Monday Made It!

Happy Monday, friends! The clock is ticking until school starts back up, and for me...it's ticking pretty fast! We officially reported back to school last Thursday, and it has been crazy busy.

It might seem like we go back to school early, but we have a great schedule. We have a two-week fall break in mid-October, a full week for Thanksgiving, two-plus weeks at Christmas, and a two-week spring break, and not to mention the snow days in between. Plus, we're still out by Memorial Day, so...I won't be complaining any time soon.

But...that early start means that there won't be many more Monday Made Its from me, but I managed to squeeze out a few fun things this week, so let's check them out! You can join in the link-up by heading over to Fourth Grade Frolics.

Coat Hook Labels and Name Tags: Usually I just post the students' names above their coat hook each year. I tried a number system, but then I could never remember which number was who, so I went back to names. Plus I think the kids like seeing their names up there! This year, I decided to be extra crafty and add pictures of each student with their name. It was pretty simple since I could see all the students' pictures in Infinite Campus, our attendance and grading system, and I was able to use these Editable Book Bin Labels by Learning in Wonderland to choose from hundreds of Melonheadz clipart kid images. I was able to find a different image for each kiddo, I added their names, and...voila! Cuteness overload!

And...I liked them so much that I decided to make a separate set to wear on the first day of school as a name tag. I just punched holes in the top and looped a pincher clip through for the kids to clip to their shirts. I like the clips, as opposed to lanyards, because they will be easier to see. I also thought they would be great to keep around in the event of a guest teacher or any other special visitors.

Desk Nameplates: I used to make fancy nameplates to put on each desk. But they always PICKED at them or PEELED the corners, and it made me crazy! Plus, when any standardized testing came along from our district, we had to remove them-lest they actually use that number line or any other useful tool on it when you actually want them to. So, last year I decided I would just write their names on their desks with a thick Sharpie. It worked, but when I wanted a kid to switch seats, it would be days before I would remember to scrub the name off and change it. So....

I came up with this brilliant idea for this upcoming school year. I made the nameplates using an editable template from the Happy Rainbow Collection by School Girl Style and laminated them. However, instead of sticking them on top of the desks, I put them on the front of the desks. Now-this probably won't work for everyone depending on your desk arrangement, but it is better for me because all of my desks actually face me. (If you are familiar with Teach Like a Champion, then this desk setup might ring a bell!) Now I can see everyone's names and they can't mess with them. Win, win! Plus it will be nice for when we have surprise guests, substitute teachers, or new students.

Oh! I also attached them with velcro from the Dollar Tree so they can be easily interchanged. I love it!

Miniature Dice Holders: So, this is a different version of last week's pill box turned dice holder. I ended up finding this pill box at the Dollar Tree, and I especially loved how it was only 3 compartments. (Not to mention the handy dandy carrying case!) I used nail polish remover to get the letters off, and then bribed my hubby to donate more of his miniature gaming dice to the cause that is my classroom. (It's one of the few perks of being a war-gaming wife.)

Here are some of my plans for them:

Place Value Practice: shake, write the number, and identify the value of a number in a specific spot. The kids could even turn the boxes to make the greatest number possible. For example, if you look at the yellow box, is 653 greater or would 356 be greater?

Addition Practice: This would be a great tool for addition with 3 addends. 6 + 5 + 3 = 14 Or you could combine boxes to make multi-digit addends. So, if I used the boxes below, it could be 653 + 552, or it could be 32 + 55 + 65. I can also envision easy differentiation for these activities, too.

The possibilities are endless!

Student Workbook Drawer Labels: Even though my students each have a desk, they do not actually use the inside of it. The desks actually lift open, so you can imagine how everything slides right off the desk anytime I ask them to get something out. And it happens every.single.time they open their desks every.single.day. It drove me nuts. You would think they would learn. But...nope.

So, enter these Rubbermaid drawers. The kids store all of their necessary materials-workbooks, notebooks, manipulatives-in each drawer. Four students share each set of drawers. Since everything stays in one place, there is none of the "I can't find my..." anymore.

So, long story short, I made these fun labels for each drawer using a "Hello My Name Is" free template from I Teach What's Your Superpower?. The kids really didn't have any trouble putting everything where it went, but I like the look of these labels anyways!

Well, that's it for this week! But here is a sneak peak at something I've been working on that I just recently finished up and posted on my TpT store. If you own my Light Box Bundle, head over and download the newest update that includes four adorable unicorn slides. You can see them all HERE.

Have a fantastic week!

A Unifix Cube Behavior Management Plan

That's right, y'all. All it took was an old box of Unifix cubes destined for Goodwill to save my classroom.

It was a couple of weeks before Spring Break, and I was desperate to find something that would get us to that much needed two-week break without losing it.

