My "CREATE" Board to Showcase Student Projects {Classroom 360}

Classroom 360 is a complete tour of my classroom as designed for the 2012-2013 school year. Each post highlights an aspect of my room with photos, a detailed explanation of it's purpose, and often times videos. Be sure to check out all the other posts.

When I started to plan my classroom design for the upcoming year I flipped and flopped between doing a classroom theme vs sticking to a color scheme. I've done both in the past and loved each room for different reasons. Over the years my classroom has featured a beach theme, camping theme, western theme, Hollywood theme, detective theme, and a jungle theme. 

Then I switched to a "color scheme" last year and was quite happy with it.

Because I like change and I love to set up classrooms, I couldn't resist mixing things up.

I loved how the black accents looked with the bright colors in my room and ultimately decided to go with a bright and cheerful scheme.  This was perfect because my goal this year is to really find ways to foster creativity and inspire kids to want to learn instead of just expecting them to do so. 

With the national push for data-driven instruction, it is important to put in extra efforts to make sure that opportunities for creativity and open-ended, project-based learning exist.

To help with my goal, I've designated a board in my classroom specifically for displaying all of those gorgeous, colorful creations that kids design when given some construction paper, paints, glue, and scissors. The work will be changed out regularly, but the hot pink background and the title in the center will remain the same throughout the year. 

It states simply, "Create." It will be a constant reminder of the importance of establishing an environment that values learning "outside the box."

Plus, the darn thing makes me smile everytime I look at it's Crayola-goodness! 

It was super fun to make too.

What is Your #1 Goal for the Year?