Noise Level

I'm hoping to try something new this year with the noise level in my classroom.  We all know that this is a battle that none of us like fighting with our students. They want to talk and work and we want them to work and then talk.  Well in an effort to help them to be independent in yet another part of their day I saw this noise level chart on Pintrest and wanted to make my own version. Hopefully it will give then a visual reminder of what we are striving for in our classroom.  You can grab yours for free on my TPT store!

Rainbow Words

My first project of the summer is to get all our sight word stuff organized and ready to go for next year.  We are still following the same routine as we did last year, introducing two new words a week. But this year we are bundling them together into color groups.  These are called Rainbow words.  We are doing it a little differently then other formats.  In the usual format the kids start out with a group of words and remain working on it until they pass (being able to read and write them). When they pass they get a new set of words.  Having done this format in my previous school I found that some of the kids never got passed the first set of words and therefore were struggling with the same six words the whole year.  This year we are going to continue to introduce two words a week.  The students will be tested monthly on the words.  If they pass them they earn a color in the rainbow.  The goal is that by the end of the year they will have earned the whole rainbow.  We are still introducing the words whole group so that all the students are exposed to them.  They may not be able to read and write all the words from the first month but they are still being exposed to the other words they may need.  We will also be able to differentiate word work by what color words the students are working on. 
I made up the word wall cards with polka-dot frames to add a little cuteness to the whole thing.  I posted it on TPT for free so please feel free to use them in your own classroom!  IF you want different ones I am happy to make those up to so let me know.

Organization

Well I am moving rooms!  I put the exclamation point there because it means I will be with the other kindergarten rooms and not down the first grade hallway.  While I like my family down there it feels removed from all the action.  I am excited to bring our kindergarten hallway to life.  Check back later this year and see the cool way we utilize our hallway space!  ( I am geeked for the new ideas)

In the effort to move and get organized I have taken a pintrest trip and gotten a lot of good ideas that I wanted to share in case you might have missed them in your exploring.  First I got a great deal at target on tupperware with two different colored lids. I am organizing my math materials in one set and my literacy in another. This way students will know where to return them in the room. I also made labels which you are welcome to print off and use yourself if you want.  I will have more as I get packed and move ( I take pictures of what is in the tub so the kids know what goes where). 
Check back and I promise to have these uploaded....really big picture files I need to size down...sorry :(
I also wanted a new way of labeling books.  On pintrest there was a picture label that I really liked.  I ended up making my own because I needed bigger pictures.  My students have a hard time getting things back where they belong and I thought this might help them out a little better than my other labels did.  I went to IKEA and got blue tubs for all my books so that it looks uniform.  I did snag a few red ones for my math books because next year we are going to try out Guided Math and want a math literacy center.
Click Here for labels
Last but not least my supply organizer. I totally stole the idea from a pin but I thought you might like the one I found. I got a hardware organizer with 18 drawers at Lowes for 14 dollars and then got scrapbook paper at JoAnnes for 5 dollars. I typed up some labels and glued that to the scrapbook paper and then taped it inside the drawers.  It turned out pretty awesome! Let me know what you think.  You can grab my labels here too all you need is to get paper you like and have fun!

Father's Day

I know it has been a while since I posted anything.  Assessments have eaten all mine and my students time.  We have had very little time to anything other than review and taking tests.  Yes even in kindergarten students are being asked to take tests.  The best part of it was when during teacher appreciation week my students made a circle map about me during Media.  They said the usual nice things like "she loves us" and "she reads to us" but my favorite was "she gives us math tests".  Honestly it is sad when the kids are commenting on it.  But you know how it is the district has their sets of tests, and we have our tests and the school has their tests.  Pretty soon all you are doing is testing!

Well with that rant off my back I present to you the book my students will be making for Father's Day.  We go until the 14th of June so we have plenty of time to sneak this in.  I put it up on my teachers pay teachers.  This is the first time I am charging for it.  I only put it up for a dollar so hopefully you still feel like it is a deal.  I thought I would see if I could make any money at this thing.  We'll see I guess!  Make sure that you rate me or leave me a comment!  I would really appreciate it!

Click Here for the book!

Wonderful Weather

Wow I have been so busy on this spring break. I wanted to make sure that I got the big stuff done so that when I get back with the kids I don't have as many things to get done each night.  We all know I will be working on things every night anyway.  I am sure my plans will change at least two or three more times before I actually put this into action.  We are getting ready to start a weather week.  I am pretty excited for the kids to get to play around with wind, water and sun! Click the words and it will link you to my teacherspayteachers site.  Everything is FREE!!! Leave a comment to let me know what you think...any suggestions would be appreciated as well!

