Ep 43: 3 Ways to Use Bulletin Boards with Students was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best audio automated transcription service in 2020. Our automated transcription algorithms works with many of the popular audio file formats.
Hey, teachers, if you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Rachael, and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers who want actionable tips, simple strategies, and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go.
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Classroom Commute Podcast, I am Rachael your host. If you are new around here, welcome! If you are not new around here, welcome back. I'm so glad that you are joining me again today, wherever that may be.
Before we begin today, I wanted to share with you a review that someone left over on iTunes for this podcast. This review comes from 'Taylorstac', Taylor says, "I love listening to all your ideas. Your podcasts are simple and concise and your ideas are so easy to implement. Thank you for being so generous with your ideas and resources that you share. You have been a lifesaver through these uncertain and challenging times." Thank you so much, Taylor, for that review. If you would like to leave a review, I would love for you to do so. You can find me on iTunes. If you just scroll up a little bit from where you're listening to the episode, you will see the review section. So if you have a quick moment, I would super appreciate that.
All right, today's topic is about something that I absolutely love to talk about, and that is classroom decor, more specifically bulletin boards. I don't want to tell you about super cute themes that you can use in your classroom or color schemes. Today, I'm going to talk about the purpose and function of classroom decor, specifically bulletin boards and how they can play an important role in your classroom. First, a confession. When I was in the classroom, I would spend hours on just one bulletin board. Not just at the beginning of the year when I was setting up my classroom but all year long. I would obsess over every detail and sometimes I would even get almost all the way done with designing a new bulletin board and I'd have a new inspiration, pull it all down, and start over again. When I was all done, I would sit back and pat myself on the back for a job well done. Then I would sit and wait for the oooo's and the ahhh's that would come from fellow teachers as they passed by my classroom. This is where you would insert the mic drop moment. I'm not really this big headed in real life. I'm just doing it for effect. But I do remember one year after I had made a particularly nice display that I was proud of, I made reference to something on a bulletin board, to my students, that I had had up in the classroom for weeks. When a student then responded with "what bulletin board?" Ouch, that hurt. I did have an eye opening moment about the purpose of my bulletin boards. You see, up until then, I was really just doing the bulletin boards for me and not for the benefit of my students. As long as it made my classroom look pretty, I was happy with it. Does this all sound familiar? If so, I want to give you some suggestions for how to get more out of your bulletin board so that they are not just some pretty display in the back of your classroom.I've got three ideas for you today that I want to share with you. I think that you will find that they will make bulletin boards have a bigger impact in your classroom.
The first one is build the board. Now, if you're like me, you like seeing the final bulletin board and all of its glory up on your wall. This first idea may take the wind out of your sails a bit, but it's for the best. Trust me, one of the ways to make your bulletin boards have a greater impact on your students learning is to hold off putting up the entire bulletin board at the beginning of your unit. Instead build the board with your students throughout the unit. Now, if you own any of my science, social studies, or math units, you know that I instruct you to do this in the lesson plans. Each lesson, you're adding a new piece to the bulletin board as you teach each new concept. When you teach a new vocabulary word, you're going to add that vocabulary card to the vocabulary section of your bulletin board. If you're doing something in social studies that includes different events on a timeline, you would add the event cards to the timeline on your bulletin board as you learned about that specific event when possible. Have students create portions of the bulletin board. For example, in my "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" novel unit, I have students add a tale card to the board as they learn about the adventures of the main character. At the end of the lesson, I have a student volunteer complete the card and add it to the board. When students build the board with you, they're taking ownership on what they're learning. They're reviewing what they've learned in that lesson and they begin to see the board as a reference, not just the decoration.
My next tip for you to get more mileage out of your bulletin board is to start and end each lesson at the bulletin board or at least direct students attention to the bulletin board at the start of each lesson. Turn your students attention to the board so that you can look at the pieces that you've already added and review information that you've learned so far. If you get into the habit of doing this at the beginning of each lesson, again, students will start using the board as a reference. Then at the end of your lesson, come again together as a class, as you add those new pieces to your board that you're going to be adding to review the information that they just learned that day. Once in a while, reverse this process by having your students take charge and play the role of a teacher, having them use the bulletin board to reteach what they have learned to their classmates.
