Rethinking Bulletin Boards
From time to time, the TLN daily discussion turns to the seemingly mundane details of daily teaching practice. Even so, there are surprising twists and turns, as this in-depth discussion of the venerable classroom bulletin board indicates.
Read these excerpts, then click on the link at the end to download the complete conversation. You'll find many more ideas about using bulletin boards to advance learning.
Carolann, a teacher leader with a joint school district-higher education appointment, began the discussion with this query:
I come to you once again for a reality check. As I begin to plan for this semester, I was wondering how much emphasis to put on bulletin boards with my pre-service teachers. In our elementary partner schools I see word/vocabulary walls. I see steps and procedures. I see visual support. I see behavior management systems at work. Sometimes I see student work displayed. The walls are crammed full.
One of my students last semester told me that when she first entered her practicum classroom, she thought the walls were cluttered. After working with the class one full day a week for a semester, she understood the importance of what was displayed. The teacher constantly used the walls in her teaching.
How do you use bulletin boards and wall space in your classrooms? How often do you change them? Do you do your own boards/wall displays or does an assistant do it for you? What do you display in the hallways? How much is too much?
Laurie, a special education teacher, replied:
Here are my answers to how I use bulletin boards in my 6th grade classroom. I teach in a middle school, and the kids are in my room for part of the day, and in the mainstream for part of the day.
My largest bulletin board has the words: "Stupendous Students" hung up. This is where their work is hung — both essays, spelling and math tests, etc. as well as any work they've done outside my room that they want to show me.
Beside the big board is "Our Pets." I am a huge pet/animal lover, so I have the kids bring in photos of their pets with their name attached. It's a nice way to have a personal connection to my students. Our principal, my teammates and I also have our pets' photos hung up there. I also have a side bulletin board for "What I See in You," a set of cards I've given my students when they've done something really special, thoughtful, kind towards another student or for our class. I also use this space for additional student work such as math projects and reading (I teach 3 subjects).
I also have a reading motivation bulletin board with a chart with the kids' names and stickers next to their names when they read a book, as well as their written reviews and recommendations. When they read five books I give them a gift certificate to a local book store.
How often do you change them? I change them frequently. As the kids do more essays and projects we take down the old and put up the new.
Do you do your own boards/wall displays or does an assistant do it for you? The kids are in charge of this; they save me a lot of time, and they love creating them. I will only suggest we need to change it, and they may decorate it with a theme such as Halloween decorations for their fall/Halloween essays, etc.
What do you display in the hallways? Our teams have display cases so we may do a team display or take turns with the various seasons or units. Right now it has their Ancient History projects from last year and our "Who Works at Our School?" These are our interview essays that the kids did with me in LA class.
How much is too much? I'm afraid I can't honestly answer this. I have lots of student work hung up in my room as well as visual "help" posters on one of my white boards (multiplication charts, parts of speech, word walls).
For Cindi, bulletin boards are "another teacher."
I have always considered my walls to be "another teacher in my room." Last year the fire marshal complained to my principal that I didn't leave 20 percent of my wall space showing. His answer was, "So?"
My students don't come in on the first day of school and see 80 percent of my walls filled. It is a work in
progress, and they are the workers. They make the Word Walls, one word at a time, place them on the wall themselves, and interact with those words daily. We play Word Wall games once or twice a week, and once I know that my students are using those words seamlessly, a word or two at a time will come down to allow for others. Word Walls must be interactive to be purposeful; otherwise they aren't instructional at all. I've seen so many classrooms with Word Walls that just sit, never changing, all year. Luckily, I had Dr. Jim Cunningham for my master's work. His wife Pat invented the Word Wall as part of her Four Blocks program so he was able to share some fun activities with us.
As far as student work, Marzano et al, as part of Classroom Instruction that Works, specify the "Providing Feedback" strategy and indicate that it is important to have writing samples on a bulletin board that represent each of the levels on the writing rubric. Of course they don't mean to put failing papers with student names on them; instead, find examples that we get in our writing training, or teachers can write a failing paper themselves as an example (easier and quicker to write than the passing papers!), and stick those up there with the excellent work of the students.
