Sailing Into Summer Blog Hop!

I'm excited to participate in a summer-themed blog hop hosted by The Language Arts Classroom and Julie Faulkner! Summer is fast approaching and if you're nuts like me, you're already looking for new ideas for next year. Check out my quick tips below and don't forget to visit all the other blogs at the end of this post!

1 final exam tip/idea

I teach second grade so we don't administer the big state tests to our kids but they do participate in diagnostic testing. I find it helps my kids out if I prepare the parents by sending home a little parent info pack. The gist of it is to notify them of testing, tell them ways they can prep their child, and to give parents the opportunity to write an encouraging note to their child which you can give them before their test. Click {HERE} to get my Testing Info for Parents FREEBIE.  

 

1 (classroom) thing you want to do again next yearI recently blogged about Class Compliments. This is a behavior system I use in my room and plan on using every year! It's simple to implement and easy to maintain. Best of all, the kids love it! Click the picture for a FREEBIE!

1 (classroom) thing you want to change next year

I plan to reboot how I introduce and manage my library. It needs a makeover!  I always say to non-teachers that they'd be surprised how quickly sixteen eight-year-olds can take over! Your classroom library is no exception to this rule. Without a fool proof plan you're at risk of chaos, book boredom, or probably BOTH. I'm obsessed with this post about introducing your library (by The Thinker Builder). He has it dowwwwn.
 

1 gift idea for students 

For my kids last year, I bought cute, mini journals at Michaels. I also gifted them each a mechanical pencil with a flag attached. The flag spelled their name vertically and each letter was a different adjective to describe them. I I was inspired by the below photo that I found on Pinterest (of course). The kids loved this gift because it was personal! I hope it kept them writing over the summer too. This year, to better ensure they don't get writers block, I'll include writing prompts to keep them inspired. 



They were similar to these! (by Adventures of a Student Teacher)

 

Hold on! Summer is coming!!!!!!!!!

An InLinkz Link-up

Class Compliments & FREEBIE

The school year is winding down but for me it doesn't feel that way because I will have to return from maternity leave for the last few weeks of school (If you read this blog you've heard me whine about this 100 times already!). It almost feels like I'm starting the school year over! Yiiiiikes☺ I've been thinking a bit about behavior management when it comes to the last days of the school year so, I wanted to share a behavior system I use with my students that tracks their behavior everywhere in the school including your classroom! A veteran teacher told me about it my first year teaching and I've altered it a bit to what works for me.

The system is Class Compliments and the way it works is simple. I tell my kids that anytime an adult at school compliments our class in the hallway, the lunchroom, the playground, etc. we get a tally. If an administrator gives us a compliment, we get two tallies! They loooove this. When we get 25 tallies we get a party! They get to vote if they want pizza, ice cream, doughnuts, and so on. You can reward them however you see fit. You can use tallies, puzzle pieces, marbles, or this freebie I created to keep track of your compliments. Click on either image to get the freebie!

I plan on printing it in color, laminating it, and using Velcro stickers to tack on the flags as kids earn compliments. I might even make it poster size!  

I also plan on adjusting this system for the last 15 days of school. For example, if the kids get 5 compliments by the second to last day of school, I'll bring cupcakes for breakfast the last day! 

The cool thing about this tool is that it can be adjusted to meet your class's needs. If you have an exceptionally well-behaved class that always walks in a perfect line, behaves well at specials, and rarely makes mistakes in the hallway (everyone is jealous) then maybe you tell your kids they have to get the whole 25 compliments. If you have a more challenging class, perhaps you make the goal smaller at first and build up. My first year using this, I had a very well-behaved group.  It took about 4 months to get all 25 compliments just to give you an idea for when you're deciding how many compliments to expect from your class.

I made sure to clue in administration that my class was working on receiving compliments. This way they're more likely to give them to the kids if they're deserving of them. The kids go nuts when they see two tallies added to their compliment chart at once!

The other cool thing about this system is that it can be used to your advantage in your own room and not just the rest of the school grounds. My kids this year had a really hard time being respectful when an adult would come in our room to speak with me. I told them if they shaped up they could receive a compliment from that adult right there in our own room.

I hope this freebie helps you all survive the last few days of school and the school years to come!

Happy Little Classroom Challenges





Oh, Bob. 

I had a much different class this year than my first year as a teacher.  I had a mix of levels, most of my students being  kindergarten-first grade readers. I teach second so it felt a lot like instructing at three different grade levels. This is an experience I think most (all) teachers can relate to. I also had the ESE cluster and a fair number of undiagnosed students that needed a lot of attention both academically and emotionally.

It can certainly be time consuming to differentiate activities among students that you are 1. Preparing for rigorous unit tests, more complex reading, and 3rd grade state testing while 2. Working on sight words, basic phonics principles, and poor oral language skills with others. It takes creativity. Especially if you're also managing students with behavioral issues and trying to find activities for, and ways to reach, students that don't love school in general.
 

Because a big percentage of my schools' population live at or below the poverty line, I see a lot of kids that grew up in households where parents might not have been around to read nightly to them. The parents worked two jobs or maybe they couldn't speak the language. Sometimes both. That lack of "lap time" really effects a child's ability to view themselves as a student I think. If they haven't grown up with warm memories of a particular book being read to them, it seems harder for them to connect with reading like some other students that had the privilege of mom reading-them-to-sleep.

I felt challenged a lot more this school year and I left (for maternity leave) with a new perspective on what it takes to really teach.  Some days I wondered if I had the patience to get through (nope). Other days I felt accomplished. 

If you're still here (thanks for staying!), let's talk goals...

I have two goals I know will be on my long list of "areas for improvement":

1. Differentiate word work better! 

- I loved the spelling inventory from Words Their Way because it really gave me an idea of where to start with word work but I struggled a little bit with how to form groups effectively. I want to get a system down next year that will work like clockwork. 

2. Get on the floor! 

- Getting back to the "lack of lap time" I was talking about before. Next year during independent reading, I'm going to get on the floor more with my kids that can't read and read to them and with them. Yes, I do this during guided reading and read alouds but I feel like this one-on-one time might work wonders. I know for some it will be the closest thing they get to having a book read just to them so it's worth a shot. 

The biggest challenge of all will probably be leaving on time each day to get home to my babies!

How do you manage so many different levels of learners?