Encourage your budding poets with some clever classroom bulletin board displays. The ideas below are sure to brighten your classroom and excite your students. Whether your class is focusing on haikus or limericks, there is something just for you.
Bulletin Board Ideas for Poetry Month and Beyond
The Shape of a Town Bulletin Board
A shape poem is one that is written in the shape of the object it is describing. For this bulletin board idea, capitalize on that and have students create a town using shape poems. Start by covering the top half of the board with blue fabric or paper for the sky. Next, hang black paper with a double yellow line in the center at the very bottom of the board to represent a road. Above that, and below the sky, use grey or tan paper to create a sidewalk. Instruct students to choose different types of shops or building that they might find along Main Street in a town. Be sure that everyone has a different type of business. Students can then fold a piece of paper in half, draw the shop and cut it out so that it opens like a card would. On the outside, the students can draw the details of the building’s exterior. On the inside, they can write their shape poem about the business they have chosen. Once completed, students can staple their building along Main Street.
Laughable Limericks Bulletin Board
Poetry month is usually the same time that state testing occurs in many schools. Let students release some of their test anxiety by encouraging them to create limericks about testing. While you want them to take testing seriously, this is a good way for them to express their anxieties in a funny, safe way. Cover the bulletin board with bright, cheerful paper. At the top, label the board “Let’s Laugh!” Encourage students to write limericks and illustrate them. When they are finished, hang them on the board for all to enjoy. This is also a great bulletin board for just outside your classroom, because it will give passersby a chuckle and validate your students’ work.
Harmonious Haiku
There is nothing like springtime to break students out of the doldrums. Have them gather their coats, grab their poetry journals and head outside. Ask them to sit quietly on the playground or at the school garden to listen to the sounds, sights and smells of nature around them. Have them write adjectives to describe their experience. Once back indoors, use those adjectives to help create haikus. Write the good copy on a sheet of fancy parchment or resumè paper. Cover the bulletin board with spring theme pages from an old nature magazine and staple the poems to the board. Finish it with a border of artificial ivy or flowers.
What are some of your favorite poetry bulletin board ideas?
Share them with us below or on the Really Good Teachers forums!