As a middle school teacher, I have found that I'm not as artistic as my elementary school colleagues, so it is really important to me that the students do the work. I have a pile of different colors of bulletin board paper (you know, the rolls in the workroom), and I rip them off with jaggedy edges (that's about as artistic as I get ) and my students write on them. Last year I wrote "Reading Strategies We Use" on a big scrap of orange paper and placed it in the middle of my wall. As we studied those strategies, one by one, I would have students write them in their own writing — "prediction" "think aloud," etc — and we added those to a big abstract looking collage. I pointed to it almost daily, and because they had written the strategies, they remembered them.
I use the walls outside my classroom more as an instructional tool for the new teachers I work with than for the students. Although my students like to see their work out there, I also include the learning goal, state objective, and sometimes a copy of the instructions for the project. This enables other teachers to see what we're doing as part of our professional learning community. Later they may say, "I saw that activity you did. Tell me about it." That's much better than hiding our light under a bushel, as my mother says (or hiding our good teaching inside our classroom).
Rona has seen bulletin boards across the grade levels:
I love walking into a primary classroom and seeing all of the students' work related to learning objectives. They are artistic, personalized, and appealing. On the other hand, when I go to middle and high schools, I am disappointed to see random posters stapled on the walls. Is that a reality or an unfair, broad generalization? I think the walls are an extension of teaching and learning, but there has to be an explicit connection made for students. They have to be a part of the product or the instruction. How much do kids get from posters hung by the teacher and left hanging?
My own favorite bulletin board in fifth grade is "We're All Connected," with every student's name connected to another's like a scrabble board. I start with my name in the middle. It takes some time — several hours — but it's worth the investment. I do not plan it in advance, but rather I "wing it" by starting with the longest names and the trickiest letters. I also am mindful of the width and length of the board, so I build in both directions. Before I start I laminate black construction paper and then use the letter press to make lots of letters. It's been easy to save the letters and reuse them.
I also use my math bulletin board every day. We do calendar math (Great Source's Everyday Math) with lots of daily activities that change monthly. That is part of the students' morning work on arrival.
My district requires that we post daily objectives for each subject. I balked about this at first, but now I see it as a way to focus students (and me) on the lesson. I love referring to the objective to see if we are making progress through a lesson. It is a good beginning and ending statement.... this is where we are going... and did we get there?
Marsha teaches middle school math and science:
I'll have to admit that I'm not as artistically inclined as the ideas you've circulated. But I found an idea several years ago that works really well for my personality and the classes I teach. Since I teach two different content areas, I have two spaces.
In my math space during the 1st quarter, I have this "How Many Ways Can you Describe the Number _____?" Then I fill in the blank. The kids can do graffiti or stick a post-it up there with different ways to express the quantity. For 2nd quarter, I put up the title "The Answer to this Problem is _______ ." Students then graffiti or stick up a post-it with some kind of expression that would be answered by the number I fill into the empty spot. In 3rd quarter, I try and print out photos that demonstrate the geometric concepts we're studying, and I challenge students to bring in their own contributions. I've gotten some incredible examples from kids, and they "donated" them to my future-year bulletin boards. During 4th quarter we do a Scaling project and the BB holds all the project calendars/ideas.
We also have a Property of This Number bulletin board. That's where I work with them on defining over and over and over the properties of numbers. I only do it for them for part of the 1st quarter. After that, they take over with their math group, plan out the number, write the Guess My Number clues and run the bulletin board themselves.
Science is much easier. Typically our BB is sectioned off by the hours I teach science. Usually we create class graphs and those results are stored in each section and we try and see if each class has the same results. It's a great way to talk about variability. Then, for most of the 2nd semester, the BB is where we post all the clues for the Mystery Class activity we do (the Journey North project). This project lasts from January until the beginning of May. Each week we receive new clues about the location of 10 classrooms around the globe, which we are trying to solve using facts about their number of daylight hours and eventually interdisciplinary clues. Every week the partners that are responsible for data crunching post their results on this bulletin board. It helps them find errors, and if someone was absent they know where to go to get the clues and data.
