Bulletin Boards!

One of my favourite things to do as a teacher is assemble bulletin boards. I literally get excited when I know I get to plan and design a new board. I am by no means an expert in this area, but I enjoy the task nevertheless.
I've included pictures of a few of the bulletin boards in my classroom from this year so far.  Hopefully they bring about an idea of two that you could use in your classroom. And, if you have a fun idea, please share!

I began the year with this bulletin board in the hallway. I had each of the frogs say or think something different about the students coming into my class. For example, "Hey Shinae did you know that Annika and Halanna are going to be in our class this year! I am so excited."

I always begin the year by having my students create a self portrait. I teach them the basic dimensions of a human face and then they draw their portrait on black construction paper. After this they outline it with white glue. When the glue is dry they use oil pastels to colour. They are always so beautiful.

This is a picture of my 6 + 1 Traits Writing and 7 Habits board. I refer to them through out the year, but they don't really change a very much. I drew a picture on the paper for the writing board and placed the 6 traits on different parts of the picture to illustrate the trait. For the 7 Habits board I painted a tree and then put it up with the 7 habits surrounding.

This was our hallway Christmas bulletin board. We read the Christmas story broke it up into three parts: Mary & Joseph in Nazareth, The Journey to Bethlehem and the birth in Bethlehem. Then we identified all the characters in each part. The students chose one character and wrote a paragraph from the perspective of their character. Following that they printed their paragraph on a word or thought bubble and then created the character out of felt and yarn. It created a great visual story.

Reading Boards

Often when I read novels to my students I create the setting of the story and put it up on our board. At the moment we are reading Silverwing by Kenneth Opel. Every time we meet a new character in the board I have a student cut out a bat and we glue the bat to our setting picture. This really helps students remember the names of the characters when they are retelling the story and reviewing it. Plus, they love to see the picture fill with the different bats.

Every month (or two) I choose 10 novels that I think students would be interested in. I photocopy the front of these books and place introduce them to the class as 'Mrs. Ward's Picks of the Month'. I then encourage students to read one of these books over the month. When they have finished reading the book I ask them to give their feedback by writing their evaluation of the book on a laminated star. I then staple the star by the book so others can see how it is rated.

Daily Five & Cafe

This is how my students keep track of their Daily 5 jobs. I found magnetic foam at the dollar store and had a parent volunteer glue the Daily 5 picture job on the front. Monday morning the students come in and plan their week of Daily 5.

To create this Cafe board I went to the dollar store and bought a plastic table clothe for a dollar. I used that as my background and then put up the black paper and words. I also printed off pictures of plants and have the students but their stickie notes on the plates to mark the strategy they are 'ordering' (aka working on). It really sticks out in our classroom.