Monday Made-It {07.21.13}

Today's Monday Made it is just a small share of the few things I made this week. I go back in a little over a week. My summer is sadly coming to an end. I enjoyed relaxing and making things for my classroom. I know the school year will bring so many great things. Summer is not over and I will be back next week to share what I make for my classroom. But onto this week...

Item #1- Bathroom Sign
I am lucky to have a bathroom in my classroom that I share with the classroom next door. My lovely teaching partner came up with the idea of using magnets on the back of sticks for monitoring bathroom usage. At the beginning of the year students love going to the bathroom whenever they feel like it. You would think that having a bathroom in your room would provide very little disruptions. Well it seems to be the opposite. I think since the kids see the bathroom in the room, they want to visit it more. I also use the bathroom sticks, but they would always fall off the door frame if someone walked into them and bathroom sticks went flying. I decided I needed something a little more practical. I created this hanging sign. It's just a magnetic whiteboard that I decorated. Very simple and hopefully it will cut down on the sticks being bumped into and flying everywhere!!

Item #2- Cheers
It seems like everyone is all about cheers in their classroom. I love celebrating moments with my children and sometimes it's hard to come up with something on the spot. I'm sure that these cheers will come in handy this year. You can get your own copy of these cheers HERE. You can print them full page or smaller. I choose to print the smaller ones so they are a little more portable. I can take them onto the carpet, in line, or even outside!!

Item #3- Rules
Last year I used the Whole Brain Teaching rules in my classroom. We went over them every morning and my students knew them, but we didn't always use them. I was pretty fortunate to have a pretty good class last year. Even though most of the time they followed the rules, I still didn't feel like those rules reflected what I expected of my students. This year I am using a new set of rules. You can find a copy of them HERE. It's great because you can use the rules that are already created or edit them to fit the needs of your classroom.

Item #4- Clock Labels
I have seen so many different clock labels out there and for the last few years I have been using post-it notes as my labels. I decided to step it up a notch and create my own this year. They are using my new forest theme. Now all I have to do is buy a new clock that has a silent tick. :-)

You can get a copy of your own labels HERE for free.

Groundhog's Day Freebie

Groundhog's Day is coming up next week and I will be talking about it next week. I've found a few cute activities that I am planning on doing with my students, but none of them had any facts about groundhogs. I went ahead and made my own little groundhog informational booklet for my students. I am giving it away as a freebie. Click on the picture to get the file for free. If you end up using it your class, let me know how you and your students like it.

 

I am linking this post over at Friday Freebies!

 

Stress-Free Morning

Do you ever have those morning with your students where it seems like they are all asking you what to do? Every morning we have a routine. My students come in, take out their homework folders, put their back packs away, start their morning work, and when they are finished they can either read a book or work on their math facts. It's been the same since the first day of school, but I still have students who ask me what to do when they are finished, or even worse... they just sit there and do NOTHING! I have created a morning checklist that will have all of those answers for, "What do I do next?" and that will leave you time to get morning routines done like lunch count and attendance.

I have made a checklist that follows my morning routine, but I have also created a blank checklist that you can customize in your classroom. You can get the file HERE for free.

Synonym Rolls

We have been working on synonyms in my class for the past few weeks. When I saw this activity on Pinterest, I KNEW I had to do it one day. My students struggled with coming up with their own synonyms, but know they are coming up with them left and right. I will most likely wait until later on during the year. I wanted to share with you a few pictures that I took of my kids as well as the bulletin board that the whole 2nd grade team put together.

Our bulletin board. Each grade is assigned a bulletin board in the cafeteria that we are able to decorate. This is the first year that we decided to decorate it and I'm so glad we did.

This is me showing off our activity.

 A few of my little darlings. They were all so cute with their little chef hats on.

 Posing in front of our bulletin board. I love my team this year. I didn't get permission to use their pictures on my blog, but trust me, they are amazing!!

Now on to a freebie!!

While preparing for this lesson, I tried looking all over for a cinnamon roll template, but I couldn't find one. I went ahead and made my own. I am sharing it with you! Just click HERE to pick it up!!

I am linking up over at...

Magic Answer (Flip Chute)

Don't we all just love Pinterest? I know I do! I have been wanting to implement math centers into my routine this year and I slowly want to teach my students games that can one day be part of their math centers. I am currently working on a math fluency "program" (future post) and I knew that I wanted math facts to be a big part of my math centers. I saw this flip chute on pinterest and I thought it was perfect.

I went ahead and made one of my own. It was actually pretty easy.

There is a video on Classroom DIY, but I decided to do a more step-by-step video. You can see that video here.

I also  made a template in word that you can go ahead and type your questions and answers into. Click the photo to visit my TPT where you can download the template for free.

I Have Self Control and a FREEBIE!!

I was browsing through Pinterest, as I normally do, about 1000 times a day and I came across this video.