I like this system because it is super easy to use once you get the titles up and get the system going. And you don't have to be artistic AT ALL. You also don't have to be one doing much work. I really like that part!
Abey offered ideas from her elementary classroom:
Carolann, you've had some awesome advice about bulletin boards, wall-space and hall space. Your interns will have their hands full adjusting to writing daily lesson plans and organizing for behavior management, but they can certainly utilize their extra teaching space by getting help from their students, parent volunteers and Teaching Assistant (if there is one).
Here are a few other suggestions from my elementary classroom years. I like for my students to be actively engaged with my bulletin boards in two ways. I like for them to help create, cut and assemble the stuff for the bulletin board, and I like to make them interactive.
In most of my classrooms, there have been at least two to three bulletin boards. One became an interactive math center, a second became an interactive language arts center, and a third became an interactive map and globe center. The math and language activities were theme-based and sometimes holiday-based, and my students loved voting their favorite ideas.
The "moving parts" were sometimes hung with push pins and/or velcro. I used lots of yarn, felt, plastic, aluminum, etc (lightweight materials that would work well with push pins and velcro). I also used cloth instead of paper because it held up better and looked nicer, especially if I did a holiday theme. I changed the activities about every 2-3 weeks after giving each student the opportunity to complete the activities. The map and globe interactive area stayed up all year and each week I would add a new and intriguing map or globe activity. My students had many more opportunities to learn about their state, nation and world by being actively engaged all year rather than the short time it takes to "cover" the material in an elementary social studies book.
If the students were not able to do the cutting, pasting and assembling, I was usually able to get a couple of parent volunteers to help me because I didn't always have a TA in my classrooms. Within the 80-20 fire marshal rules, I used every inch of "legal" wall space for displaying student work, providing vocabulary, math resources, science resources, etc. I would try to help my students to find these resources easily by keeping down the clutter.
I also saved space for praise and esteem-building. I feel it is important for students to pay attention to themselves and fellow classmates who make wise and healthy decisions, so each day students had a space for writing a compliment about another student or even about themselves when a good choice was noticed. It's amazing how this helped with behavior management. During transition times students could place a post-it on our "Awesome Choices" wall. Then when we had a couple of minutes in between activities we would have the child who placed the post-it retrieve it and read it to the class. We would then all give the recipient and the student who wrote the post-it a quick indoor-voice cheer.
Susie offered a simple solution and posted several resources:
This will be a little "off the wall" (pun intended), but one year when I was really behind, due to construction, maternity leave and some other big obstacles, I just put up the required basics and then simply added one item per day. Some days were exceptions, of course, and I would issue disclaimers, but I had a lot of kids who raced into the room and really got into finding the new item. We called it "What's New?" I taught science then, so many times the new item related to a lab we were going to do. Eventually it got to the point where I took some things down to put others up.
Here's a good bulletin board resource I found. And a helpful article at the Education World site. And Kathy Schrock's bulletin board resources page.
Patty shared some thoughts about over-stimulation:
This discussion on bulletin boards has been very interesting and at an appropriate time of the year for most of us. A long time ago I taught in junior high and middle school and I used to spend hours trying to create bright, beautiful and educational bulletin boards and I enjoyed it! Then a dozen years ago I became a Montessori teacher.
We were taught to minimize the amount of visual stimulation on the walls. We covered our boards with fabric in earth tones with no bright paper borders. We learned to put up a few beautiful pieces of art or framed photographs. Additionally we post charts and posters that pertain to the topic being studied and then remove them when we move on to another topic. We post lots of student work in the hallways. We use bulletin boards in the hallways to show photos of students engaged in projects, to post student wishes for peace, or to show our progress as a school in walking a certain number of laps or reading a certain number of books.
As an individual diagnosed as having ADHD, and as a teacher of many students with this label, I am amazed at the effect this has on concentration and focus. Sometimes the environment can just be too stimulating!