The next step is to turn your bulletin boards into games. You can extend the life of your bulletin board by using them for review games at the end of your unit. Doing this will bring your bulletin board process full circle because if you've spent time building the board with your students and using it every single day to review information, then using your final product bulletin board as a game allows your students to appreciate how far they've come in their learning. I have a few games that I've done in the past using the pieces of my bulletin board.
The first game is called Bulletin Board Swat. This is a whole class review game. What you'll need to do ahead of time is prepare a set of review questions that can be answered using information from your unit bulletin board. You'll also need two fly swatters to play. You're going to divide your students into two teams, each team gets a flyswatter. Have a member from each team come to the front of your bulletin board with their flyswatter. You're going to ask the students who are at the board one of your review questions. Students must wait until the entire question has been read. The first student to swat the correct answer that's found on the bulletin board earns one point for their team. Simple, right? And it requires very little prep on your part. Here's a quick tip. Make several different questions that have the same answer so that students don't begin to think that once a spot on the bulletin board has been used or "swatted", that they won't need to refer to it again. For example, if I was reviewing biomes from my Animals and Ecosystems Bulletin Board, I would create two or more questions that the students could swat a picture card on the bulletin board that says "dessert's" and gives the definition of the desert. One example of the question could be "which biome would most likely have animals that survive without water for long stretches of time?, that would have students swat the desert card? Then a second question would be, "which biome has 10 inches or less of rain annually?" Again, students would still need to swat the desert card on the bulletin board. So Bulletin Board Swat, a real easy, whole class review game before your students take a unit assessment or complete a unit project.
The second game that I like to play with my students using the bulletin board is a scavenger hunt, this is a small group center. To prepare for this, you are going to create a scavenger hunt recording sheet that has questions that can be answered using information from your bulletin board. This sheet is something that you're going to print out and provide to your students. The reason you want to do this as a small group center is because you don't want to have so many students crowded around the bulletin board at a time that students can't get to the information that they need. This would work well if you had other review centers that students were using for whatever unit you're teaching and this is just one of the centers. For students to play the scavenger hunt again, you would provide them with the scavenger hunt sheet, with the questions that can be answered using the bulletin board. Then students use the bulletin board to answer all of the questions on their sheet. These can be fill in the blank questions, true or false questions, vocabulary questions, whatever would help your students review the content from the board. One quick tip for this center is to have a spot on your scavenger hunt sheet for students to indicate where on the bulletin board they were able to find their answers to prove that they are right.
The next game I like to play with my students is a little tricky to explain over audio. I will try my best to explain it but then I will also provide for you picture examples over at the show notes so that you can get a better idea of what I'm talking about. If you head to classroomnook.com/podcast/43, you'll see some images there that will help guide you into preparing for this game. This game is called secret code and it's another small group game. Here's what you need to do to prepare. You're going to decide on a secret code word for your bulletin board, the secret code word should be related to your unit. Now, if you're working with other students, you might want to have a secret code phrase instead of word. I'll explain why in just a moment. For example, if you are teaching about early European explorers and you've created a bulletin board for that, your secret code word might be 'voyage'. What you're going to do is you're going to take your secret code word or phrase, and you're going to write each letter from that word or phrase on a small card. So V is going to go on its own little individual card. O, is going to be on a card. Y, A, and G and so on. You're going to write each of these letters on their own separate card, then you're going to come up with a question that matches that letter. You're going to come up with a question that's going to be associated with V, you're going to come up with a question that's going to be associated with O and so on for every letter in your word or phrase. Voyage has six letters, so I need to come up with six questions and you're going to write those questions without the letters next to them on an activity sheet that you're going to provide for your students so you know which letter goes with which question, but your students do not. It's important here that you keep track of what letter matches what question, but your students, again, will not know that answer. What you'll then do is you're going to place the letter on the bulletin board next to where students will find the answer to their question. Let's say you have a vocabulary section of your bulletin board and one of your explorer's vocabulary word is compass. One of your questions might be what is a compass? You have associated that question with the letter V, you're going to place the V next to the Compass vocabulary card on your bulletin board. Are you with me still? OK, so then when your students go to play the secret code game, they're going to use the bulletin board to find the answers to the questions on their questions sheet. Once they find the answer, they're going to see that letter hopefully next to the answer on the bulletin board and they're going to write it down. Once students have answered all of the questions, they'll have to unscramble the letters to determine the secret code. Now, again, I mentioned if you're working with older students, you might want to have a phrase because that will then make it a little more tricky for them to figure out the entire phrase. It will also give them more questions to answer, but if you're working with younger students or this is the first time you're doing this activity, then you might want to start with a smaller word. I really love this game. It's a lot of fun for students and they love the mystery aspect of trying to find out what the secret code word is. Again, if you need a little help visualizing how this all works, make sure you head over to the show notes and I'll have some images there for you to help you visualize it all.
