Implementing Morning Meeting~{It's my BIGGEST Blog Series Ever!}

Through the end of August, all of September, and part of October, I will be focusing my Saturday mornings at Tarheelstate Teacher on the Community Meeting {aka Morning Meeting}. I have been working really hard on this blog series and I'm so excited to share with you all that I have planned. I LOVE thinking and talking about Morning Meeting, so this series is putting me in my "back to school" zone!

I love, love, love morning meeting and the community that it creates in my classroom. My first days of school will be spent having many community-building conversations with my students under the umbrella of the Community Meeting. I hope you will follow this series and learn more about why I'm dedicated to the community meeting!

1) Why I Devote Classroom Time to Community Meetings
2) The Design of My Community Meeting Program
3) Why Have a Theme-Based Community Meeting?
4) Materials and Resources for Preparing for Your Community Meetings
5) Launching Community Meeting at the Beginning of the Year {or anytime!}
6) A Look at Day by Day in the Community Meeting
7) Scheduling the Community Meeting
8) What if “I Still Can’t Fit it In!”?
9) Problem Solving Classroom Issues: a structure for when you need it!
10) (Do you need to) Justify Your Classroom Meeting?

I'll come back to Life, Love, Literacy to link-up the blog posts as they go live each Saturday, but it'd be great if you go ahead and follow Tarheelstate Teacher on bloglovin' and you won't have to worry about missing a thing!

Did you see this? It's my "first day of school" step-by-step community meeting lesson and it includes free student journal pages and bulletin board materials!

And did you grab this free list of my favorite back to school read alouds? I took it with me to the library this week to start collecting read alouds for my first few weeks of school! 

~~Morning Meeting Made Easy~Set 2 Ready!~~

Finally!!!! My second set of Morning Meeting Made Easy themes is complete! This makes me super happy because I have had the draft in the works for MONTHS and it's been one of those projects that has been hanging over my head a little.

If this is the first you are hearing about my Morning Meeting Made Easy sets, let me tell you more! Last year, I decided to try a theme-based morning meeting and loved it! I created a list of themes for personal development, came up with related vocabulary words, and found quotes to match the themes. I created posters for each theme so that I could display our community themes all year for us to refer back to. I also used key read alouds to initiate my discussions with students about the theme. From this idea grew "Morning Meeting Made Easy." Not only does the set include posters for each theme, but you get student journal pages and teacher overviews that suggest read alouds, possible activities, and videos or songs that connect to the theme. This product is seriously READY to USE instantly, except for grabbing the picturebooks!

My first set of Morning Meeting Made Easy includes the following themes:

You can check out my detailed post about teaching through the theme of belonging earlier this year. (It includes my daily plans! At that time, I had not yet completed my student journal pages, but you have them ready to go AND my belonging set is offered as a FREEBIE download on TPT and TN!) Best of all, you can also use this as a mini-literacy unit on theme. It is SO ready to go and the discussions are SO rich. {Belonging has to be my most favorite theme to teach through} :]

You may also purchase themes as individual downloads, but I highly recommend going for the whole set (they are cheaper as a set, of course, and I believe that using many of the related themes helps spiral back to previous conversations and helps build your students' understanding of theme even more--leading to growth in your classroom community.)

Compassion Theme 

Conflict Theme
Perseverance Theme
Kindness Theme
Compromise Theme
Happiness Theme
Achievement Theme
Individualism Theme
Integrity Theme

Here's a closer look at my Kindness student journal pages. (All included in the kindness download or the MMME Set # 1.)

Happy Friday! We have been out with three snow days in a row and have a two-hour delay for Friday. Gotta love being a "Tarheelstate Teacher!"

Belonging Theme Lessons in Action~Morning Meeting Made Easy

My goal at the beginning of the year is to introduce the classroom community themes that I plan to focus on throughout the year. Then, I plan to spend at least a week exploring each theme in more depth with my students. This week, we focused on belonging. {My students use a marble notebook for Community Meeting. I used the coverpage image to create stickers on labels for them to place on the front of their notebook). 

I have a quick 15 minutes each morning before my students go to special area classes. As I think about morning meeting for the week, I know that I will have some quick days and on other days, we will have a longer block of morning meeting that continues after students return from special area classes. Morning meeting can take as little or as much time as you have, but I think it is nice to have the flexibility in my schedule to have some days that are quick and some that are longer where I can push for deeper thinking  and discussion. You will see this alternating change of pace in my week's outline below.

