Whether you are departmentalized or teach all subjects, making math a focus during back-to-school season is so important! Presenting math in a fun and engaging way, with hands-on and creative activities sets the tone for the school year and shows your new students that math is an important part of the day.
I love kicking off back-to-school season with engaging math activities and tasks that truly help me to get to know my new students as mathematicians. I work hard to make sure that math gets just as much attention as ELA. I love to share math picture books, do math art projects to display, and create meaningful math bulletin boards, many of which I leave up all year long!
Here are 4 math bulletin board ideas that you will love using during this back-to-school season...and all year long, too!
1. Math Accountability Talk Stems
My favorite way to kick off math is to dive deep into discussions with my new students about what good mathematicians do to solve problems, how they feel about math, and share a bit about their past math experiences. Once that is discussed, we talk about the expectations for the new school year when it comes to being engaged in math discourse. To help us practice and set the tone for the year, we use this bulletin board with math talking stems to help us and hold students accountable for participating. I also encourage students to use math vocabulary in our math discourse each day.
2. Anchor Charts
I love dedicating one bulletin board strictly for math anchor charts! I hang new anchor charts that I create with the students above the old ones, but the students know that they can go to this bulletin board and find information that they need from older anchor charts. This truly helps students become responsible and independent learners who are held accountable for their own learning! The best part about this bulletin board is that it is class created, interactive, and can be left up all year long!
3. Content Bulletin Boards: Place Value and Geometry
Even though our first math unit of the year is focused on place value, it is a topic that we practice all year long! That is why having a place value bulletin board or chart like this above the board is a must! I consistently see students checking this poster out to correct their work or confirm their mathematical thinking...yay #teacherwin!
I also love to keep a geometry terms display up all year! By having geometric terms with visual representations hanging all year long, students include this vocabulary into their daily life. This makes teaching geometry towards the end of the year a snap because students are already familiar with so many of the terms!
4. Math Practices
Does your school or district require you to post the math practices? These are so easy to hang and make it simple to refer to throughout lessons so that by the end of the year you know you addressed them all! The best part of referring to these during lessons is that it makes the learning and connections authentic and natural instead of isolated or forced.
Bonus Bulletin Board Display: Math Content Alphabet
When I was moved from teaching third graders to fifth graders I knew I had to up my alphabet game! That is why I created these cursive math alphabet posters! The kids LOVE them! They are a great way to increase math vocabulary use and encourage rich math discourse all year long.
Get students excited about math right from the first day of school with these easy to hang and meaningful math bulletin board displays! By sharing your excitement and love of math you will quickly see that your students will get excited, too! Happy back-to-school season!
Want to kick-start math in your classroom with engaging activities? Try these free activities!
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