Historical Overview of Inventions Bulletin Board and Unit Ideas

If you teach the Seven Habits in your classroom and happen to be fortunate enough to have a huge bulletin board, you might want to set it up like this.  This 15-foot  bulletin board was in the Gifted and Talented wing where I taught the last 3 years before I retired. My team teacher and I set up the right end of the board with the word LEADERS. Under that we switched out each of the seven habits every few weeks, and focused on them in all of the study and research the students were involved in. The rest of the board always held current projects from 4th or 5th grade district-wide gifted students.

(SOMEWHERE in all the tubs of things I brought home after retirement are lots of my big watercolors of the characters. Watch for them on Ebay - the plan is to get lots of my decorations on there for other classrooms to enjoy!)

Here is just one sample of the many great uses for student work on the big bulletin board. (This idea took up so much room we had to put the current habit on the other board across from this one.) In this photo, we see the board almost finished - as students shared their inventor of choice research, they added it to the board in the timeline section.

My team teacher and I threw this Unit together so that it fit our student needs from several sources. This one, on Amazon, might be a great place to start if you want to do the same:  Inventions Thematic Unit 

This is what the students viewed at the beginning of the unit. The title "Historical Overview of Inventions" was at the top, timeline chunks of years were left to right, Inventor cards were in groups all around the edges, and (not in photos) to the left of the bulletin board was a color-code chart that explained, for instance, technology - green, etc.  Students were given a reasonable amount of time to explore the categories and inventors on the board, then took the name of the one they wanted to research.

When the research was done and students had written up a paper to share with the class, they gave a speech and then put their writing on the board in the correct timeline section with construction paper coordinated with the category behind it.   

The students who were listening to each speech had a short rubric to fill out. This kept them engaged and reinforced our study of the things that make good speeches. Each student also did a rubric on themselves, to self-assess. 

We all learned a lot, and when the parents came later for student-led conferences, this board was great  way to share knowledge.