I had already read aloud Big Al by Andrew Clements during the first week of school. We watched how Big Al, the ugliest fish in the sea, tried many things in order to fit in. When a fisherman's net captures many of the fish, Big Al saves the day and gains a sense of belonging. Finally, he has the most friends of all the fish in the sea.

On Monday, I quickly shared our focus theme for the week, shared the related quote, and went over key words. I post the theme, quotations, and vocabulary on our "community themes" bulletin board and give students a copy in a journal page format. Then, students complete the self-assessment and goal setting pages. (I print these as 1/2 pgs for students to glue into their marble notebooks).

Tuesday/Wednesday: After introducing the theme to students, I spend time building the theme with as many examples as possible through read alouds. I read aloud Babushka Baba Yaga by Patricia Polacco on Tuesday and Wednesday. If I had pushed it a little, I could have finished the book in one day and read Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch by Eileen Spinelli. However, the beauty of my morning meeting is that I can spiral back to these themes again and again, adding new texts to push students to add to and enhance our understanding of the theme with another author's take on it. (For example, when we do return to Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch, I think that we could learn that sometimes a person's isolation keeps them from having a sense of belonging, but if they could or would step outside of their shell and take a risk, others are more than happy to welcome them with open arms.) You can see what we learned from the other stories in the chart we made on Friday.

Thursday: We watched The Lost Thing and discussed how what we saw in the video related to our belonging theme. (There is SOOOOO much to talk about in this video. I could do an entire week of lessons just on it, but I mostly stayed focused on the idea of belonging in this lesson, knowing that I would be able to go back to it and use it later in other lessons. For example, why is "the lost thing" a lost thing--who says he is 'lost'? Is it really lost? Do we have to find others like us (or assimilate) to gain a sense of belonging? What does "the lost thing" symbolize? etc. This is a rich video for "close reading" lessons! It is also sending a message about individuality in a society of sameness, so I plan to use the video again during our Individualism theme.)

Friday: We have met many characters this year that have tried to gain a sense of belonging (especially this week with it being our theme focus), so it was time to start comparing our story lines and identifying generalizations. Students worked to fill out this simple chart and then we created a class chart on the smartboard. This was one of our longer morning meeting lessons this week. We could call this stage "synthesizing" :).

Drawing Conclusions and Going Deeper: Since completing our chart took a little while, we are going finish up our belonging theme on Monday by reviewing the information we put into the chart and drawing conclusions about belonging as a theme and a desire. I have lots of questions for my students, but here is what I hope they notice:
-In stories, sometimes characters "save the day" and gain a sense of belonging from that act. Is this realistic for a student who does not fit in or seem to belong?
-Does changing yourself to fit in with others seem to work? (Is this "fix" long-lasting? Is this fix of not being ones "true self" sustainable?)
-Is it possible to accept others for who they are, give them a sense of belonging and love, without expecting them to change to fit our idea of "normal" or what's popular/cool?

I love having "The Lost Thing" as an example in the mix of our analysis because how he gained a sense of belonging is much different from how the Baba Yaga and Big Al gained a sense of belonging. (Basically, the narrator finds a place where other things look like the "lost thing" and drops him off there. Instead of the "lost thing" actually being accepted into mainstream society, he goes to live with others of his kind.)

If you want to pick up my "Belonging Freebie," it's in my teacherspayteachers store. Morning Meeting Set 1 and Set 2 are now available.

This week (and probably next), our theme will be Achievement because it's mid-way through the quarter and time to set some goals. I'll post about those lessons soon!

PS: I am working on Pinterest boards for each of my morning meeting themes. If you decide to start implementing theme-based morning meeting lessons, you can follow my boards to have all of the video resources in one place. I will also be adding other goodies I find that may not be linked in my Morning Meeting Made Easy product.
Follow Tammy's board Belonging (Classroom Community) on Pinterest.

~Morning Meeting Made Easy! Set 1 Ready~

It's finally finished! My Morning Meeting Made Easy set is ready to go for your classroom community meetings!

First, let me say, I call my morning meeting by a few different names: morning meeting, classroom meeting, and community meeting. Having our classroom meeting in the mornings doesn't always fit into our schedules, right?

