Just making it through- behaviour management

I'm going back into the archive for this one...but it's a good one!

Every year in May and June it gets HOT in Ontario....soooooo hot.

The kids are hot, the teachers are hot...everything is hot.
(Most years…this year? Who knows!!)

What to do??
So how do I plan to make it through without losing my sanity!?

FREEDOM FRIDAYS!!!

As a general rule I am not sure how I feel about Freedom Fridays as a behaviour incentive for the duration of the school year, but for the last few weeks of the school year it works wonders to keep everyone (me) happy!

This is what the Freedom Friday board looks like in my room. 

I just used those markers that can write on the board and only come off with water. 

Fancy, right?

Then I have my students work in groups to brainstorm all the ways they could earn a letter towards getting Freedom Friday (a free period for games etc) and what they might do to lose a previously earned letter. 

There are always some great conversations going on in my room during this activity! 

I hear things like, "Mrs. Lyons is always reminding us to do ______ so it must be important!" 

(That one made me giggle a little.) 

We also have a quick review on how to brainstorm- take down every idea that is given and talk about it after you have run out of ideas.

I am always impressed by how focused my students are on the task...nothing like the allure of a little free time to get students motivated! 

Try it and let me know how it goes in your room. 

A Peek into My Class...The First Weeks Back From My Maternity Leave

No, I didn't forget about you guys and my little ol' blog over here. I just didn't quite anticipate how much more juggling there would be with 2 kids and going back to work. Add in an entire new focus on working out and getting fit (I'm talking 7 days a week) and there just isn't enough time in the day!

I have some pictures of my class to share and I promise to try and be back more regularly to share....

Fingers crossed.

The start of our lesson on "Just-Right" books...notice that the t-shirts are all different sizes. 

Finished posters to be posted soon!

Our carpet and Morning Math Meeting area. 

Class library

Bulletin boards

 (I love that I painted them black!)

More carpet area

View of the room from the back corner. 

Our first Math Huddle....success!

We focused on math talk and didn't worry too much about the actual math being done (good thing...) and it went super well.

We've done a second one since that I want to post about soon. 

Close up of the Math Huddle board. 

Anchor created during the Math Huddle...notice where it says "kids loving math"?

Totally their input.

Love it.

Turn a card behaviour system used school-wide. 

Small group meeting area...under construction as well are still getting our routines in place.

View of the whole room. 

And that's where the magic happens folks!

I have promised myself that I will set time aside for blogging...and I will do it.

If I don't- can you all drop me a line and yell at me?

Thanks!

A Name Art Project- A Wonderful Way to Start Your Visual Art Class

In anticipation of the coming school year I am hoping that I get to teach my own visual art. It is an area of the curriculum that I love and really enjoy teaching. 

In the Ontario curriculum for art we concentrate on the elements of design: line, colour, value, texture, shape and form, and space. I found a great resource for explaining the elements on this site. You should definitely check it out if you are teaching art this year.

This is a great project that could be used as a display for an Open House night and even double as the cover of our art portfolios.

Deep Space Sparkle had just the art activity I was looking for, Name Designs: Line Art...go take a look at this fantastic project to do with your class.

What an amazing site...so many ideas, techniques, supply lists. 

Everything you could ever need to teach art!

The last time I taught this lesson I started with a discussion on lines and patterns. 

My class and I looked at some art by Keith Haring, Van Gogh and others (multiple mediums) and discussed the moods, emotions and types of lines we saw. 

It was very interesting to talk to the kids about their impressions of the famous art works. 

Then we did a lesson on how to draw block letters and we practiced various size letters, shapes of letters and talked about the contours of the lines. Once we had spent a good deal of time on the block letters we moved on to different types of patterns we could create using lines... thick lines, wavy lines, round lines, thin lines...you name it. 

The students created a tic-tac-toe board on their practice paper and drew 9 or so different types of patterns. 

When we had finished that we did a gallery walk to get new ideas from what our classmates had tried. 

(This was my first art class gallery walk and I LOVED it!)

Now we were finally ready to start the project! I must say that the kids were focused, quiet and hard at work make their name projects.  