Books we are going to read:

 

Weather Math/ Morning Work

What is the Weather Book

Weather Writing

I even threw in my non-fiction features book. Made it half pages so that we can save on paper!  It is like gold and we all know how hard it is to copy a book when we know it is using tons of paper. This one should print back to front as well!

Non-Fiction Features Book

Funny Frogs Part Dux

I am plugging along on the unit.  I have added two more things; a sentence sequencer and a easy reader for the kids to use during read to self time. I try to have a book the kids can read each week added to their book bags so I know that they have something to practice.  It is great to see them pulling them out on their free time and with their friends.  Hope these add to your plans! Have Fun

Frog Sentence Sequence

Five Green and Speckled Frog Book

Funny Frogs

Spring Break!!!  Let's all admit it now....we use this time to catch up on the teacher planning we haven't had the time to do while teaching.  People keep telling me that I am supposed to be on break and I just laugh. Break?  from going in to school everyday yes....but not from work.
We only have 8 weeks of school left....how crazy is that?  I am using this break to plan the rest of the school year out and get started on all the activity planning and making for the themes.  Right now I am working on frogs. I have used kinder-pond.blogspot.com as an inspiration for pretty much all of the things that I came up with.  I hope she won't mind the status of muse.  Below is a link list to my teacherspayteachers pages.  They are all free so please download and use!  Tell your friends! I want as many people and kids to get a chance to use them as possible. I will post more as I get them finished and uploaded!

Frog Mixed Up Sentence

Frog Sight Word Code Coloring

I Have A Little Frog Poem

I Have A Little Frog Homework

The "H" Brothers

One night I was of course working on school stuff and surfing Pintrest.  I came across the "h" brothers story. I had heard it before but hadn't really linked it in my mind. I knew about the choo choo train one and the brother who keeps sticking out his tongue and the oldest one trying to study.  It was the one pretending to be a police man that confused me. Telling kids that he is trying to whistle only makes sense with the word whistle, but not the action of trying to whistle. Your mouth doesn't do the same thing as when you say a "wh" word.  So I substituted in a detective brother who is going around asking everyone who, what, when, where and why questions.  I of course wanted these to put up in my room for my kids so I had to draw them myself. I can't say that they are very good since I drew them myself, but maybe they will be helpful to someone!
 Click on pictures below to download the images FREE!

Rocking Awards

I can't believe how awesome my students are doing with this new behavior system in place.  They have truly taken ownership of their choices and I have seen some serious changes. One of my students who used to be on yellow and red almost everyday has changed things around and now gets on pink and silver almost everyday.  I actually saw him make a mistake and take responsibility (which he never used to do either) and then walk back to his desk and immediately get down to work quietly so that he could move back up the ladder.  He was self motivated to make a change without any talk from me. It honestly made me want to scream for joy in the middle of my room.
  My kids have started choosing the behavior coupon where they can get a recognition award. I tried to find cool ones online that were free (on that no money budget we teachers are familiar with) In the end I just made them up myself.  Below are the links to a boy version and a girl version. Hope they are useful to you all!

 Boys Rock                    Girls Rock

Penguin Party

This week was all about penguins!  The kids were super excited because for some reason the waddling, sliding, flying challenged little birds just make you smile.  I have tried for once to make my activities all connect to the theme.  This meant I spent a good few evening making up worksheets and stuff.  I did of course take inspiration from Pintrest ideas!

To start the week out we made sure to do the first parts of the KWL. I find that I don't do the L side simply because there just isn't time and the kids are showing that they are learning things throughout the week. Here is the chart that we made.

Straight from Write from the Beginning and Pintrest we did our Penguins have, can and are tree map and them we transitioned it into the book.  I made a tree map for the kids to work on while we were doing the class one. This way when their big buddies came to help them with the books they had their own tree map to draw from.

For the tree map worksheet click here

For the book template click here

We also tried to link penguins into math.  I wanted to just review some skills and make sure that my students were getting the information we had been working on.

We did a coin sort (click here to get it) The kids had to cut out and glue the heads and tails side of their coins to the correct igloo.

We also did a shape sheet. (click here to get it)  We did this two different ways.  The kids finger painted so we could count how many points each of the shapes had and then slide to see how many sides they had.  We also made the shapes with play dough.  One of our assessments ask the kids to make the shapes on their own. I want to give them as much practice as possible.

Hope that you get a chance to use these!

Our Behavior Rocks

The new behavior plan in our classroom is really rocking!  I have seen a definite improvement in my children's behavior with the up zones.  This was the goal I wanted and it is weird to see it actually happen for once.
I wanted my perpetual zone changers to switch how they were thinking about things in my class.  I wanted them so see that it was not about just going along doing nothing and hoping not to get caught. I wanted them to see that if you want the attention that you need to really step up your game.  My one really young guy who couldn't stay still if super glue was applied has actually made it to silver twice in the last week!  Go man! My little dude who sits there most of the time and does his work without actually following directions at all has started to produce some good quality work. And to think that all it took was a few pieces of construction paper and stickers, paper bracelets, and free printed out coupons.

