Students in charge of data

Hi everyone!

I know its been a while since I have posted... been busy at school.
We are on our fall break now. Yahoo!

Anyways now there is some free time for me to update my blog and put some new things in my store.

Here is what I have been working on :)

Data Trackers! It covers tracking data for reading, writing, math and student behavior. The forms are all made in kid friendly terms and language. It is intended for students and teachers to use. Teachers can work with students to update and track their progress and students can look at the pages and see how they are doing. 

Here are some examples. 

 Reading and High Frequency words

 Math page (there is one for each quarter) 

 Writing tracker

 The kids love using these sheets. First off the students get to color :)

Then it helps the students see what they are good at and notice what things they are struggling with or need more help with.

I have seen my students setting their own goals and some even shared those goals with their parents at conferences! :) Talk about a win!

As you can see this is an awesome resource. 

For now I am out. More posts to be coming soon. In the mean time. Check me out on Facebook and my teachers pay teachers store! :) 

Leave some love here! 

Let me know if there is something you would like me to make or something you want to see me blog about

Better Late than Never

Hi friends :)

It has been a while since I posted but I guess it is better late than never.

We have been back in school for almost 3 weeks... talk about a hectic time of the year.

Here is my room before anything was started - its a panorama of the whole room.. The room is actually much bigger than this.

Below is a view from the back of my room. I am loving my new rug and the fun puff balls hanging from the ceiling. :)

View of my teacher table which looks a mess but I promise I always leave with an empty table. I don't like to walk into clutter. 

View from my teacher table looking toward the door. 

View from the side corner by my window. 

View from my safe place and Library. A safe place is used for students to calm down when in melt down mode. 

View from the front of the room. The boards on the back wall are for reading, writing and math. 

View of my door. I am loving all of my circles and chevron with bright colors.

Love having hand signals in my classroom. It makes things so much easier and a lot less interruptions during lessons when all they have to do is hold up certain fingers. :) 

Also our school rules as well as our schools words of wisdom (When the students are able to say all the words of wisdom they get a free T-shirt. They love it :) )

This is where my timeline will be for the year. As you can see, it has not started yet... 

This is a view of my class library as well as my safe place (you can read about that and conscious discipline here)  The tree is going to house pictures of all my students and their families. The students love being able to see themselves and each other. 

Class jobs. Again loving the chevron and bright colors. I use numbers for all of my students in the classroom and the clothes pins make it easy to change jobs. 

Here is my teacher tool box. I just made this for this year. I was one of the teachers who had a teacher desk and never sat at it. It was just a junk collector. I decided to take a leap of faith and ditch the teacher desk and use this instead. I am loving it. No more paper clutters taking over a giant clunky desk. Since you have read about and took the tour of my classroom you can get a FREEBIE. 

Click here to get my teacher toolbox labels for FREE!!! 

Loving Summer

Hi everyone! I have decided to join up with a linky party to get more followers. I have joined Aimee over at Primarily Speaking (click to go to her blog!) with her Teachers Love summer Linky! 

So here it goes my first linky...

My summer is short. I teach at a year round school where we get out of school the first week of June and then we go back to school the middle of august. It gives me 5 weeks of summer. As much as the short summer is annoying I like the schedule because I get two weeks off in October, an extra week around Christmas and then I get a second week at spring break :). 

Reasons I love summer! 

Reason #1 Sleep 

During the year my alarm clock goes off at 4:45AM. It is so hard getting out of bed and as the year goes on it gets harder and harder. I love being able to not set alarm and just sleep until my body is ready to get up. Most of the time its by 8:00am but I still feel much more relaxed and refreshed.

Reason #2 Work out 

I love working out and during the school year my work out time has to be in the evening which takes into dinner time with my hubby. During summer I can go workout in the morning be productive during the day and then have dinner with my hubby sometimes I even have it ready for him before he gets home :)
For my Workout I go the YMCA and take their exercise classes such as insanity, cardio strength and athletic conditioning. Sometimes they kick my butt and then I am sore forever...

Reason #3 Time at the pool 

One big thing about summer is the pool. Having a short summer I spend as much time at the pool as I can :)

Comment below tell me why you love summer and I am sure Aimee would love for you to link up on her linky :)

Kim

Summer Clean up

Hi there blogger friends!

We have been on summer now for 3 weeks! LOVING it!!!

Anyways one thing I am working on over the summer is cleaning out and reorganizing all my school files. Here is what I have been working on.

Before: What a mess...

After: So much better :) 

As you can see I have been busy. Reorganizing will allow me to make things easier and quicker :) 

I have been working closely with Jens Kinder Kids on creating some great stuff for the new school year. Stay tuned for some great things coming soon :) 

Thanks for reading :) 

Kim

Summer Breezing

Hi everyone,

So we have been out of school for a week now. Two workdays were thrown in there but they were productive with a room change.

Since summer started I have enjoyed some relaxing days catching up on reruns of Gilmore girls. Also hanging out at the pool with some friends and enjoying some gym time.

