Thursday, March 27, 2014

Spring Cleaning


It's time to do some spring cleaning!  Leave feedback on your purchases to earn your TPT credits and then hop on over and visit these fantastic TPT stores.  You can use your feedback credits to buy items at up to 20% off from all these fabulous sellers!

Here is one of our newest products that we are so excited about!  Head on over to check it out while it is on sale!!
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Nate-the-Great-2-Series-Activities-1180713

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Nate-the-Great-2-Series-Activities-1180713



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Sunday, March 9, 2014

Beyond the Clip Chart-Extension Ideas!

I am soooooo excited about the 2nd Bright Ideas Blog Hop!  I'm looking forward to visiting some of my favorite bloggers for some great tips and tricks!
I know that so many people use clip charts in their classrooms.  They are all over Pinterest, TPT, blogs, etc. They are wonderful, but what else can you do with them??  I want to share how my coworkers and I have decided to extend the use of our clip charts and tie them into our whole classroom management system. 

My coworkers and I have used variations of clip charts for years and over the past several years have slowly added extensions to this already great behavior management system. We have some great kiddos this year and needed a way to recognize and reward those kiddos who were going above and beyond with their behavior.  

We start off every year with our clip chart full of clothespins with numbers on them.  We talk up our behavior chart and how it such a great way for the teacher to recognize good behavior.  The kids always get excited about the possibility of moving up. 

Then we tell our kiddos that we always want them to be able to share how their day went with their parents.  We introduce the behavior calendar that goes in the back of our daily Take Home folders. At the beginning of each month we give our kiddos a calendar on card stock ( we use card stock because it slides in and out of the folder pockets so much easier than regular paper).  They keep this calendar in the back pocket of their folder which goes home daily.
(Lovin' this calendar and how it reflects time off for conferences and our crazy snow days!!!)
 At the end of each day the kiddos record what color they were on.  They then come and show us the calendar and receive stars.  For green they get 1 star, blue is 2, pink is 3, and for purple they receive 5.  They keep these stars in a folder in their desk. At the end of each week they can redeem one star for one piece of candy and 3 stars for one prize from the treasure box.  They can also choose to just hold onto their stars for our quarterly auction.  (we are still allowed to give out candy as prizes, although we limit it!  If you can't do candy any reward tickets should be a hit.  We do a mixture or reward tickets, toys, and edible prizes.  
 The other way that we extend our clip chart is to give our kiddos a jewel for every 5 purples they earn.  This is a HUGE motivator for our kiddos.  They work very hard to try to earn purple by the end of the day so that they can work towards a jewel.  The jewels that we use can be found in the craft section at Walmart and look like those in the following picture.  However, you could really use any type of jewel or sticker!
The kiddos collect their jewels on their clips and when they have 10 jewels, 5 on each side, they can trade their clip in for a colored clip. We have spray painted clips before and this year we used Washi tape for our colored clips.  Either works great.  The kiddos are just proud to have a different clip and show off their great behavior!
(Regular clips with jewels)
 (Washi tape clips with jewels)

 Once they have earned 10 jewels on their clip they retire that clip to a ribbon that is located above the clip chart.  I currently have 2 girls who have retired their regular clips and moved on to their colored or Washi tape clips!  They ar so proud of themselves!
I know that not every year requires more than a clip chart, but for those years when you have a dream class this is a great way to recognize the above and beyond behavior of those kiddos!  It has been a huge success for us this year and we would love to hear if you give it a try!!

Next it is time to hop on over and visit Marsha at A Differentiated Kindergarten to learn about Engagement through fun and seasonal manipulatives.


You can also check out the linky below to search by topic!
  







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