You're ready to decorate your STEM classroom, but what should you set up? And in terms of bulletin boards, what are some creative things that you can hang up in your classroom, and also kind of some things that you can keep up all year? Maybe you didn't think about that when it comes to your bulletin board situation. I'm going to be sharing with you six bulletin board ideas that you can hang up in your classroom. There is a creative twist to these, so I'm so excited for you to hear these.

Welcome to the Elementary STEM Coach Podcast, a show that will help you with lesson ideas, systems, and actionable tips to apply to your classroom. I am your host, Naomi Meredith, a former classroom teacher turned current STEM teacher and coach. With over a decade of experience teaching and a master's degree in STEM leadership, I am here to coach you throughout the year to help you gain back more time to create innovative experiences for your students.

Grab your earbuds and let's get started. Welcome to back to school season. You may or may not want to hear those words right now.

I totally understand however you were feeling. I actually posted an Instagram reel the other day, and it said you and your teacher, Bestie, are hanging out by the pool. One of you is obsessing about setting up your classroom.

The other one of you is waiting to hear when you guys are going to go get your next iced coffee. I've definitely been both teachers depending on the year, especially when I used to have started new positions in a school or a grade level. I've always been the one to obsess about my classroom and go in and get organized and figure all that out.

But then as I've been comfortable in that position and know what to expect overall, I'm the second where when is my next iced coffee. I don't know if you know this about me, but I love iced coffee and I especially love oat milk lavender iced lattes. That is my go-to, but it has to be from a local coffee shop that makes their own syrup.

So fun fact about me. So what are some bulletin board ideas that you can have for your classroom? So before I jump in really quick, something that I really want to try to do and I love to chat is keeping these episodes this school year a lot shorter. A couple of the podcasts that I listen to that actually aren't teacher related are doing this and I absolutely love it.

And I feel like I get enough information and I'm good to go for the rest of the day and I will binge some of them. So I'm going to try to keep these 10 minutes or less or around then. So I know you are busy and you want to get on your way.

So if you're like, I want more, I have almost 200 episodes and there are many that are longer than 10 minutes. So we're going to try this out and see how it goes. But of course I never run out of ideas.

My husband's like, how, what are you going to even talk about on your podcast when you almost have 200 episodes? I'm like, there's so many things. There's a lot, a lot of things to talk about. So you like to talk, then that's where we're at.

Okay. So six different bulletin board ideas in my STEM teacher one-on-one course that, um, you can jump on it into the whole course, or you can just jump in on specific modules that I am slowly releasing on teachers by teachers. But these are some of the things in terms of decoration and bulletin boards that I recommend.

So I actually have printed off the checklist, um, that goes along with this. So definitely helpful for your classroom setup. If you see me looking down, I am looking at the checklist if you're watching the video version.

So the first one, when it comes to bulletin board setup is having your classroom rules and expectations. This is something you need for any classroom, but it doesn't have to be ugly. And so think about how do you want to teach this to students, but also how are you going to display it in your space? And this is something you want to keep up year round and also something that is easy to see all the time and can be something you can refer to.

I recommend having maybe three to seven classroom rules. Five is pretty good. Three to five is actually pretty good for a STEM space.

And so definitely figure out where to put that. Next is having growth mindset sayings. And I'm sure this is something you have thought about, whether you're a classroom teacher or going into STEM or you've been teaching STEM for a while.

How can students use growth mindset and what are some things that you are going to be constantly remind them? Not have a good growth mindset. What are some of those things? We make mistakes to help us grow. Something that I like to say is practice makes better.

Perfect doesn't exist. And I don't say that to them. So practice makes better.

I had my growth mindset sayings on, like you could still see them, like kids could read it still. They would all the time. But I have them as light bulbs and they would be on the top of one of my walls.

So they decorated my classroom, but they were also things I referred to constantly and kept up all five years that I was in the STEM space. Next is, it sounds very simple, but it actually, like hear me out on this one, is I had giant letters up on my whiteboard. So one of my walls was an entire whiteboard.

