Classroom Management What works for me

I have wanted to share something with you all for a little while now. I know we all have to have a plan for how to manage our classrooms, how to make sure we setting the bar for good behavior and what do we do when behavior is not positive.  I have changed and tinkered with my plan many times.  How am I suppose to manage behavior, but also make it FUN and EASY for me and my students.  I want to celebrate my students successes, not always come down on their mistakes or misbehaviors.  About a year and a half ago I stumbled upon  www.ClassDojo.com  It is a free site that I use to give or take points from my students for the behaviors they show at school.  The first thing that drew me in was the cute, fun avatars that you can give to each child, or if you choose you can upload their own picture.  Let's face it the fact that it is FREE is also a very important thing for teachers.  Can anyone say BUDGET ; )  

Basically you load your students names into the list and each child is given a little monster type of avatar.  Unless you choose to use their own pic you have taken.  Every teacher can customize their page by deciding to start at zero and work your way up to a goal or by starting at a number and taking away.  I start at zero and when you reach twenty points you go back to zero.  Once you get to twenty you get to choose from the treasure chest. You can reward individual children or groups of children.  You also get to choose what you are rewarding for and what you are taking points away for.  My rewards for good behavior are for the following- Creativity, Great Insight, Compliment, Hard Work, Helping Others, and Making good choices.  My points are taken for the following behavior- Disrespect, Tattling, Hurting Others, No self discipline and interrupting.  Many of the 'negative' behaviors I do not use such as interrupting or tattling.  Those only used when it 

becomes an issue.   

At the end of each day you can open up a circle graph that will show you the positive and negative for the day for the whole class.  You can also open for each individual child however I never do this with the whole class.  In the graph you will see a percentage of what the positive/negative behavior was.  Sometimes we check this and sometimes we skip this at the end of the day.  It all depends on the behavior and the time we have left.  My students love to see how we did as a class.  They try and reach for 100% positive many days.  You can also email a child's report to their parents so their parents can see what the issue is and when it is happening.  Overall I just love this site, my students love this site and my new teammates at my new school were so excited when I show it to them.  If you are looking for something new to help spice up your classroom management I highly recommend you check out ClassDojo.com!  

I mentioned yesterday that I had a Mini Unit on Spiders as well as Bats,  I thought I would post incase anyone would like to check it out.  Hope you all enjoy!  October is one of my most favoirte months.

Mini Spider Unit

Batty Fun!

Here is my latest product on TpT, I also have a great Mini Unit on Spiders. Come check them out! Let me know what you think.

Batty Mini Unit Fun

Fall Activities/ BLOG HOP!! Check it out!

So, this week we finished up our apple unit.  We did some fun art with our apples as well.  We made apple stamped apples, (that's a mouth full lol) and paper plate apples.  We will be working on fall activities for the next 2 weeks and I am super excited.  Here is a little example of our apples art.

In the next two weeks when we do some more on Fall we are going to make these cute trees I found last school year on Pinterest.  I made them with my class last year and they turned out so cute and festive.  I wish I had taken a picture then but here is an example from Pinterest.

<div align="center"><a href="http://teachingmy3.blogspot.com/2012/09/fall-blog-hop.html" title="Teaching My 3"><img src="http://i1146.photobucket.com/albums/o527/hlpharris/fall-blog-hop_zpsc925475e.png" alt="Teaching My 3" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Appleseed Freebie!

Here is a little something I used with my apple unit this past week.  The kids loved it.  I used this as a quick morning activity, they drew/wrote 3 facts about Mr. Appleseed on the back when they were done  coloring.  I hope some of you can use this cute freebie.  You can get it on my TpT store.

Johnny Appleseed

Some Issues & New Look

Hi all,

I am having some issues with my blogger.  I am trying to work on it and fix the problem.  I had some great things to share and am very disappointed about not being able to post documents on here.  I will work on it and try and get it all working soon.  Thanks for being so understanding.

On another note, I hope you like the new look.  It was also a pain to put up but I got it done!  Also wanted to tell you that,  I am posting some new items for sale at my TpT store, so if you are interested check them out.  Thanks!  Erin

Back to school night (a little late)

I can not believe I never posted my back to school night gift for my students.  I know we have already started but, I want to make sure I do this just incase some of you are interested.  Plus I love to share and the kids loved getting this mini gift.

I saw this on pinterest (of course) and loved the idea.

I happend to have all the materials.  I have 30 glow sticks from my own kids birthday parties, and bright paper.  I also had green ones.  The kids loved them.  They read "Let's have a Bright year!".

What did you do with your kiddos?

New product! Mini color books

Check out my new set of mini color books I plan to use in my classroom in the next few weeks.  We will be focusing on a different color a week.  I decided to make my own and they are being sold on my TpT store!  Check them out!!  Tell me what you think.

Source: teacherspayteachers.com via Erin on Pinterest

My TpT Store    http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Erin-Attaway

Chicka Chicka and learning our Initials

So this was our first official full week of school.  We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and Chrysanthemum.  Two of my favorites!  We made the coconut trees by tearing brown paper and green paper and glueing them onto the yellow paper.  I then cut out the letters in each of their names so they could put the stickers on their trees.  Aren't they cute!!

After the Chicka Chicka project we talked a lot about our names, and how important names are.  We had our parents send a quick note as to why they named their children their specific name.  We talked about the letters in our names, and that our first letters are our first initials.  We did this great project I saw on pinterest.  I originally saw it done with masking tape and crayons, but I chose to do it with tempra paint instead.

I think they look so fun once you pull back the masking tape.  I chose the 3 primary colors because we will be talking about them soon and because I figured if they mix in any way they will create new colors.  I really love these and plan to hang them on my brag board in my room.  

So what do ya think??  Love to hear your opinions.