I love creating posters and anchor charts for the classroom. They are such a great visual tool for students. But sometimes wall space is limited. Or maybe you're one of those unlucky teachers who can't hang anything anywhere except on your bulletin boards. Then you REALLY need to conserve space.
When you buy printable posters, more often than not, they come one to a page or 8.5x11 size. If you are in the UK or Australia, that's equivalent to A4 paper.
Let's say you are printing a set of alphabet posters. That's 26 pages to hang and 19 linear feet of wall space!
If that's more than you can spare, there is an easy solution right there in your print settings!
How to Print Half-Page Posters: The Easy Way to Resize PDF Pages
Just follow these steps to reduce your letter-size posters to half-page.
Click PRINT in your menu bar.
Change the PRINT HANDLING to Multiple Pages Per Sheet
Set PAGES PER SHEET to 2x1
Make sure AUTO CENTER is checked
Set ORIENTATION TO landscape
It will look like this:
That's it! When the file prints, you will get 2 posters on each sheet of paper.
Your printer settings may vary somewhat depending on what PDF reader you use, but they should look very similar.
What if the posters are in landscape orientation?
It's just as easy! You will follow the same steps listed above, but set the ORIENTATION to portrait like this:
The great thing about printing multiple pages per sheet is that you can actually print them as small as you want!
For example, I have various math Bingo games that run through Powerpoint. Each screen shows what students should mark on their Bingo cards. But some teachers would rather call the game out in the traditional way. Instead of using the Powerpoint with full-page cards, they can be printed out with multiple cards per page.
In this example, I've taken a file with one large card per page and set it to print 6 smaller cards on each sheet of paper:
This will work with any PDF. You can set the number of rows and columns to any number to get the size you want.
I hope these tips help when you are printing your classroom materials!
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