It's not that things were out of control. But-there was just enough shenanigan-making to drive me nuts. It wasn't everyone, but it was enough that it was disrupting the entire classroom. I really wanted to acknowledge the kids who were consistently on-task and following our rules, but I needed it to be quick and discreet.

And that was when I saw it-an old box of Unifix cubes in the Goodwill donation pile on my dining room table, and the idea hit me like a ton of, well...Unifix cubes.

It went like this:

Each kiddo starts the day with three cubes. It's basically like three chances. They can lose them for a variety of reasons, and they can earn extra ones for a variety of reasons. At the end of every day, we counted up our cubes, and I wrote the totals in the grade book. After a certain amount of time, I would select a (not so random) number, and anyone who had accumulated that many cubes earned an incentive.

Losing Cubes

The kids can lose cubes for any reason. To be honest, I use it mostly as a behavior deterrent in that I notice the behavior, I move closer to the student (proximity), and I make eye contact, giving the student a chance to knock it off ALL WHILE I'M STILL TEACHING. If the behavior continues, I simply remove a cube from their stick and keep walking. No discussion, no stopping the lesson...nothing. The fact that they lost a cube tells them they were doing something that was not okay.

Now-do discussions happen later? Sometimes, if I notice the student getting all grumpy or sad. But it's a quick conversation that reminds them of the chance I gave them and why I took a cube. I also remind them of the multiple opportunities they have to earn more. But for the most part, the student changes their behavior, and it's done.

What if they talk back or argue when I take a cube from their desk? Well, my kids knew I would swipe another one, so it was best not to talk back or question me while I am teaching. However, if they felt they were treated unfairly, I did hear them out at an appropriate time. Usually it didn't help their cause, but sometimes it did. I also wanted them to know that I was willing to listen to them.

What if they ran out of cubes? This happened on occasion. In our school, students walk laps at recess as a consequence for behavior. They call them "thinking laps." If they went into the hole on their cubes, it was a lap for each time I had to correct behavior. Done.

What about serious behavior issues? Obviously the cubes didn't apply for serious behavior problems. Hitting, swearing, throwing things...those are offenses that are referred straight to the office. The kids knew that any behavior that earned them an office referral would also cause them to forfeit all their cubes for that day.

Earning Cubes

Students can earn cubes for ALL SORTS OF THINGS. Being kind, helping a friend, picking up trash they see in the hallway, working quietly, bringing back a school form...the list goes on and on. They also earn cubes for answering questions...even if they're wrong. It's about effort and focus and trying and participating. My participation level for group discussions go through the roof when I have a handful of cubes with me.

The thing to remember is that sometimes I do give cubes, and other times I don't. The kids know not to ask for them. I just trained them that way when we started the whole thing.

Earning an Incentive

This is the easy and CHEAP part. Usually the incentives revolved around something that didn't cost me a penny and required no work from me. Bring a stuffed animal to school, no shoes for the day, sit by a friend, pillow day, pajama day, crazy hair...you get the idea. When I felt super motivated, we would have doughnuts or cookies and milk or something like that.

But here was the important part-I was very purposeful in the "number" of cubes the kids had to have in order to earn the incentive. Sometimes, one of my toughest kids would only have 5 cubes total after a few days. Well, guess what the lucky number was...5! I didn't do that all the time, but I did want to get as many kids involved in the incentives as possible, and I wanted to reward effort when I saw it. Other times, the number would be 25. It really just varied as I saw fit.

And that's what is so great about this! You make it fit your needs.

I'm serious, y'all. This system worked so well that I am starting it at the beginning of this upcoming school year, and I have high hopes for it. I don't have to worry about stickers, or punch cards, or clip charts. It's such a weight off my shoulders to know that these little cubes can do so much to improve the classroom environment and requires little work from me.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions about how I made this system work for me. As with all behavior management plans, what works for one classroom might not work for another. And...just like what works for one class one year might not work with the next class the following year. But...it's definitely worth a try!

Monday Made It!

It's time for another Monday Made It! I actually did some calculating today, and there are only 3 more Mondays after today until I go back to work. Summer is really flying by! I love our school schedule (we get a 2 week fall break and a 2 week spring break), but I wouldn't mind a longer summer. The first day back for me is July 26th. So...I better get going on all these summer projects!

I'm linking up again with Tara from Fourth Grade Frolics for Monday Made It. Head over to her blog HERE to see all the other fun ideas shared by teachers.

Back to School Student Gift: This is by far the most fun student gift I think I've ever made! I was looking for something crafty that I hadn't done before, and these little wiggly eyes just popped out to me while I was wandering the aisles at Target one night. The kids love using them for guided reading, and they always begged to take them home. So, this was a great chance to gift them one! They were relatively inexpensive since they were 6 rings for only $2, so I was able to snag enough rings for only $8. I printed the cards at home and used 3D glue dots to secure one eye to the paper. They are seriously the cutest things ever!