Last year, I decided to try a theme-based morning meeting and loved it! I created a list of themes for personal development, came up with related vocabulary words, and found quotes to match the themes. I created posters for each theme so that I could display our community themes all year for us to refer back to. I also used key read alouds to initiate my discussions with students about the theme. From this idea grew "Morning Meeting Made Easy." Not only does the set include the posters for each theme, but I created student journal pages and teacher overviews that suggest read alouds, possible activities, and videos or songs that connect to the theme. This product is seriously READY to GO, except for grabbing the picturebooks! I'm so excited to have this set completed because Morning Meeting will be so much easier for me to plan for this year!

My morning meeting may be a little different than what you are used to seeing (google morning meeting and you may find calendar lessons, name games, get-to-know you activities, and morning messages). I have found morning meeting to be more typical of a lower-grades classroom, but I wanted my morning meetings to focus less on getting to know each other and more on getting to know ourselves and more about humanity. How do humans treat each other, why do we act the way we do, and what can we do to act more like how we believe we should? I also use classroom meetings to problem solve any classroom issues that have popped up.

My first morning meeting set focuses on belonging, kindness, compassion, conflict, and perseverance. I think all of these themes are important to discuss at the beginning of the year!

The shift in how I use and plan for my mornings meetings actually aligns perfectly with what I have done in past years with personal goal setting. For each theme, students have a journal page where they self-reflect and set a personal goal for improving in that theme. At the end of the week, students return to their goal to reflect on how they have improved or how their thinking has changed. (Students should have lots of ideas and opportunities to make improvements on the goal because you have continued the conversation all week!) Through our classroom meetings, I encourage personal improvement, character development, and community building.

Each theme's journal pages include a cover page with the theme, quotations, and key vocabulary, a self-assessment/reflection page, a 3 questions and illustration page that helps students analyze the theme and think of real life examples, and a quotation and video reflection sheet. Other goodies include sheets for making connections between read alouds and quotations, word brainstorms, and beginning middle, and end sheets. You will surely see many ways to extend the lessons and journal pages for your students. These journal pages are meant to support your instruction and classroom discussions.

To have a quick reference for teaching through each theme, I put together teacher overviews. Instead of having to search for read alouds, videos, and related songs to use, you have a quick list to get you started and can add to this with books you are already familiar with.

In my next post, I share a day-by-day possible teaching sequence. Two sets of Morning Meeting themes are now available. If you want to check out the theme sets up close, you can download my belonging set freebie!

Motivate Students with Daily Reflections~FREEBIE

Are you in need of a way to motivate your students and hold them accountable? I am all about intrinsic motivation and doing your best because that is just what you are supposed to do. This quarter, I decided to start a daily reflection.

Each morning, students complete the top half of the reflection (related to homework and materials going to home from school and coming back to school). Throughout the day, students reflect on whether or not they gave "110%" in each of our subjects.

Last, before students pack up, they complete a reflection on what they are really proud of and what they need to work on from the day. Students must have this ready for me when I sign their assignment sheets (this is how they get out of the room to pack up) AND I require that they are thoughtful and write in complete sentences. If it is not completed in an acceptable manner, I send them back to their desks to try again. I also expect them to be specific. Instead of "I need to focus more," students must name a specific time when they should have focused better that day. To me, this helps them target that the next day.

What do students do with their reflections? Each morning, reflections are returned to students and they glue them in their "Morning Meeting" notebook.

The best part of this "motivational" strategy is that students are creating a record of their days at school. If they have a pattern of leaving materials at home, it is documented. If they have a pattern of not completing homework, it's written on the sheet. If they repeatedly choose not to give 110%, they have recorded that. Parents will see these at our quarterly student-parent meetings in a few weeks!

Another "best part" of this strategy is that students tell themselves what needs to improve. I think reflection is more powerful when it comes from within...back to that internal motivation! Hopefully, continuing to say the same things need to improve motivates students to put forth more effort to change that behavior.

I hope you can use this! Grab the free-editable template here in google docs. This version is in Times New Roman so that the formatting comes out correctly. You can change all of the student tasks to match what you do in your classroom.

Are you following my Facebook Page? Please head over and "like" it now!

Happy motivating!

My Article was Published on a National Blog!!! Resiliency in the Classroom!

Wow! I am so super busy, but I wanted to share with you some exciting news. Recently, my principal asked me if I would like to write an article on resiliency for ASCD. ASCD promotes "whole child" education. The organization believes that "Each child, in each school, in each of our communities deserves to be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. That's what a whole child approach to learning, teaching, and community engagement really is."

