Winter Wonderland Reading Corner.

In my new school they have a reading corner competition. Each class has to design and make their own reading corner centred on their chosen theme. My class chose a Winter Wonderland theme to link to the class novel we were reading (Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe). We made snowflake bunting on with our theme title, the children painted twigs and branches white and covered them in glitter, they made snowmen and snow flakes to decorate the corner and I added inspirational reading quotes from famous authors and celebrities. On the window I put tips on how to be a good reader.

WE WON THE COMPETITION! The children were very proud with their creation!

How will you theme your reading corner?

Crime Scene Investigation ~ Linked to The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe!

Linked to our book topic of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, I created a crime scene investigation themed lesson. I created a carousel in the classroom where the children had to look at five different pieces of evidence which could point to the possible criminal. They had to scrutinise the evidence and decide at the end which character from the novel was the criminal.

Here are some images of the resources and carousel from the lesson.

I created the image of footprints on the carpet by cutting out footprint shapes out of paper, lying them on the floor and the sprinkling talcum powder over them. Then I lifted off the paper to reveal what looked like footprints in the snow! The children really believed this! 

Here is a photo of the display I created after the lesson celebrating the children's work. From the lesson they had to write a wanted poster for the character in the story which they believed to be the criminal. On the display I included some of the evidence the children had looked at in the lesson. 

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe!

Here is the development of one of my displays all about our book topic - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I have attached a series of images to show how the display developed over time and what the final product looked like!


I started with backing it in a deep blue colour, putting green at the bottom for grass and then adding a black lamp-post in the middle to create a setting in the book as the background to my display.

After that I started to add some of the detail to the setting by using white paint to create the effect of snow. 

Then the children helped me to create snow flakes to add to the display.

Finally I began to add some of the children's work to finish it off. The children loved the display and enjoyed helping paint the characters to go on the main display. I also added photos from the film for the children to visualise the setting and characters in the novel.

Next to the main display I had room to showcase more of the children's work. This included setting descriptions of Narnia and cartoon scripts sequencing the main events in the story. 

This year I have used this book as the basis for my first Literacy unit in Year 5. Rather than creating a display like this, I created a working wall themed around the novel. Take a look at how different this is to my earlier display. This display included quality examples of the children's writing, photos from the film, key vocabulary cards to help their spelling and shared pieces of writing we produced as a class. I also included steps to success for punctuating speech correctly as this was one of my differentiated class targets.

There is a place for both a creative, celebratory style display as well as a working wall in your classroom. It totally depends on what your children need.