Online Timer

Not sure if anyone has blogged about this tool before but just wanted to share because I recently found it and use it ALL THE TIME with my kiddos. We have been learning about pacing ourselves when working and this is an amazing visual for that purpose. It looks like this:

Set the time.

What the students see.

Click here to get to the online timer. 

Blurts!

Came across a new blog by Mrs. Orr - Cardigans & Curriculum. She had a GREAT idea on managing unwanted blurts!

She made a Blurts poster with velcro dots and every time a student blurts out, they put a blurt next to their name on the poster. She makes a note of the students who have went all day/week without a blurt for an extra prize. I especially like it because it makes the students aware of their blurts (number of blurts) and it worked so well that Mrs. Orr said she didn't have to use it after the first 6-8 weeks. Click on the pictures below for more information from her blog!

Behavior Plan Linky Party

The Lesson Plan Diva is having a Behavior Plan/Behavior Problems Linky party so I wanted to share what I made 2 years ago that helped some of my kiddos.

I have a lot of ELLs in my classroom (and I teach Kindergarten!) so visuals are usually a must for everything I create. This behavior contract worked really well because I had the behavior that I wanted to see modeled at the top and when it came time to give the child a smiley/frowny face, we looked at the pictures together to see if he followed his plan for that time period. He had to earn a certain amount of smiley faces for the day/week to visit with an administrator and show off his behavior plan, and also visit their treasure chest. The Behavior Plan is for a whole week and you can print them off 2 to a page.
Head on over to the linky party and share what you do in your classroom!

Music in the Classroom

It is no surprise that my Kinder kiddos come into Kindergarten never having heard The Sound of Music before, but that doesn't stop me from teaching them this song! Towards the end of the year last year I started a new way of getting their attention through singing. I was tired of using the clapping and different chants we do so I decided to teach them the "Do Re Mi" song. We started slowly, learning a little bit at a time. So I would sing "Doe" and when they heard that, they immediately had to sing the next part "A deer, a female deer". Then I'd sing "Ray" and they had to sing "a drop of golden sun"... and so on. By the time "me" rolled around, I had everyone's attention. Sometimes I'd stop there, sometimes I'd go further (depending on time). If we were transitioning and cleaning up, we might do the whole song. It was a fun attention grabber and all I had to do was sing one note to get it all started! The great thing about it was that I could stop it wherever I wanted to (sometimes just after "doe).

How do you use songs in your classroom? Link up with Miss Kindergarten below!

Classroom Management Linky Party

Miss Kindergarten is hosting a classroom management linky party and at our school we also have something similar to the volume control she mentions, except ours go from levels 0-4. Our Kindergarten team got together to take pictures of ourselves modeling the voice level (kind of hard to do!) and made a little poster out of it. We hang it in our rooms and use a clothespin to clip it to the level we want the students to be using during that time/activity. The kids responded really well to it and they got used to the language really quickly ("Show me a voice level zero!")

The hardest one to model was voice level 1 whisper. A lot of students come to Kindergarten not really knowing what a whisper is so we do a simple experiment. They touch their throats while talking in a regular voice to feel the vibrations. Then I tell them to whisper while touching their throats. They'll know they are whispering correctly if they don't feel any vibrations at all. So in the Voice Level 1 picture we have a teacher "checking her throat" to make sure she is whispering.

Another classroom management tool I use is having pictures on popsicle sticks. All I have to do is hold up a picture and students need to follow exactly what it says. It's handy because I can pull it out and not even have to interrupt my lesson!