Creating a Vision

In my blog last week, I talked about creating a vision wall for my students that incorporated inspirational quotes related to their goals. This week, I wanted to talk about my thoughts on vision boards and how I incorporate them into my life. I recently did a mini vision board for my Cultivate What Matters goal planner and I realized that I hadn’t made a vision board (or collage) for myself in years. I had forgotten how satisfying it could be.

Cultivate What Matters Vision Board

The making of vision boards (and art) in my family goes back to my grandmother, whom we call Maw Maw. I would stay with her during the summer and she taught me that art was not just paintings and sculptures. Vision boards can be art, too. Every summer, my Maw Maw and I would sit around the table, and we would cut up magazines and use sewing scraps to make colorful boards. We didn’t have any goals in mind, and the boards didn’t have any purpose other than to add color and whimsy to my bedroom, but I realized later in life that they were, in fact, vision boards.

What is a vision board anyway? Vision boards are a collage of images and words representing someone’s wishes and goals. I didn’t know any better because Maw Maw just told me to cut out things I liked, and my love for collages grew from there. In high school, I decided to do collages on a different scale, which encompassed my bedroom door, wall, and bookshelves. I called it a “living collage” and I incorporated it later in life in my classroom. Except my classroom vision boards don’t necessarily represent life goals, but rather learning goals.

Board focusing on female authors.

How can teachers incorporate vision boards in their classrooms?

• Word Walls: These are a collage in the classroom that is focused specifically on vocabulary learning. Every time we learn a new focus-vocabulary word in my classroom, I post the word on the word wall for students to reference in the future.

Word Walls

• Bulletin Boards: Bulletin boards are typically focused on a general behavior or a specific topic that is being used in the classroom. I have included here two different boards that I have done in the past. One is focused on kindness and the other is focused on female writers.

2019 Classroom Bulletin Board

• Anchor Charts: Anchor charts are another way students can focus on vocabulary or classroom concepts from a visual standpoint. This is an anchor chart I have made to remind students of annotation goals.

Notice and Note Anchor Chart

• Quote Walls (mentioned in my last blog): This is another inspirational quote wall that I used a few years ago in my classroom called “Litspiration” focusing on inspirational quotes from literature.

Litspiration Wall

• Student Work: Putting student work on the wall sets standards and goals for other students to elevate their assignments. Student work can also be considered an anchor chart. This photo is a mask symbolism project that my students created while reading Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.”

• One-Pagers: This is a type of vision board or collage that represents themes from a written work or study unit. Different media and concepts are outlined. Teachers can make these to plan their unit or students can make these to demonstrate what they learned after a unit of study. Below is a One-Pager that a student crafted after a unit of study on the themes of friendship and mental hardships with the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

Vision boards can be incorporated in many ways. Aside from goal-setting, they are a powerful tool for learning and can be relaxing to make. I want to hear from our readers. What types of vision boards do you make? If you are in education, do you make vision boards for your classroom? Don’t forget to follow us on social media and continue the conversation in our Facebook Group MMC Chat.