After six months of my first teaching post in my very own classroom, I had spent hours of time and bundles of energy into transforming my classroom into a positive, bright and energising space for my pupils to learn. This job was never a chore, it was instead a rewarding and visible aspect of my teaching, but I hit a barrier… I ran out of wall display space!

The solution came from browsing twitter and in particular the inspiring #pedagoofriday where I discovered the wonder of window pens! Although seemingly more often seen in the primary sector, these cheap pens were easily adapted to secondary.

Consequently I learnt that these window pens were not only a new display area but they could also be used as an engaging and exciting classroom tool to not only enhance learning but also encourage positive behaviour. Since then I have used the pens in a variety of ways, introducing new topics, mind mapping, revision and most recently I have introduced ‘Source of the Week’ where as a class we analyse a source and annotate on individual versions, the hardest working class member is then rewarded by being allowed to annotate the source on the window.

Understandably I bet a few people reading this are unsure of the benefits of this simple stationary but the benefit to my classroom paired with witnessing the excitement on the pupils face helps to fade any doubt of the wonder of the window pens!