C+S: Bulletin/Class Decorating

Project 2: BULLETIN BOARD AND CLASS DECORATING

Creativity & Service 

Introduction:

This activity consists of decorating some of the school’s bulletin boards and classrooms in order to help the teachers that are unable to change the bulletin boards frequently and to make the school look better and more welcoming. To do this, a group of students, including myself,  will meet after school (during the extra 45 minutes) to create decorations for various classrooms. Before doing this, we will speak with the teachers to discuss what they want us to portray in the classroom or bulletin board decoration according to what they are teaching in that classroom.

WHY IS THIS CREATIVITY?

This project is definitely creativity because we will be creating bulletin boards, coming up with ideas to portray in them and working in a team to actually produce them. We will also plan the class decorations, planning what to do on each wall or each section and how to decorate each class appropriately and creatively!

WHY IS THIS SERVICE?

One of my goals for this activity is to create a more welcoming environment in the school (by decorating it) for students, staff, teachers and visitors. By dedicating our own time to create a better-looking school, we are offering the school and its people a service.

My goals:

My goals for this activity are:

• to efficiently communicate with teachers and classmates to create a good-looking portrayal of what is being taught in the classroom
• to create a more welcoming environment in the school (by decorating it) for students, staff, teachers and visitors
• to grasp student’s attention and tickle their curiosity with our monthly bulletin boards

ANTICIPATED LEARNING OUTCOMES

2. Undertake new challenges

Participating in this activity is a new challenge because I have never been responsible for decorating the school’s classrooms or bulletin boards. This is a challenge because what you see when you come to the school is what shapes your first impression and we have various visitors in the school on a daily basis and creating a good impression is crucial for the success of the school. It is also a challenge because I have to communicate not only with my classmates, but also with the teachers in order to carry out the activity.

3. Planned and initiated activities

Together with some of my classmates, we decided to propose this activity to our CAS Coordinator because we wanted the school to look better and we decided that we had to take part in order to create a more welcoming environment. We joined a group of girls from the class, talked with the teachers, started planning, and are ready for action!

4. Worked collaboratively with others

This activity is special because apart from working collaboratively with the classmates that are part of this group, we also have to work collaboratively with the teachers as we communicate with them and discuss their ideas or propose our own. We then have to work with each other to transform those ideas into something creative and catchy, before creating the decorations.

5. Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

There are many classrooms in the upper school area that could use our help. We will continue throughout the year, progressively transforming the school’s appearance, showing perseverance and commitment in this activity. We will also change one of the bulletin boards monthly, showing both commitment and perseverance.

7. Considered the ethical implications of their actions

When deciding how to decorate the classrooms and the bulletin boards, we will need to consider the ethical implications of our actions. We will have to take into account who is going to see what we create and how this will affect them. We will also have to portray what we are learning in a way that catches the other’s students attention but does not offend them or make them feel uncomfortable. Even though we will decorate upper school areas, the lower school students also pass through there, therefore, we will need to think of them also.

Reflections:

Thursday 6th of February 2014

Today was the first day that we met to start creating our first bulletin board. However, we had already done lots of work prior to the actual creating of the board. We met Ms Trini, our Business & Management teacher and talked with her about possible ideas for decorating her bulletin board. This is what happened next...

• We discussed several possible topics and ended up choosing "Entrepreneurial Inventions that Changed the World".
• We (all of the people involved in this project) met and planned out how we would organize the board and specified other details.
• We created a google document to share information on our different inventions.
• Finally, we met today and started doing some of the real stuff! We started the actual bulletin and started organizing what needed to be done. We will meet tomorrow again to keep working.
• The due date for the board is on Wednesday the 12th of February.

Here are some photos of what we did today!

Friday 7th of February 2014 

Today we met again to keep working. I really enjoyed myself as we were all happily working together in a "it's-friday-mood". We really advanced as we were all doing one thing or the other and everybody was doing something productive. Here are some more pictures of some of us working and what we were working on, but the final results are yet to come ;) 

Tuesday 11th of February 2014
We finally finished the bulletin board! We met for the last time today and managed to hang the new bulletin board before 16:15... meaning that we met the deadline, which was Wednesday the 12th. Today we only had to cut out the photographs we had printed and paste everything. The feeling of hanging our first "creation" was very satisfying, and I was truly thrilled. Below are photos of the final creation!