Also working on getting my donors choose funded so my kiddos can have a  new rug when we go back in July.

I have also been working on getting things together for next year. Preparing some different things that will be used throughout the year. I have been working on making labels for my library. Making labels for my teacher tool box, and making some teacher checklists that will be used throughout the year.

I have also been making some resources that go along with Conscious Discipline. See older posts for more information on Conscious Discipline.

Comment below with your email address and a link to your blog if you have one I would love to link up. If you comment with your email address I will send you a shout out form. Which is a piece of paper that I plan on having my kids fill out to notice the good things that other students are doing.

Kim :)

Conscious Discipline

Happy Thursday,

I am currently on spring break, watching some day time TV and making sure lesson plans are up to date. :) I just wanted to post a blog about Conscious Discipline.

Our school started this conscious discipline journey back in January. We were using a school wide system of the cards from August to January. The students had 6 cards and when they did something wrong or broke a rule they had to pull a card. Their consequences were, 1 warning, 2 time out, 3 silent lunch, 4 laps at recess, 5 parent contact and 6 office referral. This system was very confrontational. My students did not respond well to this system because once they pulled one they couldn't go back and being in 1st grade my students did not know how to move on and not let that one card pull affect the rest of their day.
The first half of the year was very rough, students were fighting, yelling screaming not nice to me or to their peers. I had to do something, since the system was school wide I couldn't get rid of it but I did modify it. I noticed myself talking with kids and giving them more chances and warnings before card pulls would happen. The behavior decreased a little bit but I still found myself in competition with other teachers as to who could have the most write ups in a day.

Having that management system was very stressful and I felt like the students were not being kids they were becoming robots. In December our principal made the announcement that we were switching school wide management systems. We did not get any answers or have any consequences in place for our students. Going right into winter break we did not know what to expect when we got back in January. We were only given the Conscious Discipline book by Becky Bailey and told that our card system was done and we could throw it out. We were also told we could not use clip charts or any physical management system.

To be honest it worried me. I am a third year teacher and this was the first year that we had a strict school wide management system. My first two years we used PBIS the firs year we tried the above the line and below the line but the parents and the students did not seem to care or understand what it meant. My second year was still PBIS but we were given the option to use whatever system we wanted in our own room. I was using class dojo and morning meetings. I loved it and kids responded well to that program.

Then when this school year started with a  new principal and a new management system, I was not sure what to expect.

Needless to say, beginning conscious discipline I have gained my love for teaching back, the kids are being kids and I have had way less stress.

The whole conscious discipline system is set up to help kids learn how to self-regulate themselves and to make the right choices because they know its the right thing to do. It becomes internal motivation for the students. It allows me to teach the kids how to act and what the right thing is. I have been able to talk with the students when issues occur and talk through them as to why they did that behavior and get to the root of the problem. It also allows for peer talking and communication with each other, the students are using their voice to tell each other when something bothers them and giving each other choices and options as to how to make better choices.

This system also helps students learn how to deal with and cope through stress and everyday life that happens. A lot of my students have very rough home lives and come to school with a million things on their mind and learning is not one of them.

Anyways since starting this journey I have loved the results I have seen. The students are being kind with each other and noticing the positive and good things that other are doing. I love the morning meetings that help the students get off to a brain smart start. The students are making connections with myself and each other and it is helping them become a school family.

The students have more of a willingness to learn vs a feeling of fear because they don't want the consequence. The students are loving the feeling of connections and friendship that they are building within the classroom and the school.

After saying all of this over spring break I have been working on some resources that I can use with my classroom and you might want to try and use within yours.

Have a look at my Teacher Pay Teacher store for morning meeting cards that include greetings, activities, share ideas and things to use as messages.

Just for sticking around and reading this long post here is a freebie that I had made a while ago, those of you that follow Jens Kinder Kids probably got it off her blog but I was the one who created it so you can get it free here too. It is a small sheet that helps students notice the good and kind things that the other students are doing.

Click here to Download the Shot out form. 

Thanks for sticking around and let me know if you school does Conscious Discipline too. I would love to connect and brain storm ideas.

Spring Break

Hi everyone,

I just started my spring break today and it was definitely needed. So far I have enjoyed sleeping in, watching TV and cleaning up my house.

I wanted to start a blog to track everything that happens within the first grade world. There is so much I would like to share, and I figured this would be a great way. 

I am working on getting my TPT store up and running. Please follow me here :) 

Leave me some feedback. I am working on more products and will post them as finished. 

Also, I am a big Donors Choose advocate. I currently have a project running to get a new rug for my classroom as well as literacy materials. 

A New Classroom Rug

Please consider donating. I will return the favor! :) 

Thanks for sticking around and reading my first post. Here is a little freebie of what I will be using after break to work on 3-D shapes in math :) Click the and symbol  (&) to download. 

&

Thanks for reading and I hope to hear from you soon! Those of you on Spring break, Enjoy :)