Bulletin Board Ideas for English Language Arts

Can high school teachers have colorful and engaging bulletin boards in their classrooms? Absolutely! In fact, something I have noticed over the years is that not only do bulletin boards add a pop of creativity, but students genuinely enjoy the change. I am sharing a few ways that you can easily add a burst of color to your classroom, while at the same time, making the content meaningful and engaging. 


1. Interesting Words

A fun way to get your students thinking is by using one of your bulletin boards to display words that are not common in their everyday vocabulary. It's fun to watch the students pronounce and then read about each word on this particular bulletin board. Displaying absurd words are a great way to get your upper elementary, middle or high school students engaged. 

Click HERE to take a closer look at other ways you can use this idea with your class. 

2. Career Education 

Career education is becoming a more common occurrence in English classes. I created this bulletin board to go along with one of my Career Exploration Project. This activity requires students to explore a career of interest. So, for my bulletin board, I printed out "Hello My Name Is..." name tags (found online), then I typed in the name of each of my students and the career that they were interested in learning more about. It was a nice way to see the various careers everyone in the class was interested in.

Click HERE to take a closer look on how you can use this idea with your class!

3. Holiday Activities

When you think of ugly sweaters, you typically think of Christmas. While I typically use this bulletin board around Christmas time, the activity itself does not necessarily need to be used during the month of December. 

In fact, you have have your students create ugly sweaters that they could wear anytime of the year! The focus of the assignment is to make logical connections about the items that a particular character would want on their sweater and then have your students explain those connections.

Click HERE to take a closer look on how you can use this idea with your class!

Can you guess the book or movie each of the sweaters were created for?

4. Exemplars

(I ran out of bulletin board space in my classroom during the time of this photo!) When I completed an essay writing unit with my class, I wanted to be able to show my students exactly what I was looking for. I posted three different essay samples for my students to peruse. I wrote various characteristics around each essay, so students knew exactly what I was looking for. Click HERE for a quick print-and-go download!

For example:

90% sample included: 7-8 sentences per paragraph, engaging topic, strong thesis statement, etc. 

80% sample included: good title, interesting ideas, expanded word choice, etc. 

70% sample included: five sentences per paragraph, basic title, basic word choice, etc.

These are just a few of the fun bulletin board ideas I wanted to share! For more fun ideas for your classroom, check out my Instagram

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