No one has time for classroom drama, so teach your students to give their drama to the llama! Help your students navigate classroom situations by learning to write about them. When they have something to share about a classroom situation or another student, encourage them to fill out a note and give it to the llama. By creating this fun, interactive bulletin board you can nip some of those tattle tales right in the bud. Hopefully as they write they will be able to start determining what is a true emergency and needs a teacher's attention and what doesn't.
Get started on your board by covering it with your favorite fadeless paper. I love layering the weathered wood paper and the cloud fadeless paper. Once your background is set add your border trim. I like to layer these as well and staple them together before adding them to the board. This helps in lining them all up so they align just right. I layered the hot pink polka dot, turquoise polka dot and lots of dots orange border trim.
Top your board off with some colorful tissue fans. I layered orange, lime green, hot pink, polka dot fans, and chevron fans. The secret to these is to assemble them by stapling them closed, then trimming off the ends and string. I use a stapler to attach these right to my boards. There is no right way to do this, the more colors the better. Go wild! For the perfect touch add the boho pom-pom banner on top of the fans.
Now you are ready to add the Give your Drama to the Llama bulletin board set. It assembles with just a few quick staples to secure it in place.
Now your board is ready to use! Encourage your students to write a letter to the llama when they feel the need to share about something they witness in class. Be sure to establish clear expectations and review what is an emergency and needs to be shared vs. classroom drama.
I like to pull a few cards to read at the end of the day and discuss privately with the student who wrote them. It helps to have the students read what they wrote word for word, and then discuss how they think they should handle the situation. Most of the time they come up with some pretty creative solutions. By encouraging them to write down their drama you help them have ownership of their classroom issues. By not addressing it immediately you limit wasting class time on trivial issue and give students a chance to solve issues on their own or think of a creative solution. So say hello llama and bye to all that classroom drama!