Teddi responded to Patty's insight:
Patty, after reading your post I had to sit for a minute and wonder where in the world my mind has been all these years. I know all about everything you have just posted, but I dutifully put up amazing, interactive "busy" bulletin boards every year IN MY CLASSROOM! And I am a special educator!
Wow! What a disconnect for me. Soooo, as I prepare my "amazing" bulletin boards this year, they will be in a common area outside our room, and meaningful, subject related bulletin boards will be inside our walls.
I have noticed that when students not assigned to our room would wander in with one of my students, they would comment on student work posted on the walls. Now my students will be able to show off their work in the common area outside our room and be able to concentrate better inside our room. Thanks for such a clear wake up call this morning!
Mary T. brought high school into the conversation:
I've stayed off this strand because I am learning disabled when it comes to creativity on the walls. I think that is a valid reason for remaining at the secondary level. I have nothing but admiration for the primary/intermediate teachers who can do wonders with construction paper and scissors. I've been shamed by my lack of talent at many PD workshops!
However, I strongly believe in letting the student work take precedence. I just set up my room this weekend and left a huge blank wall for the student work we'll post and use throughout the year, starting with student-generated American Lit timelines that we'll refer to all year. Two things I've loved doing:
A graffiti wall — For the ninth grade poetry unit, I posted blank paper along one wall that came from the end rolls of our local newspaper. The instructions were to share your favorite poems, lyrics, or original verse. I filled the chalk tray with colored markers. The kids loved it and were instantly published. At the beginning of every class there was always a group reading or writing, and sharing spontaneous congratulations on original verse. (Caveat: I do teach in a high school. At some point the activity gravitated toward a more 'base' kind of message. It was my signal that the activity had run its course. Without comment I would just remove the wall. We were generally at the end of the unit by then anyway.) The wall went up again at the end of the year so kids could recommend books for summer reading with mini commentaries.
Character charts — I hung my students' life-size fictional character charts out in the hall early in the first year of our new school. (Get bulletin board paper. Have a student volunteer lay down to be drawn around, dress the character according to descriptions, the era, etc., and complete analysis activities on the chart. This was a prewrite for a character analysis paper.) I'm proud to say that this started a trend around the building where student work has decorated our halls ever since.
The anatomy teacher stole the character idea and had her kids fill in organs on the student "body." (The star basketball player's organs were considered especially 'hot'). The language department educated us on emotion words using student faces to exemplify the feelings. My colleagues borrowed our timeline assignment after seeing it in the hall.
And everyone's favorite project in the building is the health and sciences project on tattoos, piercings, and other weird things done to the body. The hallway work has turned into a kind of professional cross-curricular sharing. We have had lots of informal conversations around it, as you might imagine!
It has interested me that each year the quality of the projects has gone up (especially the piercings/tattoo one). I think students are scaffolding off of the earlier projects and looking forward to their chance to be published.
Renee, another high school teacher, offered her confession:
Ok, I admit it. As a high school teacher, for many, many years I never took bulletin boards seriously. My main goal was to cover what was left of the ugly cork underneath. I'd use whatever material was available, paper or cloth — one year it was aluminum foil. I did have the good sense to leave one board open for student work that was changed throughout the year (and eventually covered the walls, doors, and sometimes hung from ceilings), but the other bulletin boards went up before the first day of school, and stayed there untouched until I had to take them down at the end.
Finally, my STUDENTS took over and decided I needed help. They maintained the boards for an entire school year, and I was amazed at how important it was to them and how enriching it was for the whole class. I repented and started making better use of this learning tool. Now that I'm working with students at the community college, guess what? They work with college students, too!
Carolann closed the conversation with thanks:
Thank you all for sharing such wonderful ideas on how to use classroom walls to teach. I have gleaned several new ideas to share with my pre-service teachers. The collective wisdom of TLN is powerful and really quite amazing.
One of our local television stations advertises 125 years of collective experience among their station's meteorologists. As I've read your posts about effective use of wall space I wondered, what is the collective number of years of teaching experience we represent on TLN? How many hundreds, or thousands of years? That would be an impressive number, no doubt.
And please leave your own ideas and thoughts in our Comments section!
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