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!