Synopsis: Part of the Belair World of Display series, demonstrating a cross-curricular approach to the primary curriculum through art, design and display. 17 exciting themes present ways to deliver a creative curriculum through a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts.

Review: The Belair range of books on classroom display will be familiar to many teachers in primary schools. Here, the focus is on providing ideas for cross-curricular projects based around quality children’s books “in order to deepen … understanding and enjoyment of that text”, moving away from literacy as a self-contained hourly event towards “engaging children in the learning process in a dynamic and creative way” (p. 4). Divided into sections on fiction and non-fiction, the book explores a series of topics, with ideas for literacy work, display, and supplementary activities from Maths to Dance, Science to PSHE.

The fiction themes take as a starting point both traditional stories and classic children’s fiction such as Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are,  Berlie Doherty’s Children of Winter, and Anne Fine’s Flour Babies.

In the non-fiction section, familiar primary topics (Ancient Egypt, Electricity and Teeth) rub shoulders with less well-known themes such as Spiders and Famous Artists. As one might expect from Belair, the great strength of the units are the artistic ideas. Full-colour photographs suggest ambitious displays linked to the books – a rich source of inspiration for teachers (like me) who struggle with creative display. These are accompanied by a variety of themed art and DT activities, from banner-making to papier-mâché, boat design to magnetic games. Less exciting are some of the ideas for other subjects, which range from the innovative to the predictable and even slightly strained; I found some of the Science and Maths activities particularly so.

From a literacy angle, the topics all encourage engagement with both paper-based and electronic texts, offering suggested web resources and film clips to supplement the books themselves. Once again, however, the activities are of variable quality and, surprisingly for a book claiming to tackle creativity in  literacy seem almost an afterthought at times. Few are developed beyond the initial idea and they often lack a more than superficial engagement with text itself or the writer’s art. Teachers will find prompts for different types of writing and oral work, but little to support the shaping of a coherent, challenging unit of work.

 In summary, this book might better be titled ‘Creative Literacy Display’ and if teachers approach it as such, they will find a wealth of ideas for adding colour and practical creativity to the study of texts in their classrooms.

2008-04-19