DAILY TOP THREE: PRODUCTIVITY TIP

Like many teachers, I am a list maker.  I love making lists, especially "to do lists". However, I am what you would call an "over eager/overly ambitious" list maker.  When I make a "to do" list, I put every task I can think of on them.  Case in point, my spring break to do list. 

There was NO way I could have ever accomplished all of the things on my list of spring break.  No way.  My "to do" lists tend to be overly ambitious, and are never ever completed because I always put anything and everything I would like to accomplish on them.  

This summer, I transitioned to a Day Designer planner.  One of the things that I love about my Day Designer is that each day has a "top three" box.  This box is meant for the three most important jobs/tasks of the day.  It has made me incredibly more productive at home, because it has made me really reevaluate what I could realistic accomplish each day.  

Like most of you, I've been working in my classroom lately. I don't know about you, but sitting up my classroom can be quite overwhelming and there are many times where I feel like I'm not getting anywhere. Mainly because I'm walking around from task to task without a sense of purpose and never really accomplishing anything. 

This summer, I decided to implement the "daily top three" concept while working in my classroom, and it's been amazing!

Every day that I'm in the classroom, I create a "top three" list. I make the three jobs/goals realistic to accomplish, and I can only tackle a new task, one not on the list, if the other three are completed. 

This was my "top three" from my last classroom work session. 
1. Print, copy, and stuff my homeroom's welcome back letters. 
2. Arrange student desks into tables. 
3. Unpack, purge, and organize my personal office supplies. 

In about two and half hours, I completed my "top three" and I was able to add another task to my list, organizing my "I Can" Statements.  Here's some proof of my productivity!

I've only been in my classroom about three times this summer, never for a full day, and I've already feel that that having a "daily top three" has made me so much more productive and purposeful than in previous years! 

I plan to continue using the daily "top three" once school begins, because I love it SO much. 
I created a free printable this evening to use the rest of the summer and for the upcoming school year.  If you'd like to download my template, you can download it from Google Drive {here}. 

Once I pick up my desk calendar from our union rep, I might start putting my daily "top three" there instead.  You could also put your daily "top three" on a post it, notepad, phone, computer, etc. 

If you found using a "Daily Top Three" list helpful, I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

Winter Party Recap

Hi, friends! I had a few questions on IG about my fall and winter parties, so I'm here today to share some simple tips on how I make our holiday parties fun and exciting BUT enjoyable and calm for their teacher as well. :) 

I try to keep things simple when it comes to parties.  I've learned that just works best.  I have set up parties every way you could think of. I've had parents plan the entire party, I've had parents plan games and crafts, I've done activities as a whole class, and I've done activities in smaller groups.  I've had parties where the games where the activities took so long that we didn't get to even touch the food the kids brought it.  I've also had parties where we revert to playing tic tac toe or hangman because the games/activities didn't take up enough time. 

Over time, I learned that things work best when I'm in charge.  Parents naturally flock to you during parties to ask questions about activities, games, or crafts.  Even if you announce a fellow parent was in charge of the party planning.   For me, nothing is more stressful than shrugging my shoulders and saying "I don't know," to a parent during a party. 

So a few years ago, I just started planning it all.  I reuse many of the same activities from year to year, so it takes literally minutes to put everything into place. :) 

We rock our parties out in rotations.  I have six tables.  We have six stations/rotations.  They move from station to station with their table.  When it's time to switch, I just move the name names to their new station. So easy.  The rotations allow my kids to have fun in a very controlled way.  This allows me to have fun too and many of my classroom parents have remarked at how it allows them to enjoy the experience of volunteering more as well.

I have my students take "party bags" from rotation to rotation.  They put the put any papers, activities, or snacks from each station in them during the party.  It's a great way to keep everything together and to keep the party rolling. :) 

One of the stations always involves a fun snack.  For our winter/Christmas party, we decorated graham crackers.  I am usually in charge of this station. 

Each student had a graham cracker, that they broke in half, a knife with a dollop of icing on it, and sprinkles that they used to make little graham cracker sandwiches with. 