All right. The last game I like to play using a bulletin board is another whole class review game. It's a simple "Who has, I have" game. To prepare, you're going to actually remove all the pieces of your unit bulletin board except for any main headings that you have on your bulletin board. For example, keeping with the early explorers theme, I had a heading on my bulletin board where I had information about all the different European explorers journeys. I had a vocabulary heading on the bulletin board. I had exploration facts heading on the bulletin board and exploration artifacts and objects heading on the bulletin board. I left all of the heading cards there, but took off all the other pieces. To play, you're going to provide each student with a piece from the bulletin board. If there aren't enough cards to go around, you can have students partner up. If there are more pieces, then you have students allow some students to have more than one card. You're going to ask a review question that you've prepared for each bulletin board piece in the form of "who has?". For example, your "who has?" question might be "who has the explorer who discovered the St. Lawrence River?" And the student with the Jacques Cartier card would stand up and say, "I have Jacques Cartier" and he would put that card back underneath the exploitation journeys heading. When the game is complete, your bulletin board will be complete again as well. I love playing games using bulletin boards like the ones I mentioned. They really do give purpose to your bulletin board and they help your students to view the bulletin board as a reference for their learning.
There you have it, three ways to get more mileage out of your bulletin board so that they're not just a pretty display in your classroom. All right, let's review them. The first way to get more mileage out of your bulletin board is to build the board with your students. As you go through your unit, you put it up piece by piece as they're learning the content. The second way is to start and end each lesson at the bulletin board or at least having your students attention toward the bulletin board to review what they've learned from previous lessons and to add to the bulletin board at the end of each lesson. Then the third way is to turn your bulletin boards into games at the end of your unit as a great way to review all the information that they learned. I taught you about bulletin board swat, how to create a bulletin board scavenger hunt, how to do a secret code using information on your bulletin board and how to play "who has, I have" as a whole class review game.
I hope you have a couple of takeaways, leaving this episode today with some inspiration on how to make your bulletin boards have a bigger impact with your students. Not only do I want to inspire you with new ways for using your bulletin board, but I also want to provide you with a library of bulletin boards already done for you. You can see the entire library, I will link to them over in the show notes at classroomnook.com/podcast/43. I have bulletin boards for all the different content areas, including math, science, social studies, reading, and writing. Check those out if you want a bulletin board that is done and ready for you to just print and use in your classroom.
On top of that, I have a video tutorial in our video tutorial library over on the website that teaches you how to make your own bulletin board letters to make really nice headings for your bulletin board and titles for your bulletin boards using PowerPoint. If you want to learn how to do that, it's super simple and you can create anything you want. You can even use them to create displays in your classroom, on your walls, not even associated with bulletin boards. Make sure you check out that video tutorial and I will link to that in the show notes as well.
All right. That's it for me today. I hope you guys have a great rest of your day and I will connect with you again next week. Bye for now.
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