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Posts Tagged ‘bulletin board’

Painted Rock Gets a Blog

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 5, 2015| 2 Comments »

island-scene-on-Painted-Rock

 

Feeling the cold setting in?  Well here’s a summery scene on New Shoreham’s famed Painted Rock, one of my favorite pictures of the island’s constantly changing bulletin board. Wish I knew who the artist was.

John is behind the new tumblr blog featuring the Painted Rock in as many iterations as folks can dig out of the albums and send along.

Here’s what John had to say about it on the island e-board:

“Thanks for the kind comments and great pics submitted to paintedrockbi.tumblr.com The ‘mini cooper rock’ and the ‘hamburger rock’ are especially cool.

“There was also a question about me and the reason for the blog, so here goes.

“About 20 years ago my mother painted the rock early one morning to celebrate my sister turning 16 and my turning 21. Our summer home is a only short walk down Mohegan Trail from the rock, but if you took careful note of our ages, you might guess that my sister and I were not really morning people.

“So by the time we had rolled out of bed and made it down the street to look, it was already painted over. No photos were taken, but I know it’s there buried under all the layers. Now I am a parent, and it kind of reminds me of the many things we do for our children that no one ever really sees, but we keep doing anyhow.

“For many years I’ve been thinking about how best to document the many cool rock paintings. And last week I finally got around to doing something about it; hopefully the page will continue to get submissions and we can save the many small memories behind each coat of paint.”

Check it out: http://paintedrockbi.tumblr.com/

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Rethinking Classroom Bulletin Boards

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 10, 2014| 2 Comments »

When I was a teacher in Pennsylvania hoping to get accreditation, a supervisor from the teachers college where I took classes came to observe me at work. It was quite a long time ago, and the only thing I recall is that he remarked that I needed to do more with my classroom bulletin boards.

There I was, trying to do creative things with 11-year-olds in language arts (the play within the play from A Midsummer Night’s Dream springs to mind), but his checklist required him to observe the bulletin boards.

So imagine my delight when I saw an article today about a study suggesting teachers may be putting too much emphasis on bulletin boards and wall decorations.

Jan Hoffman writes at the NY Times, “That bright, cheery look has become a familiar sight in classrooms across the country, one that has only grown over the last few decades, fed by the proliferation of educational supply stores. But to what effect?

“A new study looked at whether such classrooms encourage, or actually distract from, learning. The study … found that when kindergartners were taught in a highly decorated classroom, they were more distracted … than when they were taught in a room that was comparatively spartan.

“The researchers, from Carnegie Mellon University, did not conclude that kindergartners, who spend most of the day in one room, should be taught in an austere environment. But they urged educators to establish standards.

“ ‘So many things affect academic outcomes that are not under our control,’ said Anna V. Fisher, an associate professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon and the lead author of the study, which was published in Psychological Science. ‘But the classroom’s visual environment is under the direct control of the teachers. They’re trying their best in the absence of empirically validated guidelines.’ ”  Hence the impetus for the study. Read more here.

Photo: Psychological Science
In a new study, 24 kindergartners were taught in two classroom settings: one unadorned, the other decorated with posters and artwork.

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