Are you ready for the Spelling Bee?

Here is what I did this afternoon at work...

It's a bulletin board to get our students excited about the Spelling Bee that's coming up on June 16th and 17th. I was told last minute to put something together really quick for the bulletin board...and to be honest, I didn't have enough of the same shade/type material available to do just one color (this bulletin board is HUGE) which is why I picked out so many different colors. I know it's not the sexiest bulletin board that I'll upload to Pinterest but it's not half-bad either. I'm actually pretty content with the way that it turned out.

It is designed to be interactive and catch the students' attention. After I vertically stapled the royal blue, sky blue, lime green, canary yellow, and tangarine orange butcher paper, and put up a thin border with black posterboard...I took hot pink butcher paper and pasted real photographs of different things that the elementary school kids are used to seeing on a daily basis. Underneath each one is a surprise....note the "LOOK!"

The students can lift up the photographs and see if they guessed the spelling correctly. Afterward, my hope is that they'll try to guess all six spelling words and get their fellow classmates involved too. (We'll find out on Monday!) Some are more difficult than others. I put up six different words representing the six different elementary school grades at our school.

Here is one my students are definitely familiar with...

I also put an encouraging phrase up above each one, since that's how I roll.

My 5th graders actually took these pictures for a countable nouns vs. non-countable nouns project we did earlier this year. So you could say that this bulletin board is partially....reused? (Remember the three R's!)

I'll probably go over the words again with a thicker permanent marker. But here's how it looks for now.

These are photographs of actual spelling words that they'll have to learn for the Spelling Bee too. So it's basically a mini-practice session for them.

And finally....I am aware that wrist and watch should be together. I will fix that pronto! You have my promise! 

That's about all for now. I'll post more pictures next week of how everything went and let y'all know if the bulletin board actually worked in sparking an interest in spelling like I hope it does. Comments/suggestions welcome! Goodnight!

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.