Classroom Posters for Veterans Day

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has a great resource for honoring Veterans Day.  They have been publishing an annual poster in honor of Veterans Day for over forty years!  It's quite a collection!  On the the GALLERY page, you can see the current poster design for the year 2020 as well as the other years which date back to 1978 - long before the birth of the internet and the digital age!  

The photo shows the poster for 2016 on the left side and the poster from 2014 on the right side.

I love that a photo of a bald eagle was included in the poster design for the 2016 year.  If you carefully observe the poster designs from past years few years, you'll notice that most include illustrations of members of the five branches of the United States Armed Forces or are images of national symbols.

If you'd like a Veterans Day poster to hang in your school or classroom, I'd highly recommend using the one from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.  Best of all, it's free!  Here's the link again:  Veterans Day Poster.  It's very simple to use print the posters.  All you do is right click the high resolution image, select "save as", save to a designated place on your computer, then open the file (it's a jpeg) and print on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper in "shrink to fit" mode.  Trim off the white border and your poster is ready.  Read on if you need a detailed tutorial.
(I'm on a PC.  If you're using a MAC, this might not work.) 

First go to the website and click on the link that says, "High Resolution".

Click on "High Resolution"

Once you click on "High Resolution" a window which is the image of the poster will open. 
Use your computer mouse and right click somewhere on the image.  You'll get a drop-down menu.  Select the choice that says, "Save Image As . . . "

Select "Save Image As . . . "

Next you'll decide WHERE you will save the file on your computer.  This is important so that you can find the file later on.  You can save it to your desk top, your flash drive, a folder in your documents, or any other place your computer allows you to save files.  Just make sure that YOU know where you put it!  You will also give it a name so that you can find it.  You can call it "Veterans Day Poster".  If you're planning on using the posters from the previous years, add the year in your file name such as "Veterans Day 2015 Poster".

(If you print several different posters, you'll have a nice bulletin board display in for November!)  

The image below has a red arrow indicating that I'm saving to my computer's desktop.  The second red arrow is the name I've given the file.  The file is being saved as a JPEG Image.  That is the file type you'll want to use.

Make sure you know where you are saving your file and give it a name you'll remember.

If you know how to use your computer's photo editing software, you can just pull up your saved JPEG file and edit and print.  If you don't know how to do that, and you want a poster that is almost the size of an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper or an 8.5" x 14" sheet of paper, keep reading!

I'm using Microsoft Word 2010.  If you have something different than that, you'll have to know how to improvise!  I opened a new Microsoft Word document.  Then, I clicked on the "Insert" tab and then on the "Picture" icon.  The computer does not know where you saved the image.  You'll have to direct it to the file location.  You'll have some options at the top and left column of your screen.  Find the option that names the location that you saved the JPEG in.  If you saved it to the "Desktop", go to the "Desktop".  If you saved it to your flash drive, go to your flash drive.  Once you're the location where you saved the image, find the image, click on it, and then click "Insert".

Click "Insert", then click "Picture", and then find your image.

The image is now inserted into the Microsoft Office document.  You need to right click the image, then you'll see a drop-down menu.  Move your mouse over to "Wrap Text".  Another drop-down menu will appear.  Left click on "In Front of Text".

Now you'll be able to move the image around the page and position it wherever you'd like.  Customize the size so that the poster covers almost the whole page.  Right click on the image and go to "FORMAT".  Then go to "Size and Position".  You'll see the measurements for the existing image which you can adjust.  Leave the check marks inside the boxes that say, "Lock aspect ratio" and "Relative to original picture size".  (If you uncheck those, your image may become distorted.) 
  

Go to the height and change it to 10.8".  Change the width to 6.98".  Move the image around the page so that all of it fits within the page.

Now you're ready to print.  Go to "Print" on your computer.  Make sure your setting is for a letter size (8.5" x 11") page.  

Trim the white edges off your printed page.  You'll have a beautiful poster to hang in your classroom for Veterans Day!  

If you have legal sized paper, you can make your poster larger.  Put the legal sized paper in your printer.  Since the width is the same as the letter sized paper (8.5") it should slip right into your printer! Use the same document as described above.  Click on "Size" and then click on "Legal".  Adjust the size of the image to cover as much of the page as possible.  Go to print.  Make sure to temporarily change your computer's print setting to "Legal" sized paper.  Then print and trim off any white space.

The photo below show the two identical posters.  The poster printed on the left is with letter sized paper.  The poster on the right is printed with legal sized paper.

Thank you veterans and families for your service and sacrifice for our freedom.  

 
Molly, Lessons by Molly