New Ideas

     Pintrest is the best gift to teaching ever invented!  I have spent many a productive hours on there coming up with new lesson plans for my classroom.
    With the many different behaviors that I deal with I have been experimenting with our behavior management system.  Our school uses PBS(positive behavior support) which as it is does not seem to really be effective for the majority of my students.  As the system stands now there are four "zones" the children can move through. They start the day on blue, which means they are doing everything that they are supposed to and doing good.  If they need to be warned about anything multiple times they move to green. This just stands a a warning to the kids to change what they are doing.  If this doesn't seem to do anything and the students are still having difficulty they move to yellow. At this zone there is a consequence, usually the students are to miss part of their recess.  The last zone the kids are moved to is red, where they have to call home on the spot to talk to their parents.  I have played with it and added a purple zone which is above blue. When kids get on this zone it is because they did something above and beyond.
   What I have seen is that the kids who have to change zones all the time don't really care when they do it again.  The warnings don't mean anything to them.  I really feel that I need to find a different way to approach the whole system.  While on Pintrest I found quite a few teachers who have more zones above the average to motivate their students to strive for better.  It is most often our good students that get the shaft.  By having more positive outcomes in zone changes it might just motivate those challenging students to push themselves to do better.  Come January 9th I will be introducing a purple, a pink and a silver zone.  When the students get on purple they will get to pick a sticker at the end of the day.  If they get on pink they will get a reward bracelet. And if they get on silver they will get to pick a behavior coupon.  I got mine from (http://seusstastic.blogspot.com/2011/09/behavior-coupon-freebie.html). They are completely free, which on my teacher budget is a must.  I will keep you all posted on how it works.  So stay tuned in!

My first attempt

Well is is my first attempt at a blog. I wanted an avenue to explore and talk about the things that I see in my classroom everyday. I teach in Michigan in a very large district. The students we see every day come from a variety of backgrounds. This leads to a very diverse group of students personality wise to meld together into a functioning classroom. I have been teaching for 4 years and it becomes increasingly obvious to me that the days of reading books and coloring are long gone in my world. I am more of a behavior manager than I am a teacher. Most of my day is spent breaking up this fight and handling this child's trouble with staying in one spot. So few moments actually go into showing my students to love of reading I may have or the way we can work with numbers. I am hoping to share my experiences with others and hopefully my ideas for teaching. Maybe they will help other teachers to see that they are not alone in their frustrations and that we are all here to help.