I hope you will head over to ASCD to read my article titled "Why Resilience is Critical in a Learning Environment." Right now, it is at the top of the main blog page! I just had to pinch myself!

Peek at My Week~Back to School Tomorrow!!

It's finally time! 

Here's a peek at my upcoming week! 

 

Farley’s Currently for the Classroom for JULY (I plan to use Currently every month this year! These will be great assignments to post in the hallway and I think Kiddos will love to see what was happening for them month to month.

  

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that I have fallen in love with morning meeting. Last year, I tried to squeeze it in from 8-8:15, but this year, I want to give it more time on the schedule, so I have blocked off 8-8:25. I have also begun working on a "Year's Worth of Morning Meeting Themes and Ideas" so that teachers can have a morning meeting resource ready for the whole year. This is going to take a little while to complete, but what you see above are the themes I am introducing this week. Basically, I want to have a quote, key words w/ definitions, read alouds, and videos/modern songs to match each morning meeting theme. In the future, we will focus on one theme for a week, however, I plan to introduce 5 important "beginning of the year" themes this week and spiral back to them in following weeks. I hope to get to belonging, kindness, perseverance, and legacy during this week's morning meetings.

Here's a peak at my morning meeting bulletin/display boards. I love the clothespins because I can just take down an old theme and put a new one up. (I also plan to have a display board in the room of past themes so that they stay on our minds). By the end of the week, we will definitely have identified a few classroom goals.

In addition to focusing on a theme per week, students will also have "Morning Meeting" journals this year. This will hold their reflections on the quotes we talk about and reflections on their personal goal setting. Who knows what else will end up in these notebooks--I'm sure we will have some classroom issues that need to be solved, so our brainstorms will also go in these notebooks. Basically, morning meeting is a therapeutic time to focus on being better human beings. I CAN'T WAIT to start our mornings like this! This week I will introduce each theme with a read aloud:

Launching Reader's Workshop Plans:

The goals for reader's workshop are simple this week. We won't have a ton of time to launch the full workshop with independent reading, but we will:

-learn about ourselves as readers (and share that with the teacher)

-discuss how to have our best reading life ever

-learn how to use our classroom library by understanding how it is organized

-set up our book bins with books that we are interested in reading

-set up our reader's workshop journals

-identify a book that is an "old favorite" and a book that we abandoned or struggled to read last year (won't this assignment give you sooo much info about your readers?) These books will be important in two future lessons I plan to do

-leave school with a "just right" book

-learn to set ambitious goals for our daily reading lives

Monday: Quick review of what it means for a book to be "just right;" explore classroom library and discuss how it is organized (maybe split class in half to work with two small groups and then come together to discuss these topics)

Tuesday: Read Alouds Aunt Chip; "I read Because sheet"; discuss ideal reading space and encourage students to create this space at home tonight

Wednesday: Aunt Chip; T-Chart: Reading is the best for me when/I don't enjoy reading when

Thursday: That Book Woman- How to Choose a Just Right book, finding books we love

Friday: Richard Wright and the Library Card (reading is a gift; people in the past have had to fight hard to receive this gift)

After lunch, we have a 20 minute block before we go to specials. I plan to do the following "fun" read alouds during this time.

When the kids return from specials, we are going to spend a lot of time on our first chapter book read aloud: Wonder by RJ Palacio. And, then we are going to organize all of our notebooks and materials.

Math and Writing will be my two subject areas that take a little while to get started. At some point, we will cover/decorate our writers notebooks and do at least a few journals/lists of writing ideas/etc. In math, I will definitely do some multiplication facts games to see who needs to study more and perhaps we will do something with our Common Core Math Mathematical practices, which we call norms.

It is a BUSY week for sure!! Are you exhausted yet? If you are still on break, lucky ducks! Although, I am pretty excited to get back into the swing of things and to enjoy this first week of school excitement!

Focus Focus-Working on Behavior part 2

 

In my last post, I shared that my class was having focusing and behavior issues.  This is the time of the year when we should be getting a lot done, when I as a teacher am reminded of how much we just haven't got to in science and social studies, and when it's quite possible that the kids are ready to fall apart see how much they can get by with.

To solve our learning and behavior issues, I put students in teams of three to discuss ideas they had for improving our learning environment. I gave students the following criteria for their ideas:

It must be:

Simple and Quick (IE, not extra work for the teacher!)

