Classroom Tour- Picture Overload!

Welcome to my classroom! I was so excited to get a room with windows this year! I have kept with my Road Trip Theme this year!

Here is our board right outside our room!

 I made this board to keep track of where my students are. When they are leaving the room for any reason they must move their magnet (with their number on it) to show where they are. Because no doubt I will forget where someone has gone! :)

 Here is my calendar and lunch count! WHERE IS MY NUMBER 3??! I cannot find it anywhere! Lunch count: students move their numbered stick in the fry box of their choice!

Here is my learning target section and soon to be math calendar board. These magnetic strips are AWESOME! Way better then duct tape.

This is my movable word wall I created last year!

The carpet area with my awesome rocker! The map blanket was given to me by a parent. So neat!

 Library area. I didn't show you my books because they are still a MESS!

 My desk! Love my spray painted file holders.. so much better than gray!

Job board, turn in boxes, and mail.

Star student board.

Materials and my palm tree! I have gotten so many compliments on this and its so easy to make! Its just a pvc pipe in a cement container, with an umbrella on top, and then I cut out green paper!

 

 Guided table, materials, and reading focus board.

 Boggle (love!) and materials.

 

There is it.. wow that was a lot of pictures! All I still need to do is get my license plates with my kids' names on the door! Those are my favorites!

Ready for my first full week of school starting tomorrow with my thirds!

 

 

Wordless Wed August 13th

Head over and link up!

Tonight was Meet the Teacher night! Can't believe school starts tomorrow! Met most of my kiddos and their parents! Hoping for a great year!

 

What is something you want parents to tell you about their student on this night?

 

Back to Work

Today was the first day back to work for me. Did anyone else head back to work this week? I wasn't excited for this day to come because I was NOT ready to take my son to daycare for the whole day. But I probably never would have been! I was lucky enough to have almost 4 months off with him since April, which was so nice!

So the morning started off rough.. for me! Here is a picture of him in his new clothes ready for the day!

You can't tell but I'm behind the camera bawling!

 

It is hard to get back into the swing of things like thinking, sitting for long periods of time, listening to speakers! Ha! First day back and we are already talking behavior! EEK! BRAIN HURTS! 

 

Hopefully, after a few more days I will have my classroom reveal up ! Until then!

 

 

 

 



 

 

B2S Linky & Wordless Wednesday!

Pop over to Miss D's and Miss V's to link up!

Today's topic is Assessment.

I was trying to decide what type or part of assessment I wanted to write about. I decided on something that I would like some ideas about!

Fact Mastery

How do you assess mastery of facts?

(Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication)

At my school we are really trying to focus on mastery of facts. Last year, I taught 5th grade. It was really difficult teaching equivalent fractions to students who had never mastered their multiplication facts. Rough! So I am really going to hit multiplication hard this year in 3rd. I'm sure I will also have to go back to addition and subtraction. (Pet Peeve: Solving simple problems like 5+4 by counting on your fingers ah! Especially in 5th grade!)

Here is a list of some thing that I do with facts in my room already

- Timed tests

- Around the world/flashcards

- Interactive Notebook entries

- Problem Solving prompts

- Math calendar (Love this, I need to write a post about this awesome product)

- And I just purchased this Multiplication Incentive program which looks awesome. I am going to try it out this year!

So questions:

How do you teach fact mastery?

Do you use timed tests?

Do you have any simple tricks to get more fact practice in during the day?

How do you assess and how often their fact mastery?

I am also linking up for Wordless Wednesday!

This is what I walked into yesterday. WHOA, this is what moving looks like. Check back for updates on my classroom decoration and organization!

Happy Wednesday!

Back to School Weekly Linky: Behavior Management

This is exactly what I needed get my head started thinking about school. Only 3 weeks left until I am back to work. How am I going to leave this little cutie!?

Here is the schedule to keep me on track.

 Head over to Mrs. D's Corner and Mrs. V's Busy Bees to link up!

So today's topic is Behavior Management:

AMC Bucks:

The last 2 years my teammates and I have been working with the same group of kids. Let's just say that we had some CHALLENGING behaviors. We taught 4th grade and then moved up to 5th grade. It had positives and negatives about it. The biggest problem was that by year 2 we needed to revamp our behavior procedures to keep the kids on task.

We continued using a money system we called, AMC Bucks. How cute is that!? I don't know if you have AMC Movie Theaters where you are, but we sure do! We were so excited it just worked out that each of our last names fit! My teammate then created these cute little bucks and the register to use in our classroom. We printed these in B&W on green paper!

 Here's how it worked:

-Each day they came to school they would get $200. Wish I could get $200 for walking in the door! :)

-Throughout the day they would have to complete their student duties: On task, following directions etc to keep their money

-If they did not follow their duties they could lose money. Usually it was $50 each time. (Most students never lost any money)

-They kept track of their money on their own register in their binders. This was the hard part because I did not keep a record of every student's money because that would be crazy! But really, they were all very honest about it. You always knew who earned the reward or not by the end of the quarter. I did love that this was exactly like keeping a bank register which is a life skill!

-They needed to reach a certain amount by the end of the quarter. We figured out how many days we had and then cut it back a bit so it was achievable if you were absent a couple days. Usually ours was about $7,000 to get the reward.  

     Rewards: Usually all were about 30 minutes, once a quarter.

-Tech Party  -Extra Recess -Short movie/snack Etc. What other rewards do you use?

*Also, we had class money that they had to earn daily. We needed to reach $800 by recess so they could have the whole time to play. Each section of our day was worth at least $100. We had recess in the afternoon. If they did not reach the $800 then we had them walk "thinking laps" for 5 minutes of their time. Again, I added or took away money based on the whole class's behavior. This worked, we hardly ever missed recess time. Shock, they love it!

Homework Club: 

In 4th grade, we had lots of trouble with kids turning in their homework. So I tried out Lesson with Laughter's - Homework Club. I loved it! Here is what it looked like in my room. Free numbers here!

Everyday the kids would have to mark off their name on the Homework Sheet, which was just a simple table with their names and days of the week. Then they could keep their number in the Homework Club. Here is how I made this.

Now, this did not work for everyone. There were always the chronic kids that did not turn in homework repeatedly and unfortunately for them they missed out on some fun activities. I had a few students that NEVER, and I mean NEVER, turned in one piece of homework in 4th grade.

*Funny story: One student, never turned in homework and always had the best excuses! My favorite one was: "Well, I did it. But, then I was outside and it kind of fell in... the lake. So it was ruined." Ps. There is no lake anywhere near where I teach. HA! (He actually did his homework last year!)

But surprisingly, this worked for them, and they hardly ever missed an assignment. I call that a win!

I am definitely going to use the Homework Club again in 3rd grade this year. Since I am moving down to 3rd grade with two new teammates I'm not sure yet what management system we will use. Hopefully something similar to AMC bucks, but I am always looking for new ideas! Hoping to find some on your posts!

Happy Wednesday!