Long Live the Clip Chart

Behavior. It can make or break any classroom! I don't know everything (major emphasis on that) but I do feel that I've learned quite a bit about behavior/classroom management over the past years. Mainly, stay positive! It works so much better to praise the positive and then watch others try to do the right thing as well.

When I first started teaching I had "elephants" (little elephant post its with the kids names on them) that moved down levels with push pins in a cork board. It was cumbersome and not easy to manage. After that, I made the elephants magnetic and added a "soar" level. My awesome cooperating teacher from when I taught came up with the "soar" level for students to move UP to for doing a great job. My kids loved our new soar level and really got into it!

Then I learned about the clip chart. This was back in the days before Pinterest (can you imagine?) so I read about it in this ebook by Rick Morris. I quickly got to work during one of my track out days and made a clip chart. It works wonderful!

Now I'm on my second clip chart, since the old one took so much wear and I wanted to pretty-fy it up a little. :)

The kids all start on Ready To Learn and from there move their clips up or down. At the end of the day if you are on Great Job you get to stand up on your chair and the whole class does a cheer for you. If you are on Outstanding you get to add a sticker to your clip. My how they love those stickers! It's the simple things folks! I will say that the "jewel" stickers (get them from Micheal's) stay on the clips better than some regular stickers.

If a child moves their clip to consequence then they get a refocus form where they write what they were doing, what they should have been doing and what they will do next time. Then they have to take it home and get it signed and bring it back to me. Sometimes I will choose a different consequence based on the action so that's why I labeled that level consequence. Parent contact is pretty straightforward - I hardly ever have kids get to this level and by this point in the year I usually am not moving many clips down but UP. :)

About halfway through this school year I came across a very good problem - I had kids filling their clips up with stickers on both sides! So thus came about the "Clip Hall of Fame". A child moves their clip to the hall of fame once their clip is completely full. What a reward this is! They get so excited about it! I then will make them a new clip so they can keep on earning stickers.

At the beginning of the year I teach my kids hand motions that I make to tell them to move their clip up or down - a simple pinch of 2 fingers and a thumbs up or thumbs down. To reinforce positive behavior I simply will start some positive behavior dialogue "Wow, Bobby you are doing an excellent job of getting started on your morning work, please go move your clip up!" Before you know it, everyone is getting to work on their morning work as well!

I also have had kids make it to pink/outstanding and I will tell them to move their clip up. They then go to Top of the Chart. After Top of the Chart comes Off the Chart where I will then proudly wear that student's clip. Yes, I usually look like a dork with a clothespin clipped to my shirt, but they love it! Once this year I had a student who was already on Off the Chart when I asked her to move her clip up. So we invented a new level where I go take a picture of their clip with an Administrator and then write them a positive office referral.

Word Work Updates

Every now and then, I feel the need to spice things up for Daily 5, keep the kiddos engaged and interested. During my workdays before track in I hunted all over the lovely blog-o-sphere for new word work ideas. I've always loved this list of ideas from Christina Bainbridge. Definitely worth checking out.

On the far left in the green basket, are our Writing Folders from Really Good Stuff. I love those things. They really help the kids learn the writing process. We don't keep them in our desk because our grade level has to keep the same ones for 2 years before we replace them. So to keep them from the doom of what is often my kiddos' desks they live in the green basket.

Next is one of the new word work choices, ipad words! I found this via a pin on pinterest - Mrs. Gilchrist adapted the iphone idea into a larger ipad. I have a list of "ipad words" that goes with this. The kiddos have to first write the words in alphabetical order in the boxes with a dry erase marker, then they "type" them and hit "send". Seriously, it is the cutest thing for this apple-loving teacher to see. I told my kiddos that I would LOVE to have more ipads and have them using those for word work, but I'm not made of money so we make do. :)
Next up is Boggle Words. Anyone else out there ADDICTED to playing Scramble on their iphone? Me me me! I love this game and have seen Boggle bulletin boards for the classroom. I bought this set of cards by Rachel on TPT. I laminated 4 of the cards, put recording sheets in the folder, and voila challenging word work. I've explained to my kiddos that this choice is a challenge, that even adults find it hard! Therefore, this is not always the best choice for everyone. But I knew my higher readers needed a word work choice that was challenging and I can tell already that they love it. Sometimes we'll do one as a class in between rounds and I'm always shocked by how many words they find!

