Teacher Week: Creative Ideas!

Day #3 (which yes, was yesterday) at Babbling Abby's Teacher Week is Creative Ideas. Here a few of mine!

Below you can see a picture of my behavior chart. I spent the first year of teaching trying to follow the exact same behavior plan that my colleague had. I learned the important lesson that you need to do the behavior plan that works for YOU (no matter how cool the other one sounds). Each child starts the week with 5 tickets which are represented by the red squares on the chart. If they disobey the classroom rules, then they loose a ticket. At the end of the week, I pass out the tickets that they have earned and they can buy prizes with them. Pretty simple- which is just how I like it.



My class can earn marbles and when they fill up the marble jar they get to vote on a special day. Although they think that they pick the special day, I have always been able to talk them into voting for the day that I want- which usually has already been planned. Below is one of my favorite special days.

POP day- We learn about onomatopoeias and palindromes. We practice math using popcorn word problems and charts. We learn how PopRocks work in computer lab. We watch movies that show us how popcorn is made. We read popcorn books and popcorn poems. We say a "popcorn" prayer at lunch. And finally...we eat popcorn, popsicles, and poptarts and watch the movie Mary POPpins. :)

Christmas Ideas- I love the month of December and all the Christmas projects and fun it brings. The picture below is of a bulletin board that I have always put up. It starts off as an outline of the manger Christmas scene and ends up being filled with small construction paper squares. The kids love working on the mosiac when they are done with their work.


The other thing that I always do at Christmas time is wrap up one Christmas themed book for each child. I pull a name a day (or two) and that person gets to unwrap the book of the day and decide if they would like to read it to us or if they would like me to read it to the class. They always are anxiously waiting their turn to be called.