And in the top right corner, I had a block letters that I printed and cut out with my bulletin board letters. And it said STEM. And underneath each letter, I had a little circle poster that would represent what does each letter mean.

So there's some images. What is science? Images for what is technology? What do the letters actually mean? That was a huge thing too. So kids actually knew, oh, STEM isn't just a buzzword.

It's not a STEM on a plant. It actually means something. And this is something I referred to constantly, constantly with kids.

And you're not teaching in isolation. And I did mention this a lot in my STEM in action series that was just before this one. But I would explain to kids, hey, this is what science means.

Here's how we're using science. When I had new students or my younger students who had never had me before, I would refer to this constantly. So this is, again, something I would hang up.

Bulletin boards don't also, or just decorations in general, don't have to be ginormous. It doesn't have to be a board. So you probably are noticing, oh, it doesn't have to be a board.

It can just, how are you using your space? It can be decoration, but how are you referring to it? So having those STEM definition posters, what does STEM mean? Very, very helpful. Next, this is a fun one, but again, a teaching tool is having a STEM and technology alphabet. And I just recently updated my STEM and technology alphabet.

I'm so excited about this because there are three different color schemes that you can print out and have it match your classroom. And there's also black and white versions so you can print on whatever color paper you want. And having a STEM alphabet, again, is a great resource.

And I also have had a teacher who messaged me and she said, I actually have your alphabet. And when I use your lessons, because I have vocabulary in all my STEM lessons that are content specific, she would print out the vocabulary that went with that lesson in a smaller version and hung it up with the STEM alphabet. So it was more like a vocabulary wall that connected to the STEM concept.

So I thought that was a fantastic idea. I also have a whole alphabet set up in my home office right now. So I love the update.

It's just more visually appealing, needed a little bit of a refresh. So that is, again, something that you can hang up in your space. The fifth decoration that you can have in your classroom, again, this is something I hung up all year.

I hung it right outside of my classroom where students were coming in. And side note, classroom teachers loved this, is having a STEM affirmation station. And so what you do is you grab a cheap mirror.

I found mine at Walmart. It was $7 at the time. Hung it up with Gorilla Glue tape.

And then there's different affirmations that go along with STEM, like, I am a mathematician. I am an inventor. I am a creator.

And you can hang that up all along the mirror. And teachers, when they're picking up their kids, they love to check your hair. So that is a fun one.

And again, right outside my classroom, if you are allowed, that was a really great addition to my STEM space for all the kids. And the final one that actually is a bulletin board is I actually didn't have official bulletin boards. But there was a space right outside my door that I created a bulletin board with some paper, had a border, had a cute little garland on it.

And I would change it out with seasonal bulletin board kits. So I made a different theme for every month that went along with STEM. And then I printed, cut out, laminated.

And I could hang those up every year. Or if there's a student teacher nearby or a parent volunteer, I would just hand them the bag with the theme. And they could hang that up.

And it was all finished up. So all STEM related, but a fun little theme. Because you guys know I love a good theme.

After these ideas, what are you hoping to try in your classroom? You can go ahead and make all the things, not stopping you. But if you want to save some time and get into more lesson planning, every single thing that I mentioned, including this checklist for setting up your classroom, you can find in the show notes for this episode, or they're also in my TPT shop, Teachers Pay Teacher Shop, Naomi Meredith. And you can just print, go laminate, and you are all done in a day.

Thank you so much. And I will see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the Elementary STEM Coach Podcast.

I would love to connect with you over on Instagram at Naomi Meredith underscore, or send me an email to elementary STEM Coach Podcast at gmail.com. Also, make sure to check out my website, Naomi Meredith.com to see all the show notes from today's episode and shop my K through five STEM resources. Any questions you have needs for resources or ideas for episodes, get in touch. I'll talk to you soon.