The classroom environment plays an important role in our students’ morale and learning. (Phillips, Mark. Edutopia.)

 This truth is highlighted when you have a group of students who stay in their classroom while the teachers rotate as per the school’s timetable. The class identifies with their learning space, connects and creates a relationship with it. In some ways, the classroom and the students will be reflections of each other. And so, the question at the beginning of the year for mentor teachers in my school isn’t really different from yours: what kind of environment should I create for my kids this year?

We’re a little lucky that middle management took some control and, instead of letting us all choose our own themes – leading to a strange hodge-podge of mixed signals when you walk the hallways-, they went ahead and assigned themes per building level. And then to give the mentor teachers some control over this, they asked us to choose a sub-theme for our mentor classrooms.

Our level’s theme is ‘countries of the world’ and the mentors went all excited and chose their feature country. So far, we have India, Indonesia, Australia, USA, Japan, Africa, England, Spain, Philippines, Korea, Italy and France. It’s like we’re celebrating United Nations Day a little early this year. And the teachers are loving it!

I have India. I hope that through studying this country, my Primary 6 students will benefit from its rich culture and history. (The fact that it is also very colourful, therefore allowing a lot of leeway in class decoration, was a very enticing feature of it!) I decided to use its colors, its love for patterns and its history as the initial features of the classroom.

I say initial – because the students still have a lot of space to decorate it the way they want to when they come and own the classrooms next week!

Its current India-themed base includes the following highlights and my rationale for each one.
1 Gandhi quotes – Students will be invited to study and reflect on Gandhi’s words. I might even use these as a journal prompt for time to time.
2 Colourful Indian-garlands inspired borders on empty bulletin boards. This will serve as a frame to highlight my students’ best work – in any subject. These ‘best work’ pieces can be from any subject and will be posted on the huge bulletin board we have at the back of the classroom.
3 Namaste and what it means on the doorway. I love how the words allow for awareness and self-reflection.
4 A famous quote about India from Mark Twain so students appreciate the country more. It is also good for my students to understand the effect of history to the world and their lives.

In the morning of the day they arrive, I will be adding the following:
1 A big poster of a door in India on the class door to welcome my students and suggest that they are entering into another world. (I used BlockPosters for my big posters.)
2 My students’ names on the class door to let them know that each one is welcome and is part of the class.
3 A big poster landscape of the Taj Mahal on my class hallway window to remind them of the wonders of the world waiting for them to go and visit. I want to instil in them a wanderlust to experience life.

As you can see, I am very excited! I hope that my students absorb all the good in the room and use it to fortify their learning throughout this coming year. I also hope that through this theme, our students in school learn how to appreciate other cultures and countries and people. We are all looking forward to an exciting year ahead!