Falling in love with bulletin boards

Before I was a teacher, I pined over bulletin boards.  I dreamed of what I would create with my students and looked forward to the process.  Fast forward a couple years later and they became the bane of my existence!  Measuring, changing paper/fabric/border, trying to be cute and creative had its toll.

I now buy a black sheet for all my boards at the beginning of the year and buy borders that can withstand the year and look good no matter the time of year.  The boards in my room are used for our daily learning and reference.  I don't put up cute projects that are only relevant to one day...I save that for the hall.

When thinking of what should be displayed on the boards I think about: 1.what do the students need to be successful, 2. what am I obligated to display, 3. what do I think will motivate the students, and 4. how likely will it be that someone uses the board.

I left this as a whiteboard because we will be using it as our Inquiry Board and I would like the students to write on it as our inquiries grow.

This Word Wall is on a whiteboard and will stay the same except for the addition of words.  I decided not to make it a sight word board but a vocabulary board.  I printed the Dolch words pre-primer through 3rd onto one sheet and laminated it for each child.  You can pick it up here: SightWordSheet

This is my favorite board.  During Meet the Teacher night, I take pictures of each family.  We use this board ALL.THE.TIME!  When the students miss their families, when they need to think about solving a problem, when they need a character for a story...the list goes on and on to how we  use this board in class.

So as I said before, I save the boards in our room for our learning.  Right now our reading and writing have displayed anchor charts that we are referring back to again and again.  Math has our strategies and rotations.  

This board is our display for the hall.  Each month I change the quilt with monthly pictures.  I use props like glasses or hats that show the time of year (bat glasses, elf hat, etc.).  At the end of the year we make a scrapbook of our year.  Parents and students love it!

Now that I have found what works for me and most importantly my students, I don't hate the boards anymore!

Big changes ahead (and Monday Made It)

My life is changing in a big way.  I decided to move schools and grade levels...AND I'm buying my first house.  As I was deciding, I let blogging get too far away but I am feeling inspired and renewed so I'm back at it.

Change can be scary. I'm leaving my friends and the students I have loved for the past four years.  But I'm ready for a new adventure!  And the best part is that I will be teaching second grade next door to my close friend. 

Today was the first day I spent in my new room.  This room is much smaller than my old room and I was nervous but it was all for nothing because everything fits!  (I still have a ton of work to do but I would say today was a great start.)

I got a moving van to haul all my stuff to the new school. I thought a 10 foot truck would be perfect but they only had a 17 foot truck.  Thank goodness that happened because we only JUST got it all in.

This is the inside of the truck :-/

So my first task, after dumping it all in the new room and walking away from it for a week and a half, was to organize my books.  I lost a lot of shelf space.

THEN

Here are my old shelves from the old room:

On top were my leveled books and below were fiction books.

Here were all my non-fiction texts.

NOW

My leveled books stayed the same.  I had to reduce and reorganize my fiction and non-fiction libraries in a MAJOR way.  The fiction texts are in the colored baskets.

More fiction texts.  The black baskets are now filled with my non-fiction texts.

 The empty baskets are the students' book bins.

Then I moved on to the large bulletin boards on either side of the board.  They are a major improvement to my one dinky bulletin board before.

Here are views of the full classroom as it is now.

 I had to bring over my favorite area from my old room!  I love displaying the students' writing in these frames from Lakeshore.

Here is our meeting area (it still needs a rug).

For my Monday Made-It I created a dry erase word wall.  You need peel and stick transparent covering and letters.  My letters are from Wal-Mart in the back to school section.

I decided to center the covering.  I started at the top and stuck three inches on.  Then I slowly uncovered more of the covering and rolled it down the door so it stuck without bubbles.

Then I stuck the letters on with duct tape.

Finally, I was able to write words on the covering with a dry erase marker.  I look forward to the ease of writing it on rather than printing, laminating and taping each word on.

I'm in love with it!

With all these changes, I am feeling excited about the future and all there is to come! 



Bulletin board pressure

As I look at all the beautiful rooms coming together on Pinterest I am consumed by how many bulletin boards are in each room.  We all want what we can't have, right?!  I have one lonely bulletin board and since there is only one I feel like it needs to really be utilized well.  My other options for hanging are on cabinets, clipped to a rope in front of a window, or on the white board....but those aren't as cute as bulletin boards with their pretty fabrics and colorful boarders that don't fall down with all the humidity!  That's right everything else that isn't on a bulletin board will fall down over and over again because my room is humid {well the rope and its contents usually stay up}.  So those cute faux boards on top of cabinets just doesn't work for me.  So back to the pressure of having only one bulletin board....this is what I did with it last year:

I found out right away that the strategy posters were lost on my beginning of the year first graders and we didn't use them as I intended.  The buckets fell A LOT!  We were constantly looking for pins and pom-poms...but I still like the idea and the look of keeping them there.  It just leaves such a small space for anything else.  Halfway through the year, I took it all down and hung anchor charts.  Then it became the math wall.

So here is my dilemma I've been grappling with:  What do I put on this board?


Here are some ways I hang other stuff.  Most of it falls over and over no matter the tape, glue or concoctions I come up with.  The best I've found is Carpenter's Tape....it is heavy duty and takes a lot of time to get off at the end of the year.  Second best is the glue gun.

 

So what do you think should be on my ONE bulletin board?  Thanks for any suggestions!