Opinion Wall

This year, I want to focus on encouraging my EFL students to develop their own personal opinions and learn how express them well, so I decided to make this display on the back of the classroom door.

The opinion wall idea is that the question (an interesting thought-provoking question, that is in relation to what we are studying in the curriculum at the time) must be proposed by the student council, posted, answered by every student, and it must be changed every week to every other week accordingly. We are studying parts of plants and photosynthesis this month, and so the first question that a student came up with was, "Is it possible to get everything we need from plants? Could you live 100% on only plants? Yes? No?" As you can see, there are a variety of answers, and it really got the students to stop and really think. And after all, that is the point of school.

Interactive Labor Day Bulletin Board Crossword Puzzle

Hey y'all. I've got news. And what a hit! I had no idea how popular this would be with the students, but they seriously love it. The idea for a crossword puzzle bulletin board was taken from here, on Pinerest, but then I changed it to my liking to fit the Labor Day theme this week. The students have until this Friday to solve it completely for the grand prize. Believe it or not, my 5th graders are actually arriving to class early, and trying to finish their work early, just so they can have extra time to try to solve the crossword puzzle. One thing is for sure: there will definitely be more of these in the coming months...

 

It's not too complicated to make either. Just measure the size squares you want to use. I used 3in x 3in (5cm x 5xm). Figure out what your crossword puzzle will look like on a separate piece of scratch paper, first. Then cut out as many squares as you need and trace their edges with permanent marker. When you're done with that, paste the squares on the bulletin board with masking tape or hot glue, add the small numbers in the corners of the across/down squares, and voilà. All that's left to do is sit back and watch the kids have fun using their intuition, perception, and reasoning skills.