New Classroom Management System!

Wow, I probably shouldn't be taking the time to blog right now...considering I am covered up with school starting, graduate classes starting, a baby, and football season starting for the hubby! But...we all must do what we enjoy sometimes...or we will go crazy. :)

I must start by saying once again how excited I am about the up-coming school year! See, our team had a lot of "turn-over" this year...we have 4 people staying and 4 new people--plus we are down one teacher from last year (we went from nine to eight 3rd grade teachers.) Anyway--I'm not at all complaining; it is going to be great! However, with a lot of new people, come a lot of changes. One of our "new" team members (new to the team--not to the school) had a wonderful classroom management system in his class! I had seen it before on Pinterest and loved it, but wow...once he explained it to our team--I was excited and hoping the rest of the team would want to jump on board! I sat quietly though...searching their faces and looking for signs of excitment as well. I was thrilled to notice that they all loved the idea!! Buuuut, considering it was Friday at 3:30 PM (the Friday before school starts), they were not too keen on creating this new system over the weekend to have ready on Monday morning. I however had a simple way to do this--and so, the words flew out of my mouth: "I will make all of us one." So...I did!

 

I had a hard time fitting them all in the picture as you can see--but there they are! I know you are probably thinking--why in the world would you do all that, when above you were complaining about being so busy. Let me explain: Teachers are busy people--and by nature, hard workers. I did not want the teachers stressing the weekend before school starts; I wanted them to be able to enjoy their time off and come in refreshed on Monday. Plus--I seriously love my team, they have worked so hard all week--they needed a break. :)

 

Making so many was actually simple. I did not cut any of the colored paper, I just layered it behind the others and glued it. (20 minutes) Then I typed the "labels" and printed them. (10 minutes) Then I cut them, glued them on, and laminated them. (30 minutes.) Now I did spread this out between my son's meals, naps, etc...but all in all, it took about an hour! Assembly lines work great for mass production! :)

 

Now let me explain the system:

 

We use clothes pins with the students names on them to move up and down the banner.

 

Ready to Learn: Everyone starts on this each day!

 

Obviously if you move down the poster, you have made some bad choices and need to change your behavior. We have Fun Friday each week (extra recess time). If the students get one yellow--they lose this priveledge. However, it is only if they are there at the end of the day. They may get on yellow and move back up.

 

I love this system though because a student can move back up with a positive change in behavior AND they can get above green! If they move to purple; they basically get a pat on the back; kudos to them! BUT--if they move to pink (in my class) they are going to receive a package of pink glowsticks (or bracelets). May seem silly and you may think boys won't want that, but last year the boys loved the pink (really red-ish) glowsticks! So I think this will work great!

 

Now for the awesome part: If they get to white; they get to decorate one side of their clip with paint, glitter, markers, etc. If they get white TWICE, they decorate the other side and get to keep their decorated clip on white for the class to see the rest of the year (and they get to start a new one.) I think the kids will love this!! The wonderful addition to our team that brought this idea came up with all of this--I love it! I am really excited to implement this Monday! I think giving the students chances to redeem themselves and also move above green is amazing! I hope you can use this idea in your room! Have a wonderful first day fellow teachers! :)

 

Hillary