Wow, Cute Way to Chart Parts of Speech
I came across these posters in a fourth teacher’s room at my school. She decided to display parts of speech on a shape poster to help students think about what types of words they use when they write. She made a poster for nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. She had displayed a house for nouns, a blob shape for adjectives, and the kite below for verbs. For some reason my other pictures didn’t turn out, but the kite picture managed to turn out, which is my favorite. Also, pictured below is another chart which she made entitled “RIP” for ‘dead words’ or words that are overused.
Cute Hollywood Stars Boulevard Bulletin Board!
Brainstorming about a way to honor our proficient and advanced students from last year’s state testing, our leadership team developed the following idea. We decided to take each child’s picture and place the child on a Hollywood square with a golden star. To evoke the feeling of walking in Hollywood with the stars’ squares, we had each child hand print the square with gold paint and a golden signature. Parents, teachers, and children alike are all complimenting the wall. Everyone has been stopping to gaze at the wall and find their child, student, or themselves. We are so proud of the positive attention it is getting and the motivation it is providing. The bulletin board simply says “school’s name wall of fame”. The bulletin board has some simple stars on it and a red carpet we made from bulletin board paper. There are pictures to follow that show our final product. This would be a great way to motivate students towards any goal. 
How Do You Keep Your Retired Bulletin Board Materials Organized?
After you take down each bulletin board, keep the border, pictures, and other materials in a medium sized plastic tub or box. Label the boxes by months. Keep your bulletin board tubs stored in your room by month and add to the boxes when you find additional decorations throughout the year. When the season comes for your bulletin board the following year, you will easily find all of the materials you need stored in your organized tubs.
Infuse Literacy into Your Math Bulletin Board (or door)…
Here is my door for this year. I just finished it! It took a lot of work, but it turned out so cute. I took the idea from Greg Tang’s book The Grapes of Math. I recycled the grapes from another project in the past to use on my door. The grapes were made from purple and green construction paper circles that I glued together. I then punched a hole through the top with a hole puncher and put some green pipe cleaners through the top. To make the vine tendrils curly, I wrapped the pipe cleaners around a pencil. I recreated the grape vine with twisted brown bulletin board paper. The grapes were made from purple and green construction paper circles that I glued together. To stimulate math thinking, I added a copy of Greg Tang’s poem so that students will be encouraged to count the number of grapes that are displayed.
Turn Your Trash Into Treasure…
Frustrated with the old large maps taking up so much space in my closet, I decided to put them to good use. The metal piece was broken on the end of the maps so they were unable to hang above my board. I thought, “hmmm…what can I do with these?” Well, as you can see in the picture below, I decided to snip, snip, snip. I could now refer to the map in my reading corner when we discussed different books. Having a map in my reading corner proved to be very handy especially when we discussed a place that the students were unfamiliar with. I found some lovely flag border to place around the map, and it looked bright and cheery on the black bulletin board paper with red letters. I also gathered postcards to post above the map from volunteers and friends when they would go on vacation.
Welcome Children to a Classroom with High Expectations
I have always been a big fan of Greater Expectations–a way of instilling high expectations in your classroom with positive statements, cheers, proverbs, and songs etc. From this workshop about ten years ago I got the following words for the posters shown below. Every year I place these poems outside my door so that students can see them when they enter. I make reference to the posters often to let students know how bright they are and that I believe in their ability to succeed.
Simple Math Bulletin Board (or door) to Stimulate Student Thinking
This was my door from this past year. I don’t have an official bulletin board outside of my room, so I put my creative energy into the door. I always try to make my decorations something that will make students think. Someone else might be able to make use of the simple idea so I am sharing 🙂 .
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Are You Out of Ideas to Motivate Students to do Homework? Try This
We recently acquired a new fourth grade teacher at school who took another teacher’s place. This new teacher is brimming with innovative ideas. She has redecorated her classroom and one of the items she had posted was a Monopoly like game board. However, instead of the word Monopoly, the 35 inch game board read “Homeworkopoly”. Out of curiosity I had to ask about this. Each time students turn in homework, they get a chance to roll dice and land on one of the Homeworkopoly spaces. Just like Monopoly each space is labeled with different opportunities. Some spaces allow students to turn over a chance card, others allow students to gain a reward such as a free homework pass, eat lunch with the teacher, and so forth. Students are motivated to turn in homework so that they can play the game. Homeworkopoly makes an attractive addition to a bulletin board, and the best part—it’s completely free. (I asked this fourth grade teacher if this actually improved students’ desire to complete homework. She said that they were more motivated, and that it increased their desire to turn in homework. You may download this pdf file at the following site with instructions and chance cards. Just click on the following picture.
Teaching Combinations? Use Arby’s
Do you throw away your weekly sales ads from the paper and other junk mail? Think twice before trashing your next set of sales ads…especially if you are teaching combinations. Combinations in math naturally lend themselves to teaching about the number of possible ways you can put sandwiches together. Capitalize on this idea and show students something that will make a connection to their real lives such as fast food restaurants– McDonalds, Arby’s, or Burger King. Discuss the number of ways that students could order a Big Mac, Whopper, or roast beef sandwich–different buns, cheeses, or other toppings. Clip pictures from these type of ads and use them to show students and to embellish your bulletin board. I have included a picture of a bulletin board that I created using an Arby’s slogan to stimulate student’s interest in combinations. The pictures on the board were clipped from a weekly sales ad. The papers on the board are student work about combinations of Arby’s sandwiches. To download the student sheet on the bulletin board, click Combinations Arby’s.
Flip Flops…Spring Bulletin Board Idea
I happened across this bulletin board when I visited another school for professional development. I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of it because of the clever flip flops that the children made. They wrote simple sentences on them, however they would make nice places to write a published piece of short poetry about summer or spring time.
