Sure, wall posters are colourful and brighten up your classroom, but their educational potential far exceeds being a decorative piece of paper for your walls. Finding ways to effectively integrate posters into the teaching and learning process is essential in helping learners to group information together, identify key concepts and understand how complex ideas fit together. Discover how to use wall posters to decorate, educate and stimulate learning and teaching in your classroom.

• Emphasize and reinforce content

Learners often become despondent and frustrated when learning complex concepts with long-winded explanations. Using posters to teach is a great method to visually illustrate complex ideas and concisely state concepts in a poster –helping learners to grasp the lesson’s work. Research indicates that learners who see educational content presented on classroom posters on a daily basis are more likely to absorb and retain the information than those in classrooms without educational wall posters.

• Link to prior knowledge

Posters can provide a link to prior knowledge and make relevant connections by allowing learners to process what they have learnt in a visual way. They can be used effectively at the beginning of a lesson to encourage learners to predict what they are going to learn, and as a summary tool at the end of the lesson to consolidate what has been taught.

• Encourage communication

Wall posters are an effective tool to encourage communication in the classroom by allowing learners to talk about what they have learnt from the poster in their own words. This is also an excellent opportunity for the teacher to informally assess how much of the content a learner understands.

• Visually stimulating environment

Subject-specific wall posters create a visually stimulating environment in your classroom and increase learners’ visual interest in the subject. For example, displaying Physical Sciences posters in a Physical Sciences classroom creates a pleasant “sciencey” environment for learners to be taught.

Look out for our next article on how to make your own posters to stimulate learning in your classroom.

Looking for posters for your classroom? We have a wide range of beautiful full-colour, A1 size posters for these subjects:

• Natural Sciences and Technology Grade 4, Grade 5, and Grade 6
• Natural Sciences Grade 7, Grade 8 and Grade 9
• Technology Grade 7, Grade 8, Grade 9
• Economic and Management Sciences Grades 7-9
• Business Studies Grades 10-12
• Economics Grades 10-12
• Consumer Studies Grades 10-12
• Tourism Grades 10-12