You can head over to my TpT store to download the free template. An editable powerpoint file is included, should you want to personalize them. Click HERE to check it out!

Updated Teacher Toolbox: So, if you saw my Monday Made It a couple of weeks ago, I had created some new labels for my teacher toolbox. I liked them...but I didn't love them. You know what I mean? Here's what they looked like:

The colors are perfect, and I liked the way the font stood out. But ultimately, I decided to go with something more modern and clean-looking, and it turned out AMAZING. Here is the finished product:

I had a few questions about the size of the drawers. They are definitely big enough to hold 3x5" index cards. I keep multiple sharpies in the drawers and normal sized (3x3") post-it note pads. I will try to do a separate post with more detailed pictures. I will be uploading them to my TpT store soon, so make sure and check back! (UPDATE: Click HERE to see the tags in my TpT store!)

Well...it might not look like I did much this week, but I was in an intensive for my graduate program from last Monday through Thursday in Denver, and I was exhausted. I think I did these two projects mainly to just relax and allow myself to chill out! So...we'll see what I manage to get done this week. 

Have a great week!

Classroom Reveal!

It's here!!! I am so excited to be joining in with Ashley at Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd and Angie at Lucky Little Learners for their #2getherwearebetter Classroom Reveal!

And...I also thought it would be fun to share this over at Blog Hoppin' for Teacher Week since it's Classroom Tour Day!  

                                                    

Before we head into my room, I want to give you a bit of background into why I set it up the way I do. A couple of summers ago, i went to a Debbie Diller training in Denver. It totally changed my mindset on how I organize, how I teach, and how I set up my room. I embraced the idea of a not-so-visually-overstimulating environment with only purposeful material on the walls. I took down all the brights and went with more toned down colors like gray, teal, and a golden yellow. The walls are BARE at the beginning of the year. The idea is that you hang up things as you teach them. This would be my anchor charts, vocabulary, and other important content work. 

I LOVE IT. 

It just works for me. Plus my new room is TINY compared to my old classroom, so I have to be really strategic about what I hang up and where I put certain things. 

So here we go!!!

This is where I greet the kids each day with a handshake and eye-contact. I love the first-thing-in-the-morning connection.

After I greet the kids, they come in and move a star to indicate which lunch they want. The stars used to have their names on them, but it took FOREVER for them to find their own names, so I erased all of them. (Tip: Did you know that you can scribble over something written in a Sharpie with an Expo marker, and it will wipe off?) I really just needed them for the lunch count.

This is looking at the front of my room. (And my back was against the cabinets on the wall. Told you it was tiny!)

This is looking over into the library, which I'm currently stressing over. I don't like the layout, but I'm cramped for space, so the angle is necessary.

The kids come in every morning and write their Daily News in their planners. They can also see what supplies they need t start the day. I made the supply cards after I had to repeat myself one too many times one day. You can check them out by clicking on the picture below. They save me so much time!

Here is a closer up view of my sad library. It used to be my favorite part of the room because I had a bench, 2 totes they used as seats, and multiple pillows. Now I'm lucky to squeeze this in. 

But I LOVE my library basket labels!

These pod organizers are a big time saver, too. The students have personal supply boxes in their desks to use for certain things, but they mainly use the community supplies in the numbered caddies. I found them at Walmart 2 years ago. They currently hold writing notebooks, crayons, scissors, glue sticks, sticky notes, Expos, and erasers. 

The 3-drawer units also have a special purpose. We level for math and reading intervention time, so other kids come in and out and need a place to keep their materials. The top drawer holds math manipulatives and notebooks, and the bottom drawer holds materials for my reading comprehension group. The middle drawer currently holds our readers for our new reading curriculum.

This is our meeting area. We typically begin a lot of our lessons here. We also end our day here as we discuss our favorite things from the day and things we need to work on. It's definitely cramped space, but I value this time so much that it's worth it.

As you can see, I don't have a desk. (It's a good thing, too, because I have NO IDEA where I would've put it!) I haven't had one since my first year of teaching, so I don't miss it. I usually find myself sitting at my kidney table more, and I'm forced to keep it clean since I use it so much! If you look really close, you can see my teacher toolbox on the shelf! The yellow frame is a cork board from Kohl's. 

Here are the rules. They're WBT based, and I got them as a freebie a while back from Melissa Shumway. You can get them for free by clicking HERE. I was strategic about putting them at the front of the room this year so I could constantly refer to them. It has paid off tremendously!

This is the back of the room, and I use it for supply storage. I also post our schedules and jobs. My jobs are pretty basic and are based on a book study I did this summer on Teach Like a Pirate. You can download them for free by clicking on the picture below!

One thing I love about my new room is all the shelves. I love nothing more than organized materials perfectly placed on shelves. It makes my teacher heart happy!