Three of the stations involve a game of some kind.  At our winter party we played Don't Eat Rudolph, a variation of Don't Eat Pete,  Holiday Bingo, and a Holiday Hedbanz/Guessing Game.  My parent volunteers are each assigned one of these stations and run the same station throughout the entire party. 

A few of my kids had never played Hedbanz before, so we made sure to play it during brain breaks the week of the party.

Two of the stations are a bit calmer and can run without any help, which is great if you don't have a lot of extra help at your party.  

My kids LOVE word searches and we never ever get to do them, so we always have a word search.  

We also do a simple craft. For this party, my students decorated Christmas Tree Magic Scratch Ornaments. I got them from Oriental Trading. 

The rotations take about thirty minutes, give or take, and then we end things with some snacks and a movie. 

The parents typically man a little buffet for our snacks at our back table and allow students to go table by table.  I don't go crazy on the snacks because for many years, the kids were throwing SO much food away.  I let the kids pick what they want and there is usually very little food left at the end of the party.  I typically have a least one student with a peanut allergy, so we usually stick to Oreos, Rice Krispie Treats, pretzels, and fruit snacks.  This year I have a student with an egg/diary allergy and he just brings his own snack pack to the party and keeps his own game boards/coutners for any games involving food in his party bag.

While my students eat their snacks and enjoy the movie, the parents and I clean up the stations.  I also send home the leftover cookies, fruit snacks, pretzels, etc. with the students who sent them in to avoid cluttering up my cabinets/counters. The movie gives my students a chance to calm down and we can go to the buses safely and calmly. 

To keep things even less stressful on party day, I put the items needed for each station in plastic tubs as they come in.  I have a tub for each station and this allows us to begin our party as soon as our parent helpers show up. 

I use Signup Genius  for our party donations and volunteers.  It takes minutes to create a sign up and I love how I don't have to coordinate who is sending in items, the website does it for me.  I send the link out to my homeroom parents in an email and usually within a DAY, everything is taken care off.  The website also sends parents an email about their donation/volunteer time a few days before.  

Even though our Christmas/Winter Parties are over, hopefully you found something helpful/useful for your future class parties.  We use the same set up at every party and it always works out great, even with my most challenging classes!

I also just wanted to let you know that my store will be on sale today and tomorrow to celebrate the New Year! You can check out Fourth and Ten on TpT {here}.

Happy New Year!

Back to School Recap

Hello friends! :) I'm back! The first few weeks of school are always so hard to juggle teaching, blogging, and being a wife/dog mom.  Thankfully, I am able to leave work a little earlier each day now and I should have some more time to blog, share, and create. 

The first three weeks of fourth grade have been wonderful.  I am so blessed to have two very sweet classes who love reading and writing.  They also have such fun personalities and I love spending my days with them.  One of my sweet students brought me an apple the other day and it about made me cry. A student hasn't brought me an apple in a very long time, so I cherished this sweet gesture. 

One of the first things we did this school year was starting our school year scrapbooks.  You can check out my School Year Scrapbook pack {here}.

I am really excited about our scrapbooks and I know that they will be such a great keepsake of our year together.   It has been fun to read through my students' scrapbooks and learn more about them! 

We also did lots of the Find Somebody Who pages from my Fabulous Back to School Fun pack.  They got us up and moving and learning a lot about each other.  These are always a hit with my kiddos and I always love participating in them too!

We also had lots of fun with my Cooking Up a Great School Year pack.  Both classes loved it this year and the books have sparked a lot of really great discussions on how to be a good classmate this year. You can check out my original post on Cooking Up a Great Year {here}.

As always, the Cooking Up a Great Year Trail Mix was a big hit, and quite tasty too!

This year in addition to reading and discussing the books, I tried to do some hands on activities for each character trait included in the pack. 

We did graffiti walls to talk about sharing. 

We put puzzles together with our tables for teamwork. 

We drew self portraits for being yourself.  I'm so in LOVE with their pictures.  They always make me smile. 