Bananagrams has always been a popular and favorite choice for word work and I don't think I'll ever get rid of it. I have a spelling list in a sheet protector and the kiddos use the tiles to spell their words and any other words they know. Scrabble Flash is a new one this year by the reccomendation of my coworker, Jim. It's basically like making words except the game self corrects and tells them which words are actually words! I love it! My kiddos can tell you what a stickler I am for quiet during Daily 5 but I do allow for the beeping of this fun game.

I forgot to take a picture of my last choice, Lacing Letters. Basically the letters have holes in them like beads and the kiddos lace their spelling words onto strings. Very kinesthetic. We've had that choice around for a while too.

February in Review

Where has all the time gone? I won't waste your time by telling you all the reasons why I haven't blogged in forever but let's just say February was a crazy month! I'm kind of glad it's over and gone!

More for the sake of myself I'm going to write about some February classroom happenings. It was a busy month with many holidays and things going on.

First up was Valentine's Day. We did SO many fun Valentine's activities! I made my kiddos heart shaped crayons. I had fun making them and bagging them all up cutesy. The kids reaction- "Miss R, what are these?" :) Once I told them they were crayons they were pretty excited though. Oh and it didn't hurt that I threw a homework pass in the bag either. :)

We did the usual sweetheart candy graphing. I realized that while this is fun most of my kiddos have already done this activity in first grade. Next year I think I'm going to try using the heart candies to do some fraction activities.

Also in February was our Inferring Unit. I had so much fun teaching this unit, many thanks to Pinterest! I found this pin about using trash to infer about a person and we did it at the beginning of the unit.

Then we practiced inferring using many great books. Some of my favorites are The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg and Two Bad Ants, also by Chris Van Allsburg. Mandy Gregory also has some great inferring mini-lessons that I use as a guide to help me plan. I also found a fun ipad app, Understanding Inferences, that I used in reading groups.

President's Day! This was my first year to really put some emphasis on President's Day and I'm glad I did. I was able to incorporate it into Social Studies. I used this unit by the First Grade Fanatics on TPT along with this unit by Amy Lemons that had a template to make the Washington Monument. I made a few labels with info about the monument and voila - history in the form of a craft. My kiddos thought it was pretty cool!

And that wraps up February!

Valentine's Cards

Valentine's Day is just around the corner. My kids are excited and so am I. I have lots of fun learning activities planned! Today we did our first activity - writing letters to our parents. My kids needed some practice writing friendly letters so I thought they could write to their parents. First we made a chart reviewing the parts of a letter and some ideas and sentence starters for our letters.

Then we wrote our rough draft letters on notebook paper. I conferenced with individual students as we worked. The plan is tomorrow to copy their letters onto this pretty paper I made very quickly using graphics From the Pond (love them!). You can grab a copy of my letter paper here!

This afternoon, I started to work one on one with my bus kids to make their cards. I used the heart hands idea from this pin. Tomorrow I will finish with the rest of the class. Then they will write different ways/languages to say I love you in black pen around the outside of the heart. The letter to their parents will then be glued to the inside of the card. And Voila, a heartfelt Valentine's card.

I think the cards are turning out very cute so far! And the things they say in their letters, sooooo sweet and funny! Here are some samplings:

"I love it when you buy me things."

"I know it's rough being a parent."

"I love how you take care of me."

"Thank you for feeding me."

"Roses are red, Violets are Blue, I know you love me and I love you too."

Love them!

Punxsutawney Phil

Happy Groundhog Day! I love any excuse to spice up our classroom life so we did a few things today to celebrate Groundhog Day!

First, we made a quick non-fancy prediction graph telling whether we thought Punxsutawney Phil would see his shadow or not. Then, we watched a video on United Streaming (Holiday Facts & Fun) about Groundhog Day. It was great because it really went into the history of the holiday along with showing the town of Punxsutawney and how they make such a big deal of it. And how cool is it that Punxsy Phil lives in the local library? Who wouldn't want to check out a few books and then say hello to a groundhog?!!