Effective

Positive/Less Punitive

My goal was that students would help me find positive ways to motivate them. I explained that negative consequences (emails to parents, silent lunch, laps at recess, etc) would come if the positive method did not help them change their behavior. As students started working and discussing, I also had to add NOT HUMILIATING to this list. They were thinking of some embarrassing punishments that I would never be able to use (but might dream of ;)

Here are some of the ideas students came up with:

* Writing in a feelings journal that you share with someone you trust to help you deal with friendship issues like arguments at recess

* require students to play a team game at recess if people are unfocused in order to learn to work together

* class apologies (we did this in January and students wanted time to do it again)

* 3 strikes you’re out-sit out for 5 min--individual based with a daily reward

* Silent lunch and 5 minutes extra recess each day for good behavior

* class dojo

For a second, I thought Class Dojo might be a good idea. We could create a CLASS dojo based on our class values and behaviors and work towards a group goal. (I was pretty anti individual dojo's because I know I wouldn't be good at giving positive feedback and it would be hard to do it equally and fairly for 20 kids.) Interestingly, for the most part, students were against Class Dojo because it is being used in our special area classes and they mentioned that it is causing them to compete to be the first student to do the things that get them positive points. I would bet it is also not really improving the behavior of the few who need to improve. 

We decided that instead of the feelings journal, we could have a table in the lunch room that was for problem-solving and discussing issues you have with the person you are not getting along with. (For the most part, my kiddos are friends and get along--but being together for two years means they do get irritated with each other and have conflicts). If students go to the table to discuss a problem, no one (including me) is allowed to ask what they were discussing. A few students have already used the problem solving table.

Moving on to classroom behavior issues, I had a few students disagree with getting rewarded every day for good behavior (candy, extra recess, etc). One student said "I don't think we should get rewarded for things that are expected."~~Phew! I was holding my breath waiting for someone to say what I was thinking. My kiddos have been with me long enough to know my belief system--do what's right, work hard, expect nothing in return. And sometimes, you might be surprised with a reward "just because." I think they also realized that a piece of candy wouldn't necessarily motivate them every day and wouldn't solve our problems.

Next we moved on to discuss the "3 strikes" idea. I reminded them that I wanted to start with positive strategies so we had to find a way to make this idea motivating. In comes the RECOGNITION WALL. I said I like the idea of three strikes and then explained an idea I had come up with as I listened to a small group discuss "3 strikes."75% of students voted yes on this method, so here it goes:

I created a recognition wall outside of the classroom so that the "Hall of Fame" is visible by students as they come into class and by visitors and other staff members. I created student name plates and then attached velcro pieces to the name plate and bulletin board paper. This makes it easy to attach and remove names daily. (You could use push pins or staples, too).

Each day I review the recognition wall before I leave school or look over it in the morning before students return to class. I decide who needs to be removed from the wall and who may have earned MVP status for that day’s behavior. I use MVP status to recognize out-of-the-ordinary good behavior.

I also made little baseballs to use as warning cards throughout the school day. I place them on students’ desks when behavior needs to change.

Lastly, I considered a few of my students that perhaps wouldn't be too motivated by the recognition wall. I really tried to get into their heads and figure out why they behave the way they do (making extra noises, talking excessively while I'm talking, etc.) For these students, I think it comes down to a desire for more attention from their classmates. I decided that perhaps a reward that pulls in a few other classmates would be motivating--choosing 2 or 3 classmates to eat with at lunch. (We have these circular tables in the middle of our lunchroom that seem "special.") With NO strikes, students can pick three friends, with TWO strikes, they can pick two friends, with THREE strikes, they get no reward that day. (So it goes 3-2-1...3 friends, 2 friends, no reward). When behavior changes more regularly, we may move to once a week rewards.

I placed the 3 strikes card onto these students desks after negotiating the reward with them. Of course, you can use the score card for consequences, but I wanted to try positive motivation. You might also have a class of students that all need the cards on their desk. In that case, you would have to come up with a reward that is possible to give to everyone, but I have had the experience that it's a small few students that disrupt the class. Generally, most students are motivated by simple recognition. (Maybe students get their name in a jar for no strikes and you pull out a few at the end of the week to receive some type of reward).

I have worked on a few versions of the Recognition/Behavior Management wall.

I may come up with a few more themes, but these are the three I was able to get finished so far. Let me know if you have one you would like to see. I have decided to charge 1.20 for these. With a few minutes of printing and cutting, your recognition wall can be ready to go in no time!

