Teachers, Save Time Using these Tips to Display Student Work

Long gone are the days where I am rolling tape to put on the back of my students' work to display it or poking holes in it with push pins.  These simple solutions will have your students' work displayed in seconds and your hallway or classroom looking fab!  

Seriously, we are teachers and so extremely busy.  Who has time for the perfect bulletin board display?  Not this 3rd Grade Teacher!  I spent an hour using these tricks before school started last year and it has saved me countless hours through the school year.  

Supplies needed:
* Hot Glue Gun
* 12x12 scrapbook paper
* Oversized Clothes Pins (from Michael's)

That is it!  What!?!?!

I started by making a plan by laying my 12x12 scrapbook paper out in the area I wanted to hang it.  As you can see from the pictures, I didn't truly stick to one way of hanging the paper, however, I did stagger my paper so my clothes pins could peep between the papers.  I was able to lay my papers either in the floor or on top of the lockers to make my plan of attack.

Once my plan was made, I was able to "eye" where I wanted the clothes pin to be.  I stuck a paper inside the clip, hot glued the back of the clothes pin and pressed to to where I wanted it.

Once all my clothes pins were hung, came THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP.  I am sharing my hard lesson learned here with you all.  So, the first day of school rolled around and my students went to hang their papers up themselves.  (Yes, teachers, rejoice!  You can save even more time because your students can hang their papers by themselves.  I allow mine to stand on a short step stool to reach.  The angels are singing!!!!)  Ok, so back to the lesson..... When my students pushed on the clothes pin to open it to hang their paper, the 12x12 scrapbook paper fell out.  Oops!


Solution:  I hot glued the scrapbook paper to the
clothes pin on the inside and they no longer fall out or need readjusted because they aren't perfectly straight.  See how I can open the clip and the scrapbook paper stays up?  Trust me, you will thank yourself later!

Last year, I had hung some of these paperclips up in the hallway already, but I want you to see the difference the scrapbook paper makes.  See how the paper stands out a bit more because the white paper doesn't blend in with the white wall anymore?

Above, the social studies report posters looked great on the gray part of the wall, but they blended in with the white wall.

So we hung our 3 About Me papers on the first day of school with black behind them. They pop out a bit more because of the 12x12 scrapbook paper.

I admit that hot gluing the clothes pins and scrapbook paper took a bit of time up front, however, it has save me a lot of time in the last year.  It was so worth it!  I hope you are able to modify this idea to work for you.