The activities that I added this year really made the traits stick and I look forward to adding them to my pack very soon! :)

On our first Friday of school, we did the Skittles Sharing activity from my Fabulous Back to School Fun pack.  My kids loved it and it was a great way to hit some speaking and listening standards and close out the week with a fun treat!

 Behavior Bingo is still rocking my behavior management world and both of my classes just love it.  They have both earned a bingo already and are super motivated to earn their next one.  
You can check out how I use behavior bingo {here} and check out the awesome behavior bingo board pack I purchased from Dots n Spots {here}. 

I also have found a morning work that I just adore. Denise's Weekly Word Work has already made a big difference with my kiddos.  It's a very well thought out resource and I love using it.  I write their assigned boxes on the Smartboard with our lunch count each morning. 

We have also been busy launching the Daily Five. I am hoping to start guided reading groups next week.  We did a trial run today and it went wonderful, so I am very hopeful for another great year with the Daily Five!

My new students are also loving our new classroom library set up and have been doing a great job at putting their books pack where they belong. 

I put a small label on the back of each book this summer and haven't found a book put in wrong bin yet. You can find the labels I used here. 

I'll be back later this week/weekend to share some of the things we have done this week as we focused on main idea and detail for the first time.  

Have a great rest of the week, friends!

Monday Made It: Dismissal Board Edition

Good Evening! I know I'm a little late to the party, but I still wanted to show off my Monday Made It. 

My project was made last summer but I forgot to blog about it.  Oops! Back to school is so exhausting sometimes. ;)

Being departmentalized means that somethings that worked in my self contained classroom needed to be tweaked in order to work.  One of those things was my transportation chart. I loved it but I knew it would be hard to manage since I would not be taking my homeroom class to the bus.  We switch classes in the middle of the day, so I take my afternoon class to the bus and once we switch we only have a few minutes to unpack and fill out our planners before some of my students leave for intervention.

So I used some dry erase poster board, fabric (purchased at Hobby Lobby), border and Modge Podge to create a new dismissal board that would a bit easier to manage with two classes. 

My teaching partner and I collected any changes in after school routine notes from our homeroom students each morning and then we passed them off to each other.  

I would review the notes and mark any changes on the posters. I also put my non bus rider student schedules on the board as well.  So for example, if Noah was a pick up MWF but a Latchkey student on T/R that would go on the board and stay up all year.  I attached the rosters for chorus and basketball directly to the board as well, so I knew which students participated in these weekly activities.  A little bit of extra organization made sure everyone was always where they needed to be when school ended.

You can download the home to school notes we pass out to our parents here.  All they have to do is fill in the blanks for absences, tardies, and for the days their child's end of the day transportation changes. 

Since the boards are dry erase, they erase easily.  

So if Michael was only being an after school pick up on 8/11, you can simply erase it the next day. 

Many of the subs who worked with my class last year remarked how easy it made dismissal for them. Plus if I have to leave right after school, our office staff can refer to it if there is any confusion at dismissal. Our dismissal board is certainly one of our most used classroom tools. 

If you would like to see more fabulous Monday Made It Projects, make sure you visit Tara's blog for this week's link up! :) You might even see a product of mine in one of her Monday Made It Projects! :) 

Have a great week, friends! 

Behavior Management Link Up

Every so often, I get an email or Facebook message via my blog's Facebook page on classroom management. Often these emails come from sweet teacher friends who are new to fourth grade and are wondering what works and what doesn't work with the upper elementary population.  

I don't claim to be an expert in classroom management but I AM willing to share what has worked in my third and fourth grade classrooms in the past.  Every group is different, so next year it could be possible none of these management strategies work. 

When I taught second and third grade, and even my first year in fourth, I used a clip chart.  

I actually like using a pocket chart with cut outs instead because I always found they were breaking the clips.  I always found the behavior chart to be super motivating with my students.  They loved clipping up, especially if they had a rough start to the day. I love that it really instilled the mind set that they really COULD change their behavior.  If they got to the top of the chart, they put a sticker on their star.  They loved it.  

