My oh my, we’ve reached that point in the summer where we teachers start to head back to the classrooms. We arrange our desks, start to gather first day materials, even organizing our bulletin boards, making sure that everything is how we want it for the first day with the students. However, there’s one thing that still remains. Coming up with a theme…
If you’re anything like me, deciding on a theme for the school year seems to be the most difficult part of getting my classroom ready. Now I consider myself to be somewhat creative, but I yet still have to find a theme that fits.
I normally try to do something that interests the students or gets them excited to be in the room. Last year I came up with a great theme, well I thought it was a great theme, of “Warping into a New Year”.
The finished product. I decided to use a Mario Theme.
My biggest challenge, as always, is to find a theme that relates to this year’s students. How do I know if they like superheroes or video games? I haven’t had them yet! Sure I use Pinterest, I’ll admit it, I”m not scared, to get ideas but that usually takes me so far.
So what about you? What do you do for your classroom? Take the poll and would love to hear what you do for your classroom!
Because I teach science and world geography (to 6th graders), I tend to create my themes around my units. For example, our first unit in science is waves so I have a bulletin board with a surf board that says “catch a wave into 6th grade”. Corny, I know, but I’m not very creative:)
I’m like you and not creative! Last year I did a Mario theme! With it being Olympics year, I may do something like “Going for the Gold in the class” or “Shooting for the top”. I tend to use what’s happening in terms of events and such.
This is the second post I have read on themes, and now I am curious. I teach high school algebra to self-contained sped students. As such, I don’t have a theme. I do have a lot of helpful posters and things like number lines, horizontal and vertical examples, which way is left and which way is right, etc. Do other high school teachers have themes like our elementary counterparts?
That’s a good question. I know when I was in high school, my teachers really didn’t have themes. However, in your case with sped students, I don’t see why it wouldn’t hurt. They may think it’s cool. I just try to relate the theme to the students and what’s the cool fad. I usually look to Pinterest for inspiration to help with my theme.
I wonder when we stop doing themes. 6th grade? 8th grade? Curious.
I look around some high school classrooms and think they could definitely use a “theme”. It doesn’t have to be cutesy like in elementary but how about some thought provoking art work? or motivational posters? They can definitely be more subject than theme oriented. I wouldn’t want to look at cinderblock walls all day long.
But it happens! I was fortunate enough to have high school teachers who used motivational posters, and they worked! It got you to think about what you wanted out of your education.
I agree. I’m chomping at the bit to go do my walls but I’ve been in twice and the halls are cordoned off. It’s driving me nuts.
I know that in my district, the middle school teachers all do some sort of theme. Whether it’s subject specific or not, they all do something! I think the fad starts to fade away in high school. I’m not a high school teacher, but it seems that themes get lost because the students are young adults. Maybe that’s just me though.
I have seen elementary teachers in my school focus there theme on units of study. This means it changes about 4 or 5 times each year. For those teachers who use a theme not tied to curriculum specifically they tend to use Twitter or Pinterest for inspiration.
Yea, I use Pinterest a lot for inspiration when it comes to themes. It’s not that I don’t like changing the themes for the units, and would be easier if I was one subject specific, but using one to two themes still works for me.
Which I use all of the time to get my thinking cap on for my themes.