best pencil sharpener!

For those of you who are still searching for the PERFECT pencil sharpener (which I know can seem an impossible task for teachers) ... search no more!

I have gone through many different kinds and am now using this one (Bostitch) and loving it! It is amazingly speedy, pretty quiet, and relatively cheap (we bought it on Amazon!). It was like Christmas for me when I got this one :)

I know this can be a tough find, so just wanted to share this little gem!

bathroom routine that works

The procedure that I have used this year for letting students use the restroom (and visit other areas of the school, such a library) has gone very smoothly and I wanted to recommend it to others! It is nothing extraordinarily unique, and many of you may be already doing something similar, but wanted to share just in case:

I have laminated library pockets by the door to my classroom that are labeled with all the different hall passes - girls bathroom, boys bathroom, nurse, library, etc... (I am sure this varies classroom to classroom). Then in each library pocket, I have the relevant pass (or multiple of the same pass, in some cases). The students take that pass out of the pocket and keep it on their desk while they are gone.

This is really helpful in many ways:
* If I am looking for that student, the pass on their desk lets me know where they are.
* If that pass is missing, other students know they are unable to go to that location until the pass has returned.
* My students know they are able to go anytime the pass is available - as long as I am not in the middle of direct instruction. Anytime they are working independently, they know they can go without asking. This is a beautiful thing to not have to listen to "Miss Vaughan, can I go to the bathroom?!" one hundred times a day :)

** NOTE: I only have one student who abused this level of independence, and we did a separate system for him. Everyone else handled it very well!

spicing up ISAT testing week

Prior to the start of our state testing, my team and I brainstorming some ways to spice up the week for the kids, and we came up with the idea of doing some low-key spirit days - no crazy hair or anything that would be distracting, just some color themes:

Day 1  - REDy to get this show on the road
Day 2 - The (blue) sky's the limit!
Day 3 - Wear PINK, it helps you think!
Day 4 - ORANGE you glad today's our last day!
 
Third grade only had four days of testing, but for the grade levels that had more days than us, we brainstormed two other possibilities:
* Lean GREEN testing machine!
* Reach for the (yellow) stars!


Also, we let the kids bring pillows to sit on or lean against at their desks during their tests, and we also let them use those pillows (and stuffed animals) to lay around and rest for a few minutes after finishing each test.

I got a ton of positive feedback from parents about this -- they said all of this excitement really helped motivate the kids for the week, which was awesome! I definitely recommend you try it!

pictures from the week

reading extended response - ISAT

This is my first year teaching third grade, and so this was my first time prepping kids for standardized tests - the ISATs in particular.

I was pretty clueless on how to prepare kids to write an extended response for reading (well math too, but that's a separate story, see below for a few details on that). Thankfully, I have a wonderful teammate who shared every tip she had in her toolbox, and I also spent a lot of time Googling more advice and also just brainstorming my own ideas.

In the end, I was incredibly proud of how well my students wrote extended responses to reading passages, and so I figured I will share what ended up working so well for us.

The format we use is as follows (and there is a student example at the bottom of the post)
* Intro: Put the question in your answer
* Reason one - state your first reason
   - Text support (In the text ...)
   - Your ideas (I think ...)
(Repeat for reason two and three)
* Conclusion - quick wrap-it-up sentence

That format is relatively standard, nothing fancy about it ... and at the beginning, this was less than successful. I would check paper after paper that all had some part or another missing. It didn't matter how many times I explained it, or how many examples we did as a class, they still left parts out.

So -- what really saved my kids was using COLORS! We underlined the intro and conclusion in black, all the reasons in blue, the text support in green, and the personal ideas in red. They weren't allowed to use the colors on the actual test day, but by that time, it was all so routine for them, that they did great even without the colors!

math extended response - ISATS

Rockford Public Schools (in Illinois) provides a link to this super awesome PDF with monthly extended response practice. A great find on Google one day! It is too late for me to use this year now that ISATs are over (not that I am complaining about that one bit!), but I think this will definitely come in handy next year! Which reminds me of another piece of advice I should give -- don't wait until the last minute to teach your kids how to do this. I procrastinated it because I was dreading it so much, and justified my procrastination with the excuse that they would remember it better if I taught it last minute (which still might be true), but then we all just wanted to rip our hair out - students and teachers alike I think! :)

Math Extended Response

That link is just for third grade, but if you Google "Rockford Public Schools extended response" - you will see results for multiple grade levels!

behavior part 2 - pink slips

This is a really quick follow-up from my previous post on my behavior system ...

When my students break a rule, they have to take a "Pink Slip" (see attachment below) - on the front, they write their name, date, and which rule they broke. On the back, they can explain their poor choice in more detail (or I can add information as needed).

The kids then return the Pink Slip to school the next day with a parent signature. This ensures that the parents know the details of the misbehavior, and not just that their child ended on "yellow" or whatever color (which is what the behavior chart shows, and is sufficient for the well-behaved students). Also, I am able to file these Pink Slips (I have a file folder that I keep for each student, with various paperwork inside). This is excellent documentation for me to keep and refer back to as needed.

Pink Slips

behavior chart

My intention for this blog is to post ideas as I come up with them and use them in my classroom, but since I am just getting started here, I imagine that for a while, I will also be posting things randomly that I have already been using for some time.

First thing's first -- my behavior system!

Pictured above is my "Shining Star" behavior board. Each child in my room has a star with their class number (which reminds me, I need to write a post to try and convince all teachers to use numbers in their classroom, they come in handy for a million different things). Anyhow, each child starts on green each day, and moves up or down their star based on their choices. The numbers on the sides correlate to our "Classroom Cash" system, which doesn't necessarily have to go along with the colors, but does work beautifully for us!

Each day, the students color their behavior chart before they go home (attachment below and at the end of the week, they tally up how much money they should receive. I have loved using this system this year, and I feel like it is has been incredibly effective for my students.

Student Behavior Chart PDF

DETAILS ON MAKING THE BOARD: The colors are strips of wide ribbon, stapled into the board. Then stapled on top of each ribbon is a velcro strip. Each student's star has a little velcro dot on the back. I teach the kids "finger first" for when they have to remove their star -- they use a finger from the opposite hand to hold down the velcro strip so that it doesn't start to pull loose from kids pulling on their stars every day.