Interactive Bulletin Board

Anyone who knows me knows that I do not like putting up bulletin boards. I seem to lack any creativity when it comes to matching border to cutesy sayings. I just can’t do it. A few years back, I was fortunate enough to work with a wonderful teacher who LOVED making bulletin boards. I am pretty sure it was her favorite part of teaching. I always pictured her just making it a full time job. Can you imagine someone coming to your classroom and putting up your bulletin boards for you? That would be amazing! Unfortunately, she moved to another district so my bulletin board maker was gone. It was up to me to figure something out.

A week before school started, I kept my board blank. I had a sign on it that said something like, “Under Construction”. That was as creative as I could get. In fact, by the time school started, the board remained the same – construction sign and all! Three weeks in to the school year and I still had no board. Kids were constantly asking me what I was going to do with it. I always suggested taking it down and burning it. About the same time that the board was causing me daily grief, students had the opportunity to go to the library. After checking out books and immersing themselves in the words that seemed to jump from the pages, I began noticing a pattern. Students kept asking me about the settings in their books. “Where is Cape Cod?” they’d ask. Or “Is this an actual town?” they’d wonder. An idea suddenly popped in my head.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the students and their desire to learn more about the places they were reading about in their books. One night, I said to my wife, “Do you know where I can get 24 different colored push pins?” She looked at me like I was crazy. I got up, jumped in the car, and drove to Wal-Mart. Side note: The closest Wal-Mart is twenty-five miles away and the closest Target is about two hours away! I ran to the office supply aisle. Unfortunately, they only had five colors. I bought all five, did some quick math (don’t forget to carry the one) and realized I still needed nineteen different colors. I became intent on finding all different colors. It was my only focus for weeks. I lived and breathed push pins. I knew weird color names, sizes, and the depths of each pin. It was getting to the point of being a little too obsessive. After weeks of searching Amazon, driving all the way to Target, and going into some shady looking office supply “stores”, I was able to collect twenty-four different colored push pins. Did you know there are six different shades of blue push pins, but I digress.

After getting all of my push pins organized in these fancy, but inexpensive, plastic bins, I put up my first interactive bulletin board. When the students arrived to school on Monday, they say the board that you see in the pictures below. When I explained to them that they each had their own colored push pin and would be able to pin the map when they read about a place in their books, they were all excited. Soon, I started noticing more and more students getting up, looking intently at the map, and pinning a place.

It was nice to see a bulletin board being used for something that helped students connect what they were reading to a map skills standard in which they struggled. Now, what will happen to me when a new student shows up and I need to find ANOTHER color? Oh, help me!