Bored with Boards?

For someone who considers herself a generally creative person, I have a huge mental block when it comes to designing bulletin boards. It’s a shame, too, because I have a pretty decent bulletin board layout for the size of my room, which is underwhelming. I have a very hard time taking ideas that look good small-scale and making them work in the larger space.  Many of my bulletin boards come out moderately uninspired, such as this one:

Honestly, for my Compare and Contrast bulletin board, the one thing I am proud of is the Venn Diagrams, which were made with a program called Inspiration. You’ll hear plenty more on that topic later; Inspiration is one of my favorite teaching tools.

Acknowledging all of this, I have to gloat a bit. Several weeks ago, I made what I feel is an exceptionally good bulletin board. I’ll start with the picture, then I’ll elaborate on the things I like.

In addition to the beautiful array of colors, I’m really pleased with the content of this board.  It was made by a mixed third and fourth grade reading group.  We were touching on poetry – what it is, how to recognize it. We also covered a couple of other skills with these two poems.  On the left is “The Thoughts of a Winter Mitten.” This poem is an excellent source to teach personification. If you look closely, some of the mittens the kids colored actually have faces on them, as they “personified” them. (I’ll post the citations for these poems, in case they can be of use, at a later time. The books are at school and I am at home. This was not planned out well.) The poem on the right, “Quilt Patches,” was used to continue a lesson in comparing and contrasting. The poem uses many superlatives, giving us the chance to address the -est suffix. Having the kids make a paper quilt was a lot of fun, too. I had several students who were unsure of the meaning of “quilt,” as opposed to “blanket,” at the beginning of the poem, and it added some hands-on interaction with the vocabulary word.

I’m happy for spring to be on the horizon, but I’ll be sad to disassemble this board. I’m also contemplating cashing in on my previous success and turning it into a spring-themed poetry board…. with the title “Spring Into Poetry.” We’ll see. Any and all creative ideas are welcomed in the comments!