As a side note: my teaching partner thought this project would be way too hard for grade 4 but I disagreed and felt that if we teach high they will learn high...and I was right! 

 Here are some pictures of my students working away on a rainy Friday afternoon. Some are close to done, some are done and moved on to other line drawings but many are still in the process. 

I can't wait to see what they all look like when they are done and on display!

This student's name only has three different letters and they are all very angular, no curves. 

He has added a TONNE of patterns and I can't wait to see the finished product.

This is one of the finished ones! 

This student chose to use pencil crayons instead of markers for his letters. 

It's going to take more work to colour everything in so that it pops! but he is pretty determined.

This student used a ruler A LOT. 

It will be an interesting contrast to this students who worked free hand.

Click here to see the finished projects on display. 

(Grade 4 students)

Click here to see some more examples taken from a different year. 

(Grade 3 students)

This post was originally published in 2011. 

First week done! Pictures and more pictures.

We returned to school year in Ontario on Tuesday and had a nice 4 day week to ease us back into the routines to school. This year is a little very odd for me because I am only returning for the first 2 weeks of the year!

I decided to focus on curriculum rather than routines because I have no idea how the teacher coming in will want the class to be set up...at least curriculum is constant and by completing some expectations they will be able to focus on the typical beginning of the year community building. 

Here is the makeshift calendar that I created (only using chalk...blah). The first math expectations I have been covering with the class are place value to 1000 and skip counting...nothing too complicated.

I have been reading picture books that focus on the theme of inclusivity. First we read Odd Velvet by Mary Whitcomb and worked through the structure I followed last year after reading The Power of Retelling.  I love following this structure because it keeps all of the comprehension strategies fresh in the student's minds. 

The first writing unit in Grade 3 is procedural writing so we did 2 different shared writing procedures to provide some examples for the students. These are the only real "classroom routines" I have tried to implement for the new teacher coming in. I hope they are okay with it. 

I was pleasantly surprised when I asked the class to make a mind map of everything they could think about math...and they came up with so many good ideas!

Here is a chart I made to illustrate the math goals we have been covering during our calendar time and during different class discussions. 

On Friday, we made this class bar graph about our birthdays. The other curriculum expectations that are covered in the beginning of the year is graphing and sorting so I thought that by making a bulletin board bar graph the students would have a HUGE anchor chart for how a bar graph should look...and it created a small sense of community when we could see when all our birthdays fell during the year. 

My biggest goal of these two weeks was to create a portfolio of diagnostic work to help the new teacher have a sense of where the students are academically and not feel as though they are coming in super late...it's what I would want someone to do for me. So in addition to the diagnostic tasks we have been working on creating a portfolio cover. I blogged about this art assignment a few years ago when I taught my own art (oh how I miss that!)

Lastly, we brainstormed all the things a good classmate is/ does/ says and is not...a great idea I found on Pinterest(!!) but is originally from Using My Teacher Voice. Hopefully, the new teacher coming can use this to create the classroom rules they want to have posted in their room. 

Well, there's my first week in a nutshell...and tomorrow I start my last week! What a weird feeling. 

Classroom Pictures...Revealed!

These are pictures from last year's class. Why last year? 

Well, here in Canada we don't go back to school until September and usually can't get into our rooms until the last week of August.

Plus...this year I will only be teaching for a grand total of...wait for it...9 days! What?

That's right, I will be going on mat leave with my second child nine days after the start of the year. So setting up a room and starting the school year is going to look very different for me this year.

Here is what my room looked like when I walked in after the summer last year.

Everything on one side.

And nothing on the other...

Yes, all my stuff is piled up behind all the furniture in my classroom. 

Here is a round about tour of my room, starting at the back of the room. 

 In an effort to make my room more "numeracy rich" (as I learned about while reading Guided Math that summer), I downloaded the Math Alphabet Posters from Bridget over at Little Lovely Leaders...and they are super cute!!

These are the bins I will use to organize my student's notebooks and work. So far I have them labelled for Math Journals, Reading Journals, Science and Social Studies. I also want to create a label for a Homework bin. 

