The Information Board: Celebrating Nonfiction Every Day

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An anchor display in our room is our Information Board, a place to highlight nonfiction resources and our learning. This display has two purposes: Half of the display shares nonfiction recommendations, and the other half displays students’ questions and learning. Both parts of the display are important in our room because they foster the social connections of a literacy tribe.

Book Recommendations

Reading is both a personal and a social experience. We may be reading in our heads, but once readers look up from pages or screens, they love to share their ideas, exchange favorite titles, and hear about the reading selections of others. Encouraging students to read and share their experiences with others is critical to a learning community’s energy and connections. The Information Board provides students with a place to display their reading lives and to recommend resources to their peers.

A variety of reading suggestions are displayed on the Information Board. I start the year displaying copies of book covers and magazine articles shared during book chats. New website names and addresses along with a screenshot of the home pages are listed on the Information Board, too. As the first weeks of school unfold, students are encouraged to share their resource recommendations. In addition to traditional reading materials, students and I display items such as postcards, pamphlets, and maps from our summer trips. We collect and display interesting infographics. I want students to recognize the wide opportunities that exist in nonfiction.

A bookshelf sits below our Information Board to hold different baskets of resources. One basket holds recommended books and magazines available for others to read. Whoever recommends these resources writes his or her name on a sticky note and marks the shared resource so other students can ask questions or discuss the information. We also use this shelf to hold baskets of new books and magazines highlighted during resource chats. It is valuable to keep new texts highly visible in a high-traffic location for a time so that students repeatedly see and notice those resources before we place them in our classroom library.

Starting the first day and throughout the first week of school, I begin adding book covers and magazine articles to the information board. In addition to sharing the resource, I add “posts” to the Learning and Questions side of the display. These posts on index cards share facts and big ideas I learned from selected resources. The posts can share questions generated after reading a resource. I want students to see the active nature of nonfiction texts and how they can expand learning opportunities and interests. When discussing Information Board shares, I use familiar blog and Facebook terms, like post and comments, because students already use these terms.

Each time I add a resource, I encourage students to use the texts during our independent reading time or take them home to read there. During our first unit of study, a chance to explore, study, and read from different parts of our library, I encourage children to visit the Information Board and check out the different kinds of nonfiction I’ve highlighted in class, reminding them that shared resources are on the board or shelf. I encourage children to read or reread these resources during workshop.

My goal during those first weeks of school is for children to see that I love sharing all kinds of nonfiction. As kids read and explore informational resources with me during the first weeks of school, I encourage them to add a favorite resource to the recommendation section of our Information Board.

Cycles of Displays

During the first month of school, we keep our posts throughout September. It takes a while for students to become active contributors. As more students add recommendations in October and November, our display cycle changes since the board fills up quickly with student shares; we “struggle” to find enough display space if we let the display go for a month. (A real problem, right?)

Starting in October or November, on the second and fourth Friday of each month, we recycle the displays. As we remove book covers and articles from the wall, we add them to the three-ring binder kept below on the bookshelf; the binder holds book covers, magazine articles, and shared infographics for future reference. Recommended books and magazines kept on the shelf in baskets stay until the end of the month and then are reshelved. If your name is on the book, you reshelf the title. Part of keeping an informative display useful is habitual curating and housekeeping. You can always find a few students eager to help with this chore, and eventually you can hand over the curating to students who love to clean and organize materials. Thank goodness every year I have a small team of neat-freaks!

Ways to Maximize the Displays

Keep It Current

Creating and curating this display and shelf is essential if you want to keep the resources current and fresh. If you schedule this Friday chore twice a month with a team of students, they will help you maintain this shelf. Don’t take on this chore alone or you know what will happen: The year will get busy and busier, and suddenly the display will become wallpaper ignored by everyone.

Use the Information Board

The Information Board and bookshelf are a great source of reading material for students to use when they say, “I don’t know what to read.” Materials recommended by peers carry influence, so maximize this display for wandering readers.

Keep It Social

When students add recommendations, ideas, or questions to the board, broadcast the additions at the beginning or end of workshop or during your morning meeting. We display our recommendations and thinking to increase the social connections of a learning community, not just to fill wall space. Make time to advertise the brave sharing of your learners. At the beginning of the year, students seem more comfortable adding resource recommendations to the display; this kind of sharing gives me opportunities to lead students into sharing their learning and questions. Students quickly learn that sharing a title can also reveal what they are learning.

Sharing Our Learning and Questions

Active readers generate thoughts and questions. This is a mindset I want to cultivate in our classroom, and I support this belief with our Information Board. In addition to housing recommendations, we use this display to post our interesting facts, new ideas, and questions.

Modeling is important because students may not be familiar and/or comfortable with this kind of public academic sharing. During the first weeks of school, I model this kind of sharing; as I read different resources that match my interests, I connect my reading to visible posts of new ideas and questions. I take time to direct students’ attention to my “posts,” highlighting my different reading resources and reactions. Here are some of those resources:

As I share daily additions to the board, children quickly see that informational resources come in many different forms. As I share my learning and questions, other children begin to participate and share on the Information Board. Through social connections, students start paying attention to the learning and questions of others in our classroom community. This opens up many opportunities for conversations, sharing resources, and working with other like-minded people who share the same interests.

Useful Supplies

Students are responsible for creating and maintaining the Information Board, so they need access to the supplies necessary to hang displays on it. Create a supply bin near the board. Model how to use the materials and how to hang resources; make your teaching life simple and ensure that your students can independently create the display without an adult’s assistance. Here are a few tools and resources that we found useful:

A basket of display tools and materials

Provide a variety of supplies for sharing resources on your board.

• Pushpins are easy to use and allow for simple cleanup if you are using a bulletin board. (Staplers are tricky for rotating displays.)
• Magnets help display resources on magnetic whiteboards or chalkboards.
• index cards
• sticky notes

Plastic pockets or sleeves for articles

If students want to share articles, you can mount plastic pockets on the board that allow kids to easily store them. When articles are displayed, other students will want to read them, so it is helpful to have a quick and neat way to display articles or magazines.

A stool or stepladder

Give kids the opportunity to select and independently hang their resources anywhere on the board. They climb on playground equipment; give them the benefit of the doubt and let them use a step stool.

Index cards

Index cards help students post learning statements and questions prompted by their reading. The limited size helps them be concise when they post their learning, questions, or comments next to shared resources.

Sticky notes

Students have the option of leaving feedback on shared resources or posted learning and questions displayed by classmates. Just as they leave comments on student blogs, students can leave one another feedback via sticky notes on the display. This feedback supports the social nature of learning and sharing.  Visitors, building staff, and parents can also leave questions and comments about the shared resources and ideas using the sticky notes.

During morning meetings or at the start of reading workshop, we alert the community if new thinking or resources were added to the display. The announcements build and maintain the community’s interest in the Information Board, and the reminders encourage other children to visit and use the shared resources. Students posting resources or learning are delighted by the community support and the acknowledgment of shared resources. Celebration is a critical element in students’ lives.

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