Encouraging students to raise hands when speaking

Looking for a way to encourage your students to raise their hands during group time or calendar time?  I like to use this tool.   I took a paper and divided it into equal squares.  Every time a student raises their hand to contribute to our lesson and shows self control to wait for the teacher to call on them, I write their name in a box.  It is a requirement that to get their name in the box, what they contribute to the conversation must be about out lesson.   This tool helps students to recognize what behavior a teacher is seeking during calendar time.

Tip: some teachers have used this chart to also encourage students to bring back homework.

Tip: What happens when the chart is filled?  That's up to you.  Some teachers bring a special food treat for everyone when it is filled.  Other teachers number each square, then draw a number at random from the chart.  That selected student (or students) might get to pick a prize from a reward chest.

Class Marble Jar

Looking for a way to encourage good behavior? In my class I also use a class marble jar.  Students get to earn marbles for such things as eating healthy at lunch, napping at nap time, tieing their own shoe or someone elses shoe, reading school work directions correctly with out teacher help, get compliments for walking/standing in line quietly in the hall, etc.  Often marbles focus on encouraging students to perform behaviors that are undesireable, require self control, or are extremely challenging.  Once the marble jar is filled we have a "marble party".  On our marble parties, we do all kinds of learning activities, such as review white board football (a loud favorite activity), practice writing letters in foam, get to play a video during work time, get to do a messy science activity, etc.  Marble parties are  my students favorite activities.

Whole Brain Teaching - Management

This last summer I discovered a management style through the Whole Brain Teaching website. I have found their techniques to be very effect. One of the simplist is teach kids how to get their attention back on you. I say "class" and the kids respond with "yes". The students are taught to mimic the way I say it... so if I whisper "class" they whisper yes. If I say class in a singsong voice, they say yes in a singsong voice.    I also have them trained  to say "yes" when I say their names individually.  

For a class motivation, I draw a chart on the board with a smilie face on one side, and a frown face on the other.  The students get points through out a group time for following my directions together as a class... if I have to repeat instructions more than twice then they get a point under a frown.   If they win, they get either extra free choice center time, or we play white board football.

Another key to this was to teach your students the rules daily, by having them listed out visually in words, represented in a picture, and given them a hand action to help remember what to do.  I work in a preschool - daycare center teaching Kindergarten this year and we use the same rules with all the kids Kindergarten-fourth grade.

rules:
1. Listen to the speaker : students point to their ears, eyes, and mouths to remember to listen with all their body parts.
2. Respect my teacher and my friends by doing what is asked the first time quickly : students hold up one finger then put hands together and wiggly them quickly (like a fish swimming quickly).
3. Have fun: students smile ear to ear
4. keep my friends safe: students point to each other
5. keep myself safe: students point to themselves
6. Be a good steward: students pretend to pick up an object off the floor and put it away on a shelf.
7. Use inside vocies and walking feet: students point to their mouths and their feet.

Phonics

My favorite phonics book is:

I like to use this book with either letter tiles, dry erase boards, or pencil paper notebooks.   This book tells the teacher word for word how to teach students to sound out words phoneticly.

example:  1.  spell the word  at   like "we are at the park".
2. Add a letter and spell the word cat.  There is a cat in my house.
3. Take the c away and spell the word sat.  He sat on the sofa.
4. Take the t away and spell the word sag. Don't let your pants sag.
5. Now lets do a trick, move the letters around to spell the word gas.  We put gas in our cars.

One of the reason I like to use the alphabet mat, is that studies show that childrens ability to read letters quickly and place them in alphabetical order quickly is tied to their reading success.

tip: the first book is for K-2,  their is an older version written for 3rd-5th graders that focuses on preffixes and suffixes.

Reading tents

Need a reading center but you don't really have the room for one?  Try using pop up tents.  Make it a firm rule that students must read NOT play inside the tents.  Also only allow two students in at a time.   To make the tent extra special, have a basket of stuff animals near by in a basket labeled "book buddies" for them to read to.  Another idea is to add cheap reading glasses (with out the lenses) into a basket near by for the students to wear while reading.

When centers are finished, these tents can be folded and put away in a snap.

homeliving center double as a writing center

There are many ways to inspire kids to write on their own, one of the easiest is to place note pad paper and sticky notes in your homeliving center.  Kids love to pretend to be taking notes, taking resturant orders, playing school, writing books, etc. 

tip:  Try placing word rings in this center so they can look up words to spell.

                                         http://prekinders.com/writing-center/

Shared writing... Shared books

This year I am trying to teach my Kindergarten students the connection between writing, illustrating, and reading.  I'm teaching them that anyone can be an author and an illustrator, all it takes is a little bit of hard work.  The harder they work, the better the finished product.  To do this we have been creating shared books.

