Bulletin Board On Fire!
For the past two years we have honored students who scored proficient or advanced on the state benchmark exam by displaying their picture in a creative way on the wall as soon as you enter the school. Our principal told us this year that our theme would be “Let’s Keep the Torch Burning!” That sparked the Olympic theme idea to make our Wall of Fame. We decided to make gold medals for each student and place their picture on each medal. The gold circles were cut out on a Cricut from gold scrap book paper. Then we hung the medals on red ribbon in the hallway with the students’ names below their picture. We originally wanted to hang the medals on red white and blue ribbon, but the store we ordered from wasn’t able to order an additional ribbon.
Then we placed a torch scene on the adjacent bulletin board to finish out the Olympic theme. The large gold fire “bowl” is a plastic flower pot spray painted gold that we had cut in half…thanks to one of our teacher’s husbands. The fire inside of the bowl is held up with a semi circular piece of corrugated cardboard with holes punched in it to hold the white Christmas lights and twisted cellophane. The torches on the sides are made with gold poster board rolled up and stapled. Then red, orange, and yellow cellophane are stuffed in the top to mimick fire.
To give the board more pizazz, we included Christmas lights stapled behind the red and yellow cellophane both in the fire “bowl” and on the bottom of the bulletin board. We set the lights on a glimmer setting so that the flames actually look like they are flickering. Covering the lights first with red cellophane helps hide the dark green cords. Then layering with yellow and orange adds a nice fire effect. Thanks to one of my followers who told me about an Olympic theme that she was incorporating with tiki torches for math fact races. She said that she used a battery operated candle inside the torches to make them look like they were burning. This gave me the idea for using Christmas lights.
All of the kids, parents, and staff who walk by exclaim things like….oooooh! cute! pretty!
We know that we have definitely put a spotlight on the kids who worked so hard last year.
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.