Next we watched a short clip of Punxsutawney Phil coming out earlier in the morning. The kids got all excited right before they opened his little door, so cute. He saw his shadow! Most of my kids predicted he would. However, since we really haven't even had barely any winter weather here in NC this year, I'm not really thinking we'll actually have 6 more weeks of winter.

For writing I used one of Ashleigh's February Creative Writing Prompts. They had to write about what would happen if the Groundhog refused to come out. I had them sketch a picture to prewrite and then get to writing. They turned out so cute! Here are some excerpts (very little editing was done":

"It was a cold winter morning. It was time for Punxsy Phil to come out. He came out and said not today boys. They said what do you mean. I mean I'm tired of always having to see if it's early spring or not. Now excuse me I'm going back to my home. Wait what are you going to in there. Play video games! PLAYING VIDEO GAMES IS MY LIFE NOW. I'm going to play it all day and night. There's nothing you can do about it!"

"It was time for Punxy Phil to come out on Febrary 2. Punxsutawney Phil was so mad his face was so red he even said I WANT TO RETIRE FOREVER!."

"It was a cold winter morning. It was time for Punxsutawney Phil to come out. But he did not want to come out. It was 2:00 am! Why should he? Who cares about just a shadow? Boring!"

"When Punxsy's owner picked him up he said put me down now so he did. I need to get to my daughters birthday she is turning five. I did not know you could talk (said the owner). All groundhogs can talk. So all this time you could talk...this is amazing! are you getting all this Benny? What? You guys video tape me when I wake up? That's just so weird why would would you video a groundhog? And also I have......STAGE FRIGHT. Get me away from those cameras!!"

Oh and in another story (too long to type) Phil didn't want to come out because that morning he watched the news and saw that the world was being attacked by clones and there were ships crashing into meteors. Can we say welovestarwars?

We also did the measuring your shadow 3 times during the day activity. I found it here on TPT. The kids like this a lot and it was good measurement practice!

Next up in the holiday rotation...Valentine's Day! I'm getting excited!

My Go To Teacher Books

Stephanie from Teaching in Room 6 is hosting a Linky Party about your favorite "Go To" teacher book. It's hard for me to narrow it down to just one, so I thought I'd share a few!

The first is The Cornerstone for Teachers by Angela Powell. I first found Angela's website in college when I did a project on classroom management. Ever since then I've become a huge fan! I poured over her website before I became a teacher and then when I got my job, one of my first "classroom buys" was this book. Angela's writing and ideas make sense, and they truly work! My classroom runs the way it does (usually) because of what I learned from reading this book!

Another book that helped me my first year is The Morning Meeting Book by Roxann Kriete. One of my sweet coworker's loaned this to me the first year. I had been doing "Calendar" time in the morning and thought that was enough. She introduced me to Morning Meeting and I've been a firm follower ever since. I really can tell a difference in my kids based on if we start with Morning Meeting or not. It's a great way to greet each other, build social skills and friendships, do some learning and most of all have fun! Oh the stories I could tell you from "share time" during Morning Meeting. (Side note: I had a kiddo do a magic trick as his share the other week. It was awesome! When asked how he did it his answer simply was "A magician NEVER reveals his secrets." Precious!)

Last but not least, is 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny by Phillip Done. I would never make it as a teacher if I took everything seriously. This book is a great reminder of that! Full of stories from his teaching career, Phillip Done will have you laughing, smiling, and maybe even shedding a tear or two. And if you love it as much as I did, you'll quickly read his second book, Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind.

If you have a good teacher book or too, head on over to Teaching in Room 6 and Link Up!

Giveaway Winner!

Happy Saturday everyone! And happy long weekend to those like me who have Monday off! :)

So, time for the winner of the giveaway. I used random.org this morning and these were the results:

So congratulations to Jennifer over at The First Grade Dream! You are the winner! I'll be contacting you via email so you can get the books!