Step 1. Together we share write.   To write I take a large paper and I give them a topic such:
My name is...         I can...                I like to...          I don't like to...
I want...                 My favorite...      If I....

Each student is asked to orally complete the sentence.  I demonstrate writing the sentence for them, sounding out words, starting the sentence with a capital letter, ending with punctuation, etc.

step 2.   Read it. During the rest of the week, the students take turn reading and demonstrate tracking the words they wrote using the teachers pointer.

step 3.  Manipulate it.  I take the sentences they wrote, type them up, then cut them apart so each child has their own sentence in parts.  Students practice re-arranging their words in the correct sentence order.

step 4. Illustrate it.  Students are given a half sheet of paper and a copy of their sentences to re-write on to their page.  After writing the sentence, the students are then ask to illustrate their sentence.

Step 5. Teacher takes a picture or scans all the illustrated pages.

Step 6.  Teacher adds the pages to the students' individual paper books (which they will keep at school till the end of the school year).


Step 7.  I uploaded the pictures to my http://www.blurb.com/ and created a published hard back book for the students for us to use in the classroom using the online bookify program.  Our book is a popular choice for story time.


Our books:
book 1: All about us: A kindergarten shared writing project

book 2:  http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2866547

Alphabet sorting

I bet most teachers could relate... the hardest struggle for a teacher is to not reinvest most of their paycheck back into their own classroom.  It is easy for a teacher to spend more than $300 a year in classroom supplies, activities, decorations, furniture, etc.   For those whom don't teach, what you may not know is that school often don't pay for these items.  Many times a teacher may get $50 - $100 on supplies for a whole year.  Often that money is spent on markers, crayons, pencils, erasers, calculators, paper, etc.  Many teachers choose to spend their own money on the larger center items or classroom kid-size furniture so they can take the items with them when they change jobs or classrooms. 

One of my favorite items I bought this year was an alphabet sorting center.  With this center comes small durable plastic pictures with their words spelled out on the flip side.  Many of my students enjoy sorting words by their beginning sounds.  This is a must for pre-school, kindergarten, or first grade classrooms that use learning centers.

Classroom Pet

Freddy the Frog one of my students favorite things about our classroom!

Every Pre-K through Second grade classroom should have a classroom pet.  For my pet I chose a webkins frong I named "Freddy the frog" and put a sweater on him I bought from a build-a-bear workshop.  I bought a clear bag from Lakeshore school supply store, and added a phonics dictionary (from lakeshore), a snap-it-up cvc spelling game, snap-it-up addition game, alphabet cards, sight word cards, number cards, and simple books.  I have a journal in which children write down what they have done with Freddy the frog on their weekends.   I have 5 kids, and right now they rotate taking Freddy home on Fridays.   In a larger classroom, I would recommend sending Freddy home throughout the week as well.

Tip: At walmart there is a children's CD called "Fisher Price: ABC sing-along".   Track number 7 has a song called "Freddy the Frog" that sings about what a great friend Freddy the frog is to them (he's got his own theme song! :-)

Tip: Want to make your classroom pet extra special?  I am taking my pictures of Freddy the frog and each student and uploading them to my computer, then going on online to http://www.blurb.com/ I added all the pictures and typed their journal entries into the program and have made a real Freddy the frog book for them to read at home, and to give them ideas of journal prompts to add.  (book $10 - $20).

Graphing

A real enjoyable math activity is graphing with the students.  It is important to introduce graphing with children, it helps to teach them counting skills, how to organize data, and gives them a voice in the classroom.  There are many different types of graphs.

Above, I used a pictograph with the kids to graph boys vs girls.   My Kindergarten classroom is still entertained by my use of stick people four months later.   Once a week (at least) we graph their favorite centers, favorite colors, the daily weather temperature, type of weather we have for the day, favorite animals, favorite foods, least favorite foods, height, shoe size, how many letters in their name, birthdays, etc.

In November we started to graph the daily temperature.  My Kindergarteners were beginning to put up resistance to wearing their coats outside.  I'm pretty sure I have a few Kindergarteners who would argue that its to hot to wear their coats... even if we were standing in a snow drift up to their eyeballs.  For that reason the "weatherman" now "texts" us how to dress for outside.  I text the weather service on my cell phone, and we receive our text message during our circle time.  If it is 35 degrees or lower, we have indoor recess, if it is 65-35 we must wear our coats.  95-65 we can choose to wear our coats or not. 95 or higher, it is too not to play outside.