Greetings from the Amazing Biomes

For science, third graders pretended to write postcards home to family describing their visit to one of the five biomes: rainforest, marine, desert, tundra, and forest.

Indoor Recess Door Decor

With all of the super cold days keeping students inside at recess, what is a teacher to do? Why not decorate the door? Any theme of the month will do. For March, students can decorate for National Reading Awareness month or use green for St. Patrick's Day. Endless possibilities!

During the polar vortex, I chose the Olympic theme. Before recess, I cut 2" strips of colored construction paper using the colors of the Olympic rings. A few students stapled together the strips in the short fifteen minute recess. I created a sign that said "Team (teacher's name)" using the Olympic rings.

Olympic Theme Door Decor

Use any color you like to match your theme! The kids enjoy making the chain and feel good about helping to decorate their classroom door. 

The butcher paper "snow" was hung before winter break. I left it up since it tied-in well with the Winter Olympic theme. :)

Classroom Style For Older Students: Grunge

Finding a cool classroom style that isn't cute is next to impossible. This year, I searched for classroom design ideas for a male upper elementary school teacher. I couldn't find anything, so I concluded it was time to create one.

I designed labels, learning targets, schedule cards, bulletin boards, and much more with a grunge theme. I really like the theme because it can be colorful for coding things like subject titles and book genres, but can also look great in black and white. The best part is that it's a fun theme for older elementary students. It has that rock-n-roll urban edginess to it that appeals to Tweens.

Reading Genres Bulletin Board

Story Plot Line

For the plot line, I used 1" ribbon and stapled in place.

Reader's Glossary

The glossary is in alpha order. I used a gray screen background, but it detracts a little from readability.

Reading Strategies

Date, Day & Daily Schedule

Used good ol' black electrical tape for the date.

9" Inbox Labels

Learning Targets

Respect & The Golden Rule

We introduced a school wide campaign to teach and reinforce the values of respect and to use the Golden Rule. Students are awarded a feather (our school mascot is a cardinal) by staff members when they are seen demonstrating actions that exemplify these values. The Principal challenged the students to earn 1,000 feathers as a school for a celebration.

Respect Rap

Cardinal Pride Feather Scoreboard

I created this "scoreboard" in one of the main halls to keep track of the totals each week. The score is also displayed with a "Feather Meter" using base-ten blocks because our school uses Everyday Math. A die-cut cardinal has the new total and moves each week to reflect the amount of feathers earned. This is a good visual math tool to help everyone keep track of our school's progress.

To kickoff the school wide respect campaign, the guidance teacher showed this video Respect Rap

Feather Meter

New Year, New Dreams, New Goals

The start of the New Year is a great time to ask students to reaffirm, reassess and restate their goals. The colors reflect the Winter Olympic theme, but work any year. The winter sports athletes were made by enlarging these coloring pages on to construction paper cut to 11x17 size. Search for Olympic sports to find the pages I used. Then cut and laminate.

Tip: I used the reverse side of a bulletin board border for white.