Taming the Wild

Day 4 of linking up with Blog Hoppin' Teacher Week '13

Today's theme is Taming the Wild: Classroom Management

I have a few things I use for classroom management in my room. I have an individual class behavior management system as well as a whole class behavior management system.

Individual Management System: Clip Chart, Tickets & Coupons

Sounds complicated, but I swear it isn't. I used a clip chart last year, and when my kiddos got to outstanding, I had a coupon book where they could choose from fun prizes such as: sit at the teacher's desk for a day, show and tell, bring a stuffed animal to school, no shoes for the day, lunch with the teacher, switch seats with a friend, super supplies, etc.

However, I decided I needed to do something to celebrate my kiddos who are always "ready to learn" or move their clips up but never get all the way to outstanding.

Click to get your own copy of my sweets themed clip chart!

I found my solution when I bought the fabulous new coupons from Laura Martin who described a fabulous ticket system that goes along with her clip chart. Laura is super generous and kiddos who only got one ticket during the week, which would mean they stayed on green for one day, can get a prize from her prize bins.

My plan is a little different, as I feel in order to pick any prizes, my kiddos should have to have good behavior all week, so, my ticket #'s will be as follows...

GREEN (Ready to Learn): 1 Ticket

BLUE (Good Job!): 3 Ticket

PURPLE (Great Job!): 5 Tickets

PINK (Outstanding!): 10 Tickets

My kiddos will then have 6 drawers and the coupon book to choose from. At the end of the week, they will need tickets as follows:

Drawer 1: 3 Tickets: pencil toppers, small stickers, bookmarks

Drawer 2: 5 Tickets: erasers, stickers, sharpeners

Drawer 3: 8 Tickets: small notebooks, pencils

Drawer 4: 10 Tickets: fancy pencils (with shaped toppers), sticker sheets

Drawer 5: 12 Tickets: small toys from the $ store, stamps

Drawer 6: 14 Tickets: bouncy balls, play dough, bubbles, other small toys

Coupon Book: 16 Tickets

My drawer doesn't have ticket numbers on it yet, but here is a pic of the prize drawers...

Classroom Behavior Management: Whole Brain Teaching Scoreboard

There are lots of ways to use the WBT scoreboard including various levels. You can read about all of that on wholebrainteaching.com

I'm going to share how I use the scoreboard... (My kids didn't push me last year to use the "levels" but if you have some tough kids, and are interested in the scoreboard check out the scoreboard levels on the website.

The scoreboard is simple, a smile and a sad face t-chart. You can draw it on the board, have a simple laminated paper like this, whatever works best.

Here's how it works... if the kids do a good job at something, i.e. in a WBT room, at the beginning of the year, you'd give loads of smiles tallies for when students respond to class, yes quickly or do a great job at teach, okay or even as simple as stating the rules correctly with the same gesture. You give the kiddos a sad face tally when the kiddos don't do so well... maybe they weren't being active during teach, okay or they were not following directions quickly.

If they get a smile, when you give them the signal they get to have a 1 second celebration by pumping their fist and saying "oh yeah" if they get a sad face they get 1 second to do a "mighty groan" which is when you give them the signal they give a short "ugh" and drop their shoulders. You could of course change these, but that is what I use.

The trick is not to let the scores get more than +3 on either side, you want to keep it interesting, you don't want the kids to think they're absolutely going to win more smiles or that there is no hope to turn a bad scoreboard around.

Now the class reward is kind of up to you as far as: what happens when the smile faces win?

You can do something as easy as: 1 minute of free talk, around the world, etc. at the end of the day if smiles win.

You could have your kiddos earn something: smiles win for ___ amount of days we earn a celebration.

Being that I switched from basically "earning marbles" to this last year, we had to earn 10 smile face days to get a class celebration. After we earned that celebration, we increased the number of days to 15 and so on and so forth.

This year, I plan on starting with small end of day rewards because I will be having my kiddos learn WBT procedures and have plenty of opportunities for them to earn smiles. As the year goes on, I plan on doing what I did last year but have a class discussion about what exactly we are trying to earn and how many smile days we should take to earn it.

Alrighty, so there is how I "Tame the Wild!"

Tomorrow... Tips & Tricks... I'm thinking maybe some more WBT tomorrow!!!