Focus Focus (Easy as Hocus Pocus) Strategy

Rounding out 3rd quarter, coming around the bend. I think some of you all are already on Spring break. My 3 weeks break starts on Tuesday after one school day and a teacher workday. WOOT WOO :) 

Is this the time of year that it seems your students are in need of a break? A few weeks ago, I found that my students were having a very challenging time listening, focusing, and treating each other with kindness. COME ON GUYS!!! This is the time of the year when I think I am supposed to be getting the most done--3rd quarter, pre-state-testing, still have major things to learn, and hey, I show up to work hard! Why aren’t my students doing the same?

Well, one thing I realized is that I had dropped the ball on morning meeting. With so many snow days and late starts, we stopped reflecting on our behavior and stopped setting new classroom goals to work towards. (Honestly, my kiddos repeat themselves every day when reflecting on morning meeting goals, and we had achieved perseverance in math for the most part. And my kiddos are DARN NEAR perfect...But hey, isn’t it better to give them the time to repeat themselves each morning--what went well yesterday, what needs to be better today--than for me to constantly have to repeat myself?)

Let’s just say the trade-off of cutting morning meeting this quarter turned into a week’s worth of lengthy morning meetings focused on problem-solving the issues we were having.

First, I had students reflect on what they wanted out of the classroom. “When you show up to school at 8 am, what are you looking to get out of our day?” In one morning meeting, we discussed these hopes and dreams.

Next, students listed the main issues they felt we were having. Next, we went around our circle and told our top two. While students were reporting out, I was taking notes and tallies. These were our issues:

* socializing/side-conversations

* getting off topic

* talking out

* group not getting along

* having fun at inappropriate times

* joking/purposely bothering people

* learning time being wasted

* not wanting to learn-motivation

* not learning enough time

* too many noises

* rudeness to teacher

* too many distractions

Wow! Does this list sound familiar?

We were able to group the issues into two main problems:

Kindness (how we treat each other)--I learned we were having problems at recess that were spilling over into our afternoon learning time and focusing-issues like too many distractions, side conversations, people joking, lacking the motivation to learn, talking while the teacher is talking, etc. all relate back to a lack of focus.

In comes our FOCUS reminder sign. 

While students did most of the problem solving in our next class meeting, I already had the idea of our FOCUS reminder. When I say FOCUS, students know to get it together. This doesn’t just mean focusing on me, but focusing on the task at hand, focusing on anyone who is talking, and being motivated to do their best with their best focus.

How do I use the FOCUS sign? The class starts out at O. (I simply place the clothespin on O). With extremely great focus, they can move up to an F, but with poor focus, they move down to a C, U, and lastly an S. In a given subject, they can always move back up the FOCUS sign. They can move down to a C in one minute, and immediately be returned to an O with appropriate focus. So far, no tangible consequences or rewards come from this strategy. It is meant to be motivating within itself. Pride in our accomplishments and compliments from the teacher should be reward enough!

Now, what if the kiddos are just having a bad day? With my strategic, wise teacher thinking, I decided that the FOCUS sign would reset to O for every subject. Students might think I am just being forgiving or easy on them, but I am really using reverse psychology AND helping them REFOCUS for a new subject area. By saying that I know they are going to RESTART their focus, it isn't like they have to move back up from a U or C during a new subject. They already start at O and just try to maintain it. (I'm not sure if I am explaining the beauty of this well, but I hope you "get" it :)

I found that focusing at transitions (from quiet reading to a whole group math lesson) is one of our biggest challenges. Now, I feel dumb putting that in writing because DUHHHH! but sometimes I think we (I) forget to give students time to refocus because we (I) am rushing to the next thing we need to learn.

As I write this, I once again feel like I am doing "beginning of the year" stuff. But, I am starting to learn that kids need us to revisit "beginning of the year" lessons ALL YEAR LONG. When I'm frustrated with my kiddos (behavior, learning, etc) I eventually come around to "what can I change to help them change?"

OH.....AND I ALMOST FORGOT TO TELL YOU ANOTHER AWESOME PART OF THE FOCUS SIGN....It can travel with us!!! This week, it went to the computer lab with us :)

You can download the FOCUS templatefor free here. I hope you can use the FOCUS sign, and STAY TUNED for a MOTIVATING classroom management strategy that my students and I came up with, including how I am dealing with those "stinkers" who just can't seem to control themselves no matter what I've tried (or can they??? :). I am putting the finishing touches on multiple themes for my positive management strategy and can’t wait to share (something soooooo simple) with you. Look for it tomorrow! 

