How to Make Your Own White Boards for Less than $30

Knowing how to make your own white board can save you money! Here are simple directions you can follow to make white boards for your entire class.

Here are the supplies you will need to make 32 individual student white boards:

• 1 panel of 8'x4' shower board
• Electrical tape of 4 different colors

Ask store associates to cut shower board into 12"x 12" squares.

The edges will be rough, but not sharp. If desired, you can sand them down and use as is.

I recommend buying 4 different color electrical tape to cover the edges of the student white boards. While expensive, the different colors make a wonderful tool for different types of classroom activities.

Now that you know how to make your own white board, you can enjoy! Be creative! I always use these for vocabulary and spelling reviews, number dictation, alphabet dictation....the list is endless. The colors of the edges of the boards make it very easy to create teams. If there are teams of uneven numbers (ex. 3 teams of 4 students, 2 teams of 5 students), then I determine winners by the total average score per student. If you're lucky enough that each team has the same number of students, you can just add total points.

For each question, I tell the students to always do their best work, as they won't know ahead of time what color will be called upon. After an appropriate amount of time, I call one of the colors. Students with those color boards hold up their answers and I check their work. If no one of that color has the correct answer, I call another color. If someone of the second color has already erased their answer, obviously their answer is counted as incorrect. If all 4 colors are called and no one gets the answer correct (rare), then I write the answer on the board and discuss.

Generally, at the beginning of the year, I award points for each person on each team who gets an answer correct. Sometimes I give 5 points, sometimes 10 points. Later in the year, as I ramp up expectations, I not only award points for correct answers, but I also deduct points for wrong answers. For example, 10 pts. per correct answer, -5 points for incorrect answers. One caveat: no team can win if the score is less that zero! Sometimes for a particularly difficult question, I open it up to everyone. Each person on each team who gets a correct answer gets a certain number of point, usually 20. If a student does not know the answer, s/he can write "don't know" on the board and receive no penalty. However, if they answer incorrectly, or write nothing, there is a penalty, usually 10 points.

The students love to walk into the classroom and find the white boards on the desks. Their excitement mounts as time progresses. These student white boards are much larger that those you can purchase through teacher supply companies, and are far less expensive.

If you have more ideas for how to make your own white board, be sure to leave them in the comments section below.