You walk into your music classroom, then realize you have no idea what to do with all of those white walls. How many bulletin boards do you create? How do you know exactly what to hang up? After teaching for a few years, I figured out what worked to put on each wall and want to share ideas for decorating your music classroom.
Word wall
A word wall is a great idea for helping your students learn music vocabulary. While teaching the objectives, it’s easy to refer to what you’re teaching if you have a wall of certain terms like “melody”, “beat”, or “rhythm”. Another idea is to have the words you’re emphasizing in your lessons more visible and rotate the words out each week.
Right by the words, it’s fun to have a little section with note cards and pencils for students to write down what they learned about that word and hang it up. This can get kind of cluttered, so you can maybe let one child per class write on a card each class period.
Motivational posters
There really are so many motivational quotes that you can turn into posters for your students to see. The poster should motivate your students to learn music and to understand the value of music education. I wrote about my favorite music education quotes, that you can read here.
One of my favorite posters to hang on a wall is:
Music
Unlocks
Self-expression
Intelligence
Creativity
Composer of the month
I think teaching about the composers is so important. Sometimes as teachers, it’s easy to forget that our students don’t just know about the composers like we do.
My favorite way to teach about the composers is by birthday month. There are so many composers, so choose the ones you’ll teach about from different time periods, styles of music, from different countries, etc.
On a bulletin board, hang up a map and mark where that composer of the month is from, put a picture of the composer up there, and then other things about that composer that would help your students remember who they are.
Music theory wall
Kind of like the word wall, you can have a music theory wall. This wall will be more colorful and will include things like note value, dynamic markings, and tempo words.
This wall I like to have right in the front of the room, because pretty much every day you’ll be teaching music theory in your lessons. You can find so many great bulletin board ideas at your local teacher stores or even on Amazon.
For bulletin board ideas and other great music teaching resources, check out my recommendations.
Country or culture of the month
Just like having a composer of the month, you can also teach a country or culture of the month. This is so much fun!
You can teach about the instruments, dances, songs from other languages, and even read stories to your students. A good bulletin board will include pictures of the things you are teaching. You can also use the map you hung up by the composer of the month to show the students where the music they’re learning that month is from.
Procedures and objectives
And last, but definitely not least, is part of a wall with your procedures and objectives posted. It’s up to your school and/or district if you need to have these visible for your students to see.
I have procedures posted, so if you have a student say, “but you never told me I can’t talk out of turn”, you simply walk to the poster and point.
The objectives are a little trickier to post since there are so many music teachers have to teach to so many different grade levels. You could simply post a general synopsis of what your students will be learning or use the word wall and other bulletin boards to show students the objectives.
The Music Stand offers so many great ideas for your classroom. They have awesome deals on classroom instruments, bulletin boards ideas, and even musical gifts.
What ways do you like to decorate your music classroom? I’d love to hear all about it in the comments below or share your thoughts on social media as you share this post.
Also, I’d love for you to share this post or any of the resources on my website with a friend or colleague who you know NEEDS to see it.
P.S. Are you feeling frustrated or stuck as an elementary music teacher? Check out these free resources to help you teach elementary music with confidence!
Also…I wrote a book called “Make A Note: What You Really Need To Know About Teaching Elementary Music” to help music teachers move forward in your teaching career. You can get your copy here.
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