(PS-The cool chevron frames in my FOCUS logo are from Mrs. Dixon at Teaching Special Thinkers and the swirly purple frame is from the 3 AM Teacher. Be sure to check them both out!)

All Over the Place-Linky's and Super Sale

Hi Everyone,

This blog post is going to be "all over the place" with Friday Funnies,Sunday's Super Sale, and some teacherspayteachers LoVe. Isn't teaching AWESOME?!?!

So my Friday Funny isn't exactly a funny, but an "awwwwww" that made me smile even more than a funny. So, I'll use Friday Funnies from Ashley over at Primary Teacherhood to share my warm-fuzzy moments from today.

1) My kiddos had to go to the gym today to practice "Man in the Mirror" with the rest of the 5th graders. (We have a partnership with Habitat for Humanity in our county and have a now annual Moms vs Moms basketball game. The game is NEXT WEEK!! Our kiddos perform a few songs during the bball game as their contribution to the kick-off). Anywayzzz---it was 11:50 on a Friday in a classroom and they were all "Michael-Jackson-white glove-hat down--turn around-gonna make a change--jazzed up," after practicing at their seats before heading to the gym, so I reminded them that our music teacher would be trying to lead 80 kiddos in the gym and would need them to listen and follow directions. I made the comment "and when we get in there, don't buddy up with all of your friends like it's mix-up time at lunch." As everyone who is still wound up keeps on being loud and rowdy, one of my sweeties said, "But we're all friends." Busted---then I had to explain, "I agree, but you know what I mean." Our community and kindness stuff IS WORKING! :) Love abounds in our class! Here's more proof:

2) I had a few helpful kids come in from afterschool today to help me grade the quizzes we took in math. (These are my future teachers and always great assistants). I was also meeting with a parent at the time in the room across the hall. About 15 minutes later they came in looking for a broom with a long handle. "We want to sweep." Okay, I'm not going to stop you. When I came back to the room, I asked "What's going on? Are you guys just not wanting to go back to afterschool?" What they said is the best. "Ms. Russell, you told us to pass it on so we are cleaning the room for you." Ahhh, that melted my heart.

So, no funnies, but definitely reasons to keep on loving kids and what comes out of their mouths.

And, I'm sure you have heard that TPT is holding a SITE-WIDE Super Sunday Sale. Remember, TPT only holds a few site-wide sales a year, so this is a truly big deal. Many sellers will be putting their entire stores on sale. I am putting all of my items on 10% sale which means you can save 18% off of everything in my store by using the code SUPER at checkout for 20% off from tpt. I hate to be cheapy and only do a 10% sale on my items, but I really strive to reasonably price my products for the work that I have done and the longevity of the product. Only my Words Their Way Word Searchers are over $5 at 6 bucks each (which means that through this sale you can get them for $4.32. That's a steal in my book for something that I use ALLLLLLL year long.) And, did I mention my paycheck went DOWN this month? (Probably yours too thanks to a social security increase, but MAN, I didn't think it could get any smaller.) So, tpt really supplements my income in that it allows me to pay for things periodically that I wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise. Did I mention that I bought a house last February (and I'm single:)? After a year of homeownership, I am feeling the crunch. (By the way, do you LOVE this Sale button by Ashley Hughes? He's squirreling away his footballs. How CUUUUUUUUUTE!)

I will be making some purchases on Sunday too and will be so happy to send some of my payday cash to another teacher. I LOVE teacherspayteachers and feel that it has totally revolutionized the teaching profession. I mean the time and energy we put into creating useful lesson materials that are also engaging and better-than-the-publishers is just amazing to me. I get so much pleasure out of purchasing your great products. I know you are on the other end checking your daily statistics just like me. And, I know we work hard to make amazing products because of the encouragement and feedback we get from being a part of teacherspayteachers and the blogging world. When I am making new products, I feel like what I do is worthy of my time because it will not only be a great lesson for my kids, but for lots of other students.

Anyway.....what if we all showcase what we are planning to purchase on Sunday? I am going to work on my wishlist tomorrow and maybe I will have time to post what I am looking forward to grabbing up.

And for a little INSPIra-cion, here's "Man in the Mirror" for you. Enjoy!

Wow, did I say this post would be all over the place? Hope you had a great wrap-up to your week today!