There will be no anchor charts adorning our classroom walls this year. “What?” you ask! Yes, no anchor charts. They’re going digital (more on that in a future post). I wanted to have something on the walls, and didn’t want to completely trash the idea of our teamwork anchor chart, so I decided to amplify it! Using key words that we’ve used year after year to define what it means to be a part of a team in our classroom, I used photos from the first few weeks of school to create a large wall mural of student photos that help us to define the character traits of a great team member. Check out our process!
1st: The Wall Title
I searched high and low for fun wall lettering. I wanted our TEAM MEACHAM title to
- have a depth to it
- contain letters in different fonts and sizes
- be affordable
I was drawn to the look and feel of metal and/or wood letters. I almost gave up looking but then I discovered Woodland Manufacturing. If you’ve been searching for wall lettering options, check them out! They have a lot of options, including plastic, foam, wood, and metal! The good folks at Woodland Manufacturing were very easy to work with, so was their website. They even contacted me (after I submitted my online order) to confirm that I really did indeed want different fonts and sizes for my letters. They sent me a visual markup sheet via email so I could see the different fonts and sizes. 
Once I confirmed my order, it was about a week later that my letters arrived. Upon their arrival, I immediately set out to spray paint them. Initially I was going to order letters already painted, but thought I could paint them for cheaper. Now I’m pretty sure I was wrong! I wanted several different colors, and didn’t realize that spay paint wasn’t $0.97 a can anymore! At $4.00 a can, I think I probably could have saved money by having Woodland Manufacturing paint them for me. Oh well, but then I wouldn’t have eight different colors of spray paints left over for future projects, AND I wouldn’t have been able to do the zebra and tiger striping effect. Woodland Manufacturing even asked for a picture of the final project! Such a nice company. And the packaging…let me tell you about that! I was so excited when my order came, that I tore it open before taking a picture. It was wrapped so nicely, and even had a neat logo sticker on the front of it. It is apparent to me that they take pride in their work!
2nd: The Key Words
The words, SHARE, BE KIND, LISTEN, WORK HARD, and HELP are typically on our yearly “Team Meacham” anchor chart. I wanted the photos and key words to span the entire wall, so that meant I needed eight key words. I opted to add two more key words, COOPERATE and ENCOURAGE; and to create one photo with a quote the included the eighth word, TOGETHER.
It’s not about the pieces, but how they work together.
You can find lots of options for key words that characterize teamwork or team player by using Google. I found my source of inspiration there, as well as when I reflected on my past 19 years of teaching! 
3rd: The Photos
I used my cell phone to take photos. It’s an LG G4, and takes pretty decent pictures. The black foam board behind each picture is 20×30. When exploring options for printing photos/pictures, I discovered lots of options. I priced out Shutterfly, Walgreens, Walmart, and Vistaprint. In the end I went with Vistaprint because I’ve not only used them before, but found a coupon code for 40% off. Each option had different size photo/poster options. With Vistaprint, I went with 22×28 posters. Full price they’re $16 each. So a coupon code was important for me to find since I needed eight of them! Taking photos was easy. I’m already in the a habit of taking photos for parent communication and engagement, so I had plenty of photos from which to select. One thing that I wanted to be sure of was that EVERY student in the class would be featured in one of the posters. I kept a tracking sheet for this purpose. I wasn’t sure what to do about the eighth poster, with the TOGETHER quote, but true to history, good ideas do sometimes come to mind {eventually}. I had recently taken square face shots of my students for our Daily 5 work board, and I had the idea a few days later to use them in a collage of sorts for the eighth poster with the word TOGETHER. Then I thought that it’d be neat to have a quote with the word in it, and easily found one using Google. 
Vistaprint has stellar shipping and packaging! The posters arrived in less time than expected. Each poster was protected in a thick cardboard tube. They arrived on a Friday afternoon, and although I wasn’t planning on going into school over the weekend, I made a special trip to hang them, so they’d be ready for Monday morning. My students will be familiar with the concept of the terms featured in our TEAM MEACHAM wall posters in inexpensive locksmith. I’ve already begun to use the words with them in conversation. It’s fun when you get to define a word, after hearing, “What does cooperate mean?” from one of your students. Now we can point to the visual example of cooperate when we are discussing it! For more relationship building ideas and encouraging a sense of “team” within your classroom, visit my behavior posts! 
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