My bins started here on the back table but didn't stay there for very long. A few weeks into school I had to move them to a shelf at the front of the room as I gained 6 extra students from a split class for all my Science and Social Studies class and they needed a place to sit. 

This is my Math focus board. You can start to see the first hints of my Suess theme which I decided upon in the summer. I LOVE it. 

This did not stay my Math focus board. I ended up using my Math Huddle board a lot and then hung my anchor charts over the shelves in my room in an effort to gain extra wall space. 

You can head over the post about using Command Hooks for my anchor charts here. 

This is the set of Math Problem Solving Posters I created last year that I love. I think it's good to have a resource for students to refer to during their Math lessons.

******

This is the view my easel on the edge of the carpet area. You can also see my teacher desk in the background. Last year, I faced my desk away from the class and loved the extra space it gave me in the room. As I hardly ever sit at it I figured I didn't really need all the space it always took up.

Once again I loved the extra space pushing the teacher desk against the wall gave me. The only thing I would change next year is to put it closer to my u-table so that I could still access the drawers and filing cabinet easily. 

You can also see the number line I put up over the windows. Another attempt at a numeracy rich classroom.

This is my classroom calendar board. The 2 hooks under the calendar are where I will put the daily helpers. After trying classroom jobs for many years, I moved to just having two daily helpers last year. It was so much easier to keep track of then changing a million jobs every week or so. 

I love having only 2 helpers, but I ended up moving these 2 hooks very soon as the calendar was actually behind my chair and a big pain to switch everyday. I moved them over beside our daily schedule. 

Here is my classroom library. I changed the book bin labels...again!! Why do I do that every year? 

When I return to the classroom full-time...in September 2014 (!) I am planning to purchase a set of Ladybug's Teacher Files Genre Library Labels. I just love how she organizes it and can't believe I've never thought of it before. 

I also want to buy ALL new bins from Really Good Stuff. 

I was a little worried that I wouldn't have enough books for a Grade 3 class. After 6 years in Grade 7 and 8, I really had to cut my classroom library in half, less than half a few years ago when I moved to Grade 4. But it turns out that I think it's okay...okay, not great, but okay.

Still need more age appropriate books. 

This is my Power of Retelling board that I posted about earlier. I am very excited to get it going with my students. 

Loved this! Loved my Book of the Week. Can't wait to do it again.

This is my agenda board. I've put it close to the carpet area this year so my students can sit on the carpet to complete their agendas each day. Plus, more Suess fabulousness!

I liked this but it took up too much room...I made it too big. Something to remember for next year. 

I hung 3M clips on a wall last year for chart paper and LOVED it! It was so great to be able to stand and write during shared writing and brainstorming sessions without having to be cramped over in a  chair by an easel. This year I have the easel on one side of my carpet area and the chart paper hung on the wall on the other. 

This was the inspiration for my Must Have Monday post about Command hooks. Click here to check it out. 

Brillant? I think so!!

So here is the main area I plan to be in when I work with my students. As I pushed my desk against the wall, my u-shaped table will be my command centre. From here I will be able to do guided reading, math workshop and conferences.

In real life it didn't look that messy to me, but here in the picture it does...looks like I have more work to do. 

This is my Math Huddle board. A teaching partner of mine organizes his math lessons this way and it made a lot of sense to me, especially after reading Guided Math. I will definitely be posting more about it soon!

This is the best thing I implemented into my Mat teaching last year. Click on the Math Huddle category to the right to check out more posts. Now if I could just get the process of Guided Math the way I like it. 

Class supplies. I decided to organize my markers by colour after seeing a similar idea on....where else, Pinterest!

I might create the Sterilite drawer organizer I've been seeing everywhere for next year and save table space. 

This is our daily schedule board. I created labels and put magnets on the back so I can easily change them. I also created some blank ones that once they are laminated I can write on them for days when we have an activity that doesn't fit into our normal routine, like a field trip. 

The view of the whole room from the back door. 

Whew!! I hope you enjoyed the tour of my room from last year....there will be NO pictures of this year's room as it will just be too sad!

I'm heading over to link up with A Class*y Collaboration's A Class*y Cruise.

 Hope to see you there!