it's not all bulletin boards and butterflies.

I don't know about y'all, but on my first day of freshman year in college, I was glancing down my list of education classes for the semester, and I actually asked myself, "Where's the bulletin board class?". I was quite convinced that "bulletin board making" would have been a core component of the curriculum. No?

Obviously, "bulletin board making" didn't quite make it into my college courses, but any teacher knows that bulletin boards are a huge part of any classroom, and creating and maintaining them requires a great deal of time, effort, and creativity. As I told you in my multi-tasking months post, I don't have an abundance of bulletin board space in my room. However, I do have one very large bulletin board that I use to display student work throughout the year.

I know that this goes against the grain, but this bulletin board actually stays the same all year - I don't change its appearance to match a seasonal or curricular theme. I created this board so that it would reflect our classroom's theme (superheroes) rather than a seasonal theme so that I would not have to reinvent the entire bulletin board every few weeks. I allow my kids' work to reflect the season or curriculum being celebrated, saving me a great deal of time.

Another time saver is how I post student work (I think some of you might be starting to judge me on my laziness by this point....). Rather than labeling each student's work with either a sticker with their name or just handwriting their name, I actually took a picture of each student on the first day of school, cut out their head, and attached it to a superhero body.

This, then, "labels" each student's work and shows the author of the work. Once work is complete, all I have to do is staple each child's work underneath their superhero body.

  

• I love this system because rather than completely redesigning the bulletin board every couple of weeks, I just post new, current work for each student. 
• The kids love this system because they LOVE seeing their picture on the board, and, since their picture stays in the same place all year, they always know where they can see their own work. 
• The bulletin board is arranged in a linear, simple fashion so that work is easy to find while remaining visually appealing.

How do y'all manage bulletin board updates? Do you have a good way of managing seasonal / frequently changing bulletin boards?