What I didn't like was how some of my fourth graders got so moody about clipping down.  Fourth grade is when some of your students start experiencing some of those hormonal changes and it was drama city when I asked someone to clip down. It's also hard to have a clip chart when you are departmentalized.  However, I love theses ideas from Christina and Rachelle and would probably use one of them if my teaching partner and I decided to try clip charts again in the future. 

Last year, I shared how  I use the calendar below and coupons in a classroom economy type system. You can find that post here. 

I really love the coding on this calendar and it's a great way to communicate quickly with parents about their child's behavior.  However, kids are smart.  They purposefully loose them when they get a lot of signatures and are in danger of loosing their bigger reward, such as an extra recess.  I didn't have a backup system and that made things hard when you were figuring out who earned the reward and who didn't. 

This year I plan on binding this cute free calendar from my friend Sarah and at least try to write down which calendars I may have signed that day to have some kind of record myself. 

Shopping for coupons was a little difficult this year.  My partner and I shared coupons and sometimes we ran out of good ones. Sometimes we would forget to go shopping and we found shopping every week was hard.  Luckily, Laura's coupon pack has full page coupons that we could but in a binder. I think that might be easier for us. Additionally, we may choose to go shopping once a month instead and change the value on some of the coupons. :)  If kids carried over a balance of stars/stickers, we just wrote that on the top of their new calendar. Not super pretty, but it worked. 

Now even if you find something you really like that inspires your most students to strive for good behavior, there are always outliers of students where that just doesn't work for them.  So you need to come up with a plan for them, otherwise you'll be trying to put a square peg in a round hole all year and that's no fun. 

For example, one my students used this management system instead.  One of my students really loved to clean and really struggled with his behavior. So if he didn't get his calendar signed, he wanted to sweep the floor at the end of the day. Most of ED students have a behavior plan set in place by their intervention specialist and I don't mess with it, or force them to do my system, because what she does works for them. 


As far as whole group behavior management, I've tried a lot of different whole group incentives. However, I always come back to behavior bingo. 

I found Behavior Bingo back in the day on Mrs. Gold's website.  It works for me and has worked for most of my classes.  I love it because it doesn't require much extra work for me to have two, since I teach two sections of ELA. I just have two bingo boards. One for the AM and one for the PM. 

This year, I used this one from Ms. Sanchez. 
I love using Behavior Bingo to reinforce things that my classes struggle with whole group, such as walking quietly in the hallway or transitioning without starting conversations, etc. :) 

I keep two bingo boards in the front of my room. I have a pouch of unearned numbers for each class.  This is where I draw the numbers when they earn numbers.  Each class also has a pouch for their earned numbers, so the numbers aren't picked twice.  

Once one of my classes earns bingo, five in a row or four corners, they earn a reward.  We brainstorm a list of possible rewards and then vote.  The brainstorming allows me to weed out things that just won't work, such as KFC lunches for the whole class, field trips, etc. 

In the past, I've send home letters asking for donations for bigger rewards, like ice cream and root beer float parties.  Typically, if you aren't asking all the time for donations, parents will help out.   

Sometimes your class might earn two bingos quickly, and that's okay.  I just stress during our brainstorming to come up with manageable/free rewards that time, especially if I'm footing the bill. An extra ten minute recess or watching a Magic School Bus while they eat lunch are two suggestions of free to me rewards.

One of my coworkers had a super challenging class this past year and she only had twenty-five numbers on her board.  This made earning a bingo very manageable for her group.  You could do twenty-five squares to start out and then increase the number of squares on their bingo board if you feel 100 off the bat is overwhelming. 

Like I mentioned earlier, this is simply what works for me.  What works for me, might not work for you and your class.  However, the important thing to remember with behavior is that consistency is key. If you want a clip chart to work, make it a point to use it every day! If you don't use it or don't put an emphasis on whatever you are using, your kiddos won't be motivated by it.  I found this to be true on the weeks we would go without coupon shopping.  They weren't motivated to keep clean calendars because we weren't using the coupons to reward them. 

I'm linking up with Miss V's Busy Bees and Ms. D's Corner today.  If you are in need of some behavior management ideas, I highly suggest you check their linky out. I clicked around and found some good ones myself. 

Check out the linky by clicking {here}.