Back-to-School Bulletin Board

Wow!  The back-to-school rush is a seriously real thing!  Last year, my first year as a full-time special education teacher, something that I didn't realize I needed to do was put up a bulletin board.  You may be thinking, "Duh!  Of course you do," but let me explain.  My current school has pods.  There are computers all around the pods and in the hallways that connect the pods, there aren't actual bulletin boards.  Also, since I was piloting a new special program for the building and no one had mentioned anything about putting up some sort of display in the hallway, I figured I was off the hook.

Well, that was not the case.  And this year, the same thing almost happened again!  More gen. ed. classes were added, and the wall space that I had last year had been assigned to someone else.  Turns out, I just moved to a new spot, but because I couldn't find that spot, I had to scramble to put up my board again!

That being said, I wanted to do something other than our building's standard "Welcome Back" with pre-made cutouts with each student's name on it, but I also didn't want to spend a ton of time on something when I know I need to change it in a month.  I opted for an under-water theme with the banner "In this school, we swim together."  I'd considered saying "We may all be different, but in this school we swim together," since I do run an autism classroom, but I opted for less words.

On the first day of school, each of my kiddos, myself, and my aide painted 2 paper plates which we turned into fish, seahorses, seashells, jellyfish, and a "zombie worm."

The kids loved painting, it was a great "first thing of the first day" time-filler/ice-breaker while we were getting to know one another and I've gotten a TON of compliments!

Here's the finished product:

Feel free to make your own!  Just tag "in a school daze" if you do!