ONE WARNING ABOUT COUPONS: one of the most coveted coupons is the sit at the teacher's desk one.  If you need your space don't print that one out.

Here is what my zone chart looks like now. Sorry about the poor quality, iphones don't take into account the horrible halogens.

Tweeking Pintrest

Well the first week is finally over!  We have made it to our three day weekend for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  We did some really fun activities this week, many of which were Pintrest ideas that I tweeked just a little.
First we did a snowman glyph with our big buddies. I got the idea from a pin I had seen.  I made up my own glyph so that the kids and their big buddies had things to work on together.

Original Glyph

We meet with our big buddies every Wednesday. I try to make the activities fun interactive things that the 3rd graders have to help my kids to do but not do it for them. Here is how ours turned out. I think they look awesome!

Here is the glyph that we used as well. I drew out my own snowman which I think added my own character to it.

Snowman GLYPH

1. If your big buddy is a boy color the legs stripped

    If you big buddy is a girl color the legs polka-dotted

2. If your little buddy is a boy color the mittens with 2 colors

    If you little buddy is a girl color the mittens with 3 colors

3.  If your ages added together are an even number color the boots green

     If your ages added together are an odd number color the boots yellow

4. If you and your buddy agree about snow being fun or not put 3 buttons on the tummy.

     If you and your buddy disagree about snow being fun or not put 4 buttons on the tummy.

Second we did a snowman measurement art project.  The idea came from two different ideas. The first of which was a snow paint idea where you mix laundry detergent and water and have the kids paint. I let my kids do open painting and adding the snowman parts so that their creativity has a chance to grow.  Then we measured how tall our snowmen were.  The original ideas was using only unifix cubes.

Original Snowmen measurement

I decided to have my kids measure by unifix cubes, bears and dominos.  This way we could compare the measurement of the nonstandard units.  I was seriously impressed with how my kids were doing with this. They were having each of the items touch each other and were counting them correctly.  Given the fact that this is the first time we have really done anything like this it was cool to see them be so successful.

As promised I wanted to upload the pictures of the behavior log that we tried with LC and the cool down menu.

First few days back

Well we are back from break and jumping right into it all.  I instituted my new behavior zones with my kids today and they were really excited.  It was great to see my friends who got on silver smiling big as they picked their behavior coupons at the end of the day.  One of them spent 5 minutes talking about which furry friend she was going to bring in while the other talked about how cool it was going to be getting to use the teacher's desk at school tomorrow.  I was glad that I was able to focus my attention on the kids that are always doing what they are supposed to. They so often get swept under the rug when we spend time trying to sort out our challenging students.  I could tell that the ones who got to change their zones up really felt special.  Which was the ultimate goal!

Behavior Coupons

I started this blog so that I could also talk about my truly challenging students.  One of them we will call LC has the whole school stumped.  Nothing seems to work with him. He has not made it through a full day of school in my classroom since the first of November.  He is the poster child for emotionally impaired.  With the RTI process we have to go through so many hoops to prove that there is something off balance with this young man.  I agree with the RTI process on a whole, however when it is clear that something is wrong having to do so many different interventions is just frustrating. 

 We had a meeting on him today.  We are going to try a cool down menu. ( I will post pictures later) He can choose how he wants to take a break when he gets upset or frustrated.  He chose the options. Things like drawing, deep breathing, sitting on a pillow or taking a walk.  We are also going to try a reward chart.  Every 15 minutes he will get a star if he is doing what he is supposed to be doing in the class.  He will get rewarded based on the number of stars he has at mid-morning, lunch, mid-afternoon, and at the end of school. I am not sure how this is going to play out, we will have to wait and see.

Jumping Right In.

I have already started the nightmares about the behavior in my classroom.  It prompted me to spend most of my day looking for ideas to help me with my new behavior plan I want to implement.  I came across this Rockstar themed idea on the Inspired Apple blog.  Even though we are the monkey classroom I think this one is the coolest one.

Rockstar Ideas

I am also thinking about doing Brownie Points for specials.  Whenever kids go to a different classroom there seems to be a break down in their ability to make good choices.  It is almost as if different kids come and take over their bodies.  It makes sense when they only see that teacher once a week for 50 minutes, that isn't a lot of time to really drill in your expectations. My thought is that if I can get them working together to earn compliments in specials that we might be more successful.  I am going to start with, if they earn 5 brownie points then we will make brownies as a class.  I will increase the number of brownie points they need to earn as they get better at it. 

Brownie Points

I will keep you posted on how all this goes.  I still have to think of something to motivate my challenging students....any ideas would be greatly appreciated!