First of all, let me say that this guy is amazing. I've only watched this one video and after I upload this post, I'm going back and watching all of his videos. How awesome would it be to have him as a teacher? Back to the point of this post though.

I was watching this video and I realized that this would be so helpful in teaching self control, just like he says. It's very concrete and easy to understand. You can use this for classroom management reminders, cafeteria behavior, recess, etc. All you have to do is remind them of self control and the bubbles. This is also a great idea for students that tend to get very angry easily. You could always pull them aside and do the bubble activity with them individually. You may even let them blow the bubbles slowly to help them with their breathing and calm down.

I am going to try this activity on the first day of school and I will let you know how it turns out. It could go wonderfully, or there could be a few students who take it to far. I will experiment and report back.

Now I don't want to do this activity all the time because then I think it looses it's affect. I went ahead and made a poster that I can post in my room and whenever there is a student who is about to loose it, I will point to it and remind them about their self control. Of course I had to share it will all of you wonderful blog readers. You can get this poster for FREE, all you have to do is click the image and it will take you to my TPT store.

Classroom Management

With the school year starting soon, I'm sure a lot of us are reworking our classroom management plans. Some of you may even be making your for the first time. No matter where you are in the process, I always believe that it is the most important. I've always believed that if you don't have good classroom management, then everything else you do is a waste of time. What is the point in teaching a lesson while your students aren't paying attention? You're just going to have to reteach it. Why not use your time wisely and be productive. With all of the right procedures in place, your classroom will run smoother than butter!

Sure classroom management and procedures take a while to teach and learn, but it is all worth it in the end. I am currently reworking my management procedures and when I do I will make an updated post. For today though I want to share with you what I did last year.

When I first started teaching I was using this behavior chart.

I wasn't really a fan of it because the kids that misbehaved were always on red and the students that behaved were always on green. One teacher I knew had most of her kids on red at the end of the day and this chart back fired for her. For me, most of my students were all on green with a couple on yellow or red so I didn't find myself using this chart anymore. One year I didn't even use it at all, even though it was hanging up. Last year I decided to try out the chart again. I added a few more colored cards to see if that made a difference. At the end of every day I was still only moving a few kids' cards back to green. I kept thinking about all of those kids that stayed on green all day. Sure we give our attention to those kids moving to red, but most of our class is filled with those green students. Why were they not getting the recognition they needed? That's when I decided that there had to be a behavior chart that worked for those that behaved as well as those that didn't. That's when I created this behavior chart.

I went searching online for behavior charts and I saw many different versions of this chart. I loved it because it allowed students to move up or down. As you can see every student starts on green, ready to learn. Through out the day students can either "clip up" or "clip down". You can make the cards say anything you want, but this is just what works for me. After a week I could really see a difference in my classroom. Even though I never really had major behavior issues, I noticed the little things like interrupting or blurting answers out began to disappear. My students that were normally being redirected, started being able to move their clips up. Now my green kids were becoming blue, purple, and even gold kids! Whenever a student had to move their clip down, they always knew that they could earn it back up throughout the day. It's important to know that there is downward and upward movement at any point of the day. Just because loss of privilege happens in the morning, it doesn't mean that they can't earn their way back up to ready to learn or higher in the afternoon.

How I use this...
Whenever I see a student making a good choice, or a bad choice, they are able to move their clip up or move it down. If we are in the middle of a lesson I will just tell them and after the lesson they are able to move their clip. Whenever the class is working quietly, I can make eye contact with one of my students and without talking just signal a thumbs up or thumbs down and they know right away that this means to clip up or down. Somehow every students knows where every other student is on the chart. Whenever someone makes it to Smart Choices they all gasp and clap for them. Everyone is always trying to make it to smart choices by the end of the day.

How do you become a Smartie Pants?

When you make it to the top of the chart, you have made smart choices. The students are always trying to make it to smart choices, so they can become a Smartie Pants at the end of the day. To make the Smartie Pants, I just bought a pair of toddler jeans from Wal-Mart and decorated them. I kept the hanger that they came with and it's actually hanging from a push pin. Inside the pants are candy Smarties. At the end of the day, all of my students who made smart choices come to the front of the room. They all receive a Smarties candy as well as a slip that says, "My teacher thinks I'm a Smartie Pants, because I made smart choices." The rest of the class sings to them and everyone tries to become a Smartie Pants the next day.

You can download a FREE copy of my Smartie Pants labels from my TPT store.

I have a student who is in charge of moving all the the clips back to green at the end of each day. Everyone knows that they have a fresh start everyday, which makes it really nice for students who may have had a bad day.

Other Ideas

• I have used this behavior plan with Class Dojo as well, but I will create a different post all about Class Dojo soon. 
• This year I plan on printing my Smartie Pants slips on labels that the students can wear on their shirts. That way when they get home they can show their parents without loosing it.

I hope you found some ideas that you may be able to use.