Friday 21st of March 2014 
Today we started and finished our CAS-themed bulletin board. Out of all the people that take part in the bulletin board decorating activity, only Gema, Idoia, Konstantina and I were able to do it. It is true that we have been told about this bulletin board a long time ago; however, one thing after another, you get the feeling that there's never time to do it! 

Today, we were informed for the first time during the last period that the bulletin board had to be hanged by Monday! We started working on it at 3:30, but by 4:15 it was time to go and there were tons of things to be done. Because of this, we decided to stay at school until we finished it, and have Konstantina's mother pick us up later. By giving up our Friday afternoon, I think I definitely achieved the predicted learning outcome: "Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities". 

The bulletin board was CAS-themed as I said before. We divided the bulletin board into the three CAS sections: Creativity, Action and Service. We got some interesting quotes from several class members' reflections, printed images, wrote all the learning outcomes and planned how to put it all together. We finished at 6:00. Overall, I think that the bulletin board is nice to look at, and I am sure that several people will stop and take a look at it. Hopefully, the school will appreciate the effort we have done to have the bulletin board done on time! 

In the picture above you can find me looking for some good reflections to write on our board. 

We used all type of colors and materials to create a colorful and attention-grabbing board!

The final look of the bulletin board!

Monday 31st of March 2014 
Today we started working on Room 16, Angela´s room! We are going to redo every wall of the classroom with our own original ideas. We talked with Angela and Monica (they teach in that class) about what they would like us to do on the walls. Monica gave us some hints about what she would like, but she let us create our own designs. Angela gave us full responsibility and liked all of the ideas that we suggested. Today we managed to take off all the papers of the walls and start covering them with different color papers. We also were able to finish of our planning and decide what we are going to do on each wall. 

There were various layers of old paper on some walls, but we managed to remove it all! 

 

We then had to recover the walls with new paper ;) 

We also had time to start working on some of the things we were going to put on the walls. 

Tuesday 1st of April 2014 

Today we managed to finish covering every wall of the class. It seemed like we were never going to end, but we did fortunately. We were able to cut out some things that we had printed to decorate the class (book covers for example) and to edit some of the things that were already on the wall to give it a new look (famous philosophers for example). Ms Angela gave us some printed images that she had that were related to literary vocabulary, and we managed to cover one of the bulletin boards in the class with those. It turned out to look really good and in just 45 minutes you could see a lot of progress. I realized that when people come together, with a little bit of effort a lot of things can be done. I also noticed that with not that much effort, it is easy to create a prettier atmosphere in the classroom, and a more welcoming environment. I really enjoyed today's decorating session! 

This wall was full of images representing different literary vocabulary. 

Here we have Lorena stapling some famous philosophers. 

The TOK wall!

A panoramic view of the classroom, there are still lots of things to do! 

Friday 4th of April 2014 
The week is coming to an end, and we haven't managed to finish Ms Angela's class yet. However, lots of work has been done. Yesterday I wasn't able to attend at 3:30 to work on it as I was tutoring Carlota. In my absence, the Bulletin Board girls worked on the yellow bulletin board (see in the picture above) and gave some final touches to the green bulletin board (TOK). We were planning to work on the classroom some more today, but it seems that we all had something else to do and were unable to meet. Hopefully, we will be able to finish the classroom sometime next week. Up to now I love everything about it! 

Here are some images of how the class is at the moment! 

END OF ACTIVITY 

The Bulletin Board and Class decorating activity was not the longest of activities, but I really enjoyed it. I undertook a new challenge as I had never been in charge of deciding what would be on the school's walls and I also got to work collaboratively with others while having fun being creative. In addition, I also got to think about the ethical implications of my actions, as the amount of people that would see the bulletin boards was very large and we had to make sure that we didn't offend anyone or anyone's beliefs with what we decided to expose. Overall, I really liked this activity and had a lot of fun with it!