grasp a better understanding of material. Thank you for the ideas!
A set of labels for printing would be an amazing resource!