After my son returned from his trip to South Africa and I saw his amazing safari photos, I decided to use the wild animals as sort of a vague theme. And then I saw a couple of other blogs using similar themes, so I have to say thanks to both Mr. E at http://artwithmre.blogspot.com/ for Let Your Imagination Run Wild and Becca Ruth at http://ms-artteacher.blogspot.com/ for Wild About Art. While I'm in thank you mode - I want to thank my wonderful blogger-friend Amy at http://artfulartsyamy.blogspot.com/ for some help she's given me on a project we both grudgingly do for our school's parent organizations. THANK YOU.
Anyhow, back to my bulletin boards: There's a class reward chart, and on the right is my vocab. space ("word wall") which I have left empty for the moment. It will fill and change all year.
Above is a close-up of my rules and my door. Note my very 1st (and therefore most important!) rule: NO WHINING! For many years, my students have known that there is no toleration for complaining in my happy art room. Last year, at my initiation, many of us (teachers and students) participated in A Complaint Free World's challenge to go 21 days without complaining, by wearing a purple bracelet and switching wrists when we caught ourselves complaining. It was a real attitude-changer. Check it out at http://www.acomplaintfreeworld.org/.
My 6th graders are caught in a strange nether-land between elementary and middle school - they are sort of a part of both, coming to the elementary art room but graded as a middle-schooler. Hence their own little "zone" to explain how they are graded. I'll explain about the passports in a couple of weeks, once school has begun and we've actually done this mini-project that I use for grading.
And the other poster above, not yet hung, is my crazy, wacko schedule. We are on a 6-day cycle, which works really great once you are used to it. We've done it for years. Do you use this sort of schedule too?
The "Red, Yellow, Blue" thing is a call/response I use to get kids' attention. I say the first line, the kids respond with "I hear you". So easy but it works.
My Artist of the Month bulletin board is a play where I showcase a famous artist that I am using as motivation for some lessons that month. I do not repeat the same ones every year. This year I have planned Matisse (my fave), Dali & Magritte (they'll share a month this winter), and a bunch more. Not sure yet who I'm putting up first....
Love these! Good ideas all around. Where did you get those brush posters? I've never seen them before.
ReplyDeleteI got the Mr. Brush posters from a distributor at a state art teacher's conference a couple of years ago. They have a logo from Royal Langnickel brushes on them, but I actually have looked online and cannot find them anywhere. It's too bad because they were FREE and the kids LOVE them. I don't even need to point them out - they notice Mr. Brush on their own!
ReplyDeleteHave you ever used Lettering Delights for poster making?? It is great
ReplyDeleteCheryl, I never heard of Lettering Delights before. I just checked it out - and it appears that it is a site to download fonts and alphabets?
ReplyDeleteYes Phyl, You do need to pay but they have lots of cute letter alphabets and fonts and images for creating scrap booking and charts etc
ReplyDeleteThey have 30% off at present on lettering delights. Good value
ReplyDeleteCheers Cheryl
I love your room. I really need to make my schedule big like yours! How did you do that? Is it all different papers or marker on paper? Anyways that stinks about the butterflies. I'll have to revise my idea too. Weird that they would change it. It's been so successful. Oh well. Hope your year is off to a good start! We are doing much better here in CT and excited for school to start with the kids Monday!
ReplyDeleteErica, I wouldn't survive without my big schedule hanging, since every day is different and it often feels like complex choreography. I think perhaps I overdid it this year though; it looks pretty complicated in the middle because of the smaller broken time periods. Anyhow, here's how I do it: I go to Staples and buy poster board that has a very light 1/2" grid on it. That way I don't have to go crazy measuring everything - just figure out the # of lines and # of slots I need, and divide it up! I do it all in marker - using a big fat Sharpie for all the lines and info first, and then using some Crayola markers or highlighters to color code it. It takes a while to do, but at least I always know who's coming in next!
ReplyDeleteFabulous, I'm doing the big chart. A little easier for me we are on a 5 day schedule. But there are so many changes, sometimes even voluntary changes because of field trips teachers switching etc. I might put velcro on the back of each block so I can move blocks for the week. It gets pretty confusing with the amount of classes coming in and out -this is wonderful. I answered you on my blog too.
ReplyDeletewow I am going to copy some of these posters this is fab thanks for sharing, love all your storage int he above post wish I had thoes presses in my room.
ReplyDeleteHuh? What presses are you referring to, Kathy? I'm not sure if I am misunderstanding your comment, or if there's a typo, or if you mis-read something I posted. If you mean a press for printmaking, neither my art room nor the high school art room have one. Though it would be great! :-)
ReplyDeletePhyl these look so great! I'm so inspired by them to cover even more of my walls!!!
ReplyDeleteI love what you did with mine and Mr. E's influence. I hope you don't mind me using some of yours from this post. We are using the same theme once again... Except it is going to be "Wild Times" instead of "Wild About ..... ". Other teachers thought it was great not to redecorate... Except me who sees the same kids.. Oh well. It is fun to decorate for the new year.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for sharing this post with me, Phyl. You are so generous. Here's the post in which I linked this one: http://bulletinboardstoremember.blogspot.com/2011/08/back-to-school-wild-about-art.html
ReplyDeletejan