This is a close-up of the labels. They are color-coded by subject. I have a tutorial on my blog about how to make labels for your teacher tool-box, and I used that same method to make these labels. You can check out that blog post HERE. 

I LOVE MY WRITING WALL. For real. I could just stare at it all day. The paper pennant thing is from the Dollar Spot at Target, and I cut the letter son my Silhouette Cameo. Of course, we just started a new curriculum after 4 weeks of using this...and it's now changing. Sad-ville.

These stickers are such a life saver! They have multiple uses: partners, reporters (for answering during group discussions), community jobs, supplies...the possibilities are seriously endless!

This is our brag tag area. I use a mix of brag tags from Lucky Little Learners, Not So Wimpy Teacher, and Primarily Speaking. They get to wear their brag tags on Fridays, and they LOVE them.

The paper tassels in the windows are from Schoolgirl Style. That big letter C serves as a multiple response strategy. Kids will go to that spot to show their specific answer as C. 

This is an old calendar pocket chart I repurposed as a computer login chart. Each student's individual login information will be housed here. It also currently serves as the newly earned brag tag holder. When students get their brag tags necklaces on Fridays, they stop here to see if they have any new brag tags. You can see some brag tags still in it.

Whew! That was a whirlwind tour of my classroom. If I could change anything, I would figure out a different arrangement for my library, but it will work for the time being.

I can't wait to check out more classrooms during these classroom reveals! Click on the buttons below to head over to both of the link ups. Have a great week!!!

                          

Bulletin Board Learning

I am so excited to be joining up with Ashley from Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd and Angie from Lucky Little Learners for their #2getherwearebetter monthly linky! This month is all about bulletin boards, so here we go!!!

Bulletin boards have always been one of my most FAVORITE things to decorate in my classroom. They were cute, whimsical, and fun to look at. Well, fun for me to look at. The kids didn't always seem to appreciate the time and effort I put into finding border that matched with the pretty butterflies that gleefully displayed their names and smiling faces. 

Nope. Not a bit.

And then a couple of summers ago, I went to a Debbie Diller training in Denver. Now, I learned a LOT at this training from Debbie Diller herself (I'm a #debbiedillercreeper.), but the one thing that stuck out the most was her emphasis on only hanging learning tools on the walls. If we made an anchor chart showing the steps to solving a word problem, it went on the wall. If we learned the rules for adding the suffix -ing to a word, it was posted on the wall as a reference. In other words, if it wasn't a learning tool, it wasn't on the wall. 

I embraced this thinking last year, and I started the year with blank walls. 

And it TERRIFIED me. I wondered if the parents thought I was crazy with my half-finished classroom. 

But then I had this thought-if I haven't actually taught anything yet, then I wouldn't expect to see anything on the walls. The walls would eventually take care of themselves as we learned new content. 

And it was AMAZING. Our walls grew with knowledge the students were gaining. It was a constant resource that was always available to them-even when their teacher might not be. 

As learning continued, some things were removed and replaced with newer learning. Other things-like anchor charts for Literacy, were laminated and hung from hooks on the wall using binder rings so students could always refer to them if they needed to. It made for an amazing flip chart. (Oh-and I covered the top edge of the chart paper with duct tape after laminating, punched a hole in both top corners, and then hung from the binder rings. This prevented it from tearing.)

Tragically, I don't have pictures of my class from last year to show how it changed. I'm not even sure what's going on with my iPhoto. But...I do have snaps of this years NEW bulletin boards to show off!

Let me add real quick...I'm not sure which content will be where. This is a new classroom, and I'm really waiting to see what comes to me after school starts. My word of advice is to hang up what is NECESSARY so the focus is more on what they're learning within the environment and not just the way the environment looks.

I love the hanging notebook paper. I want this to be a writing focus wall, but it's at the BACK of the classroom. Hmmm...

This is right as you enter the room. I'm thinking maybe a #currently or some sort of news that highlights what we're doing that day or week. It's really far to the the left of the whiteboards. I'm also looking at it for space for a math focus wall.

I'm feeling that this will be a literacy focus wall. It's on the side of the classroom, but easily accessible for the kids. Plus the whiteboard right next to it hold a curtain rod for extra anchor charts, so it would make for an easy extension to the focus wall.

Usually to the left of the clock is accountable talk sentence stems. I will put a couple to begin with, and then I will add more as we use them. I love that they're there as a sort of scaffold, if needed. To the right has been grammar or phonics rules we've been learning.

These doors are untapped land. They were supposed to be a word wall, but I opted for a whiteboard word wall. I'm thinking Science/Social Studies content vocabulary, but that could change. Hmmm....

Well, my July was gone in a flash, and I need to make sure I don't waste anytime in August, so I need to get out of here and get back to label making for my classroom. But, hopefully I will see you back again next month for another #2getherwearebetter linky. You can join in the fun by clicking on the button below!

Have a great week!