DID YOU SAY COLOR?
One of the things I always hated in my classroom were the white cinderblock walls. They were just so...blah! A lot of teachers did nothing to break up that "blah-ness." Oh, a few might slap up a post or two, but many many just could not be bothered. Honestly, I don't know how they could stand it. We teachers are the ones who have to put up with it all day long. At least the students are only stuck in there for a class period. Now some of you may be able to paint the walls in your classroom, and I say, "Hooray!" But if you're like me and cannot paint the walls, you do have some options.
As an ELA teacher, I had a lot of different types of information I could put on my walls. And believe me, I took advantage.
1. Posters With Quotes: Pretty easy to find, actually. Most are inspirational. Some are actually from famous authors. You can even find quotes about reading, writing, literature, etc. They come in all kinds of sizes.
2. Posters From Movies: There are a lot of movies based on literature, and sometimes you can coax your local movie theater to give you one for free!! Or you can find them on line in places like ebay. I had a poster of Troy (yummy Brad Pitt), King Arthur (equally yummy Clive Owen), and Thor (yes--Chris Hemsworth). lol!
3. Posters With Song Lyrics/Musicians: Some song lyrics are quite poetic and some songwriters are poets. I had a poster of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Bob Marley. Again, these can generally be found in music stores (if you can find one) or ebay. Or possibly in your teenager's bedroom. lol! I would print song lyrics that I especially loved and post them on bulletin boards, doors, etc. Things like "Sound of Silence," or "Stairway to Heaven," or even "The River" by Springsteen.
4. Posters of Famous Authors: Most educational catalogs have a lot of posters with famous authors.
5. Maps: If you're like me, I always liked to have maps of parts of the world up, especially Great Britain, ancient Greece, and the U.S., because I would show students where the authors we were reading came from.
6. Student Art Work: I generally put art-type projects on the wall outside my classroom for display. But if there were some that were really great, I would move them into my classroom when it was time to put up something new. My students did things like coats of arms, book posters, body biographies, hero's journey posters, timelines, etc.
7. Grammar Rules Posters: Again, you can usually find lots of these in educational catalogs. Or you can make your own.
8. Writing Style Posters: Same as #7.
9. Posters of Literature Being Studied: Educational catalogs usually have some pictures to accompany various literary works, such as Shakespeare plays, short stories, novels, etc.
10. Anchor Charts: A lot of schools require you to put up anchor charts. Usually I've seen this in elementary and middle schools, but I think it's a great idea for high school as well. I would put up lists of dead verbs, great adverbs, word substitutions (like a mini thesaurus), tone words, etc. Just whatever my students worked on in the classroom and needed to reference.
There are many ways to mount posters on your walls. I had the most success with hot glue, mounting putty, clear packing tape (doubled over), and mounting tape (although your school may not allow this because it is a b*#%h to get off the walls). It really depends on the surface of your walls.
A FINAL NOTE:
With all of these ideas, if you have a really good materials center, you might be able to create your own posters and have the peeps at the materials center blow them up to whatever size you like. They can usually laminate them, too. Our materials center could take something we created in PowerPoint and blow it up to a full poster. If you laminate them, they will last you for YEARS. And you are only limited by your imagination and whatever images you can find online.
Just say no to boring, plain, white walls in the classroom. lol!
Below you will find links to some free mini-posters I offer in my TPT store.
