Organizing Leveled Readers

My school uses the Reading Street program.  For those of you that use it as well, you know there are a lot of materials to manage.  For example, the leveled readers.  There are six units with five stories each.  So that is thirty different leveled readers.  And there are six of each book and three groups.  In all that is 540 books (if my calculations are correct).  We all know that those cardboard units they came in don't always last and they are an awkward shape to try to store.  I wish I could take credit for the following idea but sadly I can't.  This organizational gem comes from the mind of my wonderful co-worker, Brooke.  She put the six leveled readers from every story in a quart size ziploc bag.  Then she printed labels that said "Unit" and "Story".  You stick the label on the bag and write the unit number and story number in the space provided.  When you finish all that, you put the bags in order into a basket.  I have three baskets- one for each reading level group.  The books I need for guided reading groups are always right there in the front.  At the end of the week I put the books back in their bag and put the bag at the back of the basket.  That way by the end of the year, Unit 1 Week 1 is back at the front again.  Isn't Brooke a genius?

Clip Chart and Teaching Rules

Sorry for being a bit MIA lately.  I am head of our student committee at school and we have been writing a new school wide discipline plan.  We read the wonderful book Setting Limits in the Classroom and we are applying those ideas to the Clip Chart.  I am so excited about our new plan and our hard work.  A few of my wonderful co-workers made a Clip Chart for every teacher in our school using a cute font from Lettering Delights. 

My school uses data notebooks for our students to record their homework, learning and behavior goals, and their progress.  Every day our students will color in a box on a calendar to tell their parents where they ended up on the behavior chart.  We wanted to include a color copy of the clip chart in our data notebooks so that parents knew what each color meant.  I got to thinking and that is a lot of color ink! So I thought what if the students colored their own Clip Charts to put in their data notebooks.  I typed up a quick form and I am including it below!
  I have also been thinking a lot of how we teach rules and procedures.  My school decided on three rules: be respectful, be resourceful, and be responsible.  During the first week of school, the students and teachers will work together to define these rules.  Here is what I am thinking of doing: I want to start by having students think about why we have rules- why we have rules in sports, at home, on the roads, at school, etc.  Then we will talk about the importance of following rules (to keep us safe, help us learn) and introduce our three rules.  I want to give students sticky notes and have them write down some rules they think will be important for our classroom.  Then they will stick their notes under the general rule.  Later in the week, I want each child to write and illustrate a page about one of our rules.  I might give them a template like "One of our rules is....  This rule means... I can practice this rule by..."  Then I will put all their pages together in a book.  This book can either go in our classroom library or in our time out area for students to look over while they are in isolation.  We will also do a lot of role playing and modeling with our rules and procedures. Wow this post is super long!! I hope my ideas were helpful!

clipchartcolorhseet

P.A.T

Miss Kindergarten is having a classroom management linky party! We all know how important it is to have positive relationships with our kids and manage our classrooms so this is great way to share ideas.  I might have blogged about this before so please forgive me if I have.  Last summer I read Setting Limits in the Classroom by Robert MacKenize and this year I led a book study using this text.  Tomorrow, we are actually sitting down to rewrite our school wide discipline plan! Anyways, one strategy I use from this book is called P.A.T. or preferred activity time.  At the start of the week I give my kids ten minutes.  Every time I see someone on task or we get a compliment, etc. we earn more minutes.  If the students are off task I simply start a timer.  I run the timer until they are following directions again.  That time gets taken away from us.  (I do a T-Chart with positive and negative time on the board).  I also set the timer sometimes-for example I give the students three minutes to put their supplies away.  If they finish before the timer goes off then they get the time added.  If they go over the time, then time gets taken off.  On Friday we calculate all our time and select an activity to do together.  This is the important part- it is for students AND the teacher! It is a great bonding time.  Some of my kids' favorites are I Have, Who Has? Games, Multiplication Bingo, Around the World, Heads Up Seven Up, Red Rover, and math games.  I really saw am improvement in my kids using this! I pulled less slips and kids worked together and encouraged each other.  With any other program- you must be consistent! If you are interested in using this strategy I encourage you to check out the Setting Limits book.  That book really opened my eyes to how I addressed behavior in my classroom.

Conduct Sheets and Clipboards

Why is it when I don't have school the next day and I should be sleeping good because I know I will not have to get up early that I wake up in the middle of the night? Oh well, I guess I will just have to be productive!  I had some requests for pictures of my clipboard so I made a sample of the conduct sheet I use to track student misbehavior.  This idea came from my fabulous 4th grade co-worker, Brooke, so I have to give her the credit.  I tweaked the code she used a little to make it more user friendly for me.  You can also record good behavior on this sheet!   At my school, we put our conduct sheets on a clipboard and it goes wherever the kids go. Like I said eariler, this is a great way to keep up with your kids and their behavior because it goes with them to specials and PE. It makes a great documentation piece for conferences too.  Brooke uses one of those clipboards that you can store papers in so she always has important info with her.  I create a document with parent contact information that I put on my clipboard as well.  That way if I or another teacher need to get in touch with a parent we can do it right away.  I find it easy to forget to call a parent when I have to go get their number from my classroom or the office.  I hope this is helpful for you!  If you have anymore questions about this-please let me know! 

Sample Conduct Sheet

Behavior Management in the Spring

Classroom management is a fundamental part of being a teacher.  You can't teach anything if you can't manage your kids!  My school is currently working on a school wide discipline program.  The procedures and consequences vary in our class not only from grade level to grade level; but also from class to class.  I have been leading a book study with the book Setting Limits in the Classroom by Robert Mackenzie.  This is a wonderful book that is easy to read and make sense.  It really changed the way I thought about discipline and helped me to change bad habits that left me feeling exhausted and powerless.  The teachers in the book study will be presenting this book and its simple, logical ideas for a consistent discipline plan next week. 
  One thing our school does do to help with behavior is use a behavior clipboard.  Each clipboard contains a list of student names, a column for every day of the week, and a key that lists certain misbehavior.  When a student misbehaves, the teacher records it on the clipboard.  This clipboard goes everywhere with the students-even to P.E. and specials.  It makes it a lot easier to see which students are constantly getting in trouble in certain places or for certain things. 
  One last thing- in order to prevent misbehavior (well, we can't prevent all of it but we sure can try) this spring you need to keep your kids motivated and engaged.  My first year I did a "Race Across the States" with my kids.  I divided the students into groups and assigned them a cut out of a race car.  Then I posted a map of the United States in the hall.  The goal was to get your team's car from Alabama to California first.  To do that, the teams needed to earn miles.  Miles were earned by completing different academic challenges related to the concepts we were covering.  This kept the kids working hard and excited to come to school.
Katie