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

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.

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!

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!