Before You Do Anything Crazy, Read On!

Bad behavior can kill your Pinterest perfect lesson in no time.  I know you have spent countless hours lesson planning only to have your lesson ruined by Little Expletive (insert name of disruptive student).  It is now March and you are either on Spring Break or will be next week and you are ready to wrangle Little ______ if he does _______ one more time. Before you do something CRAZY, read on!  I can help!

A little background you may not know about me.  My first three years teaching were in a 5th grade classroom in a bungalow in Compton.  Enough said.  My next two years in Los Angeles. The next year as an Intervention Specialist implementing Behavior RTI for the first time.  My toughest year and a half was in downtown Phoenix and parents were my challenge in a more affluent Dallas.  I have seen it ALL and nothing surprises me when it comes to behavior of staff and students any more!  I have been given crazy advice, like my mentor teacher telling me that I should lay on the ground with my feet up in the air (think dead cockroach), kicking my legs and waving my arms all while screaming as a way to get my unruly class’ attention.  I have also been given amazing advice, like narrating positive behaviors to correct the negative behavior a student is displaying (highly effective).

While in Phoenix, I worked with an amazing SPED co-teacher and we developed a system that would help my most challenging students (both behavior and as a result of their behavior, their academics suffered too).  Over the years, I have tweaked and modified it to work with any population and make it more user friendly.

Weekly behavior charts and progress monitoring for behavior of the most challenging students.

Establish No More Than 5 Behavior Goals

If you have an RTI (Response to Intervention) team, this would be a great place to start.  If you are going at this solo, I highly recommend you reach out to a colleague that you admire the way he/she manages behavior and get some input.  Brainstorm the top 5 behaviors you wish Little _____ would change or do differently.  Then determine if you want the behavior goal be meet daily (more severe) or weekly (less severe).

Determine Motivation

Sit down with the child and discuss the target behaviors you came up with.  Then determine what motivates this child.  Is spending time with you or another special person? Is it listening to their iPod during independent work?  What makes this person tick?  There are several surveys you can give to help with determining motivation if you are stuck.  This motivation is what will help you and the student choose a reward when they meet the goal.  Here are some great resources for a reward system.  Another thing that I found to be very motivating was having students get to choose a friend that would also get to do the reward with them.  That way other students in the class could help motivate this child instead of being annoyed by them.

Consistency

Once you have your reward in place and your behaviors identified and discussed with student (and parent), you are ready to start using the behavior charts.  The key with anything that creates change, is consistency.  It is critical that you and any teacher the student goes to follows through with the plan. This means that you need to mark this child’s chart after every block of time outlined on the chart (this varies by what the child can do and still be successful…some students can be successful after 2o minutes, others it is more or less time).  It is A LOT of work for the teacher initially, but it becomes more automatic the longer you use these charts.  At one point, I had three students on different behavior charts that required check-in every 20 minutes.  Yikes!  I made my students responsible for asking me to sign their chart because I would forget.  I told them, that they needed the points and it was their responsibility to ask me and I gave them a non-verbal signal (writing with an imaginary pen in the air) to cue me to come over and mark their chart.  I also initial my mark so that I know which ones I marked and which ones they marked (see below).

Tally Up and Reward

At the end of the day or week (depending on the chart format you are using), I would have the student tally the points and determine their score for the day/week.  I usually didn’t have time at the end of the day to do this, so I would have students tally and check-out with me on the way to the bus or dismissal.  If they earned their goal, they would get their reward first thing in the morning.  I made it so they didn’t even have to ask me.  They would just do what ever their pre-determined reward was (usually with a friend).

Daily Behavior Charts and Progress Monitoring Graphs for your most challenging behaviors.

 You may be interested in the forms pictured and discussed above.  You can find them here:

EDITABLE Daily and Weekly Behavior Charts

How do you handle Little _______?

Student Led Conferences: Primary vs. Upper Elementary

There is no way a five year old can effectively lead a parent teacher conference.  Or is there a way?  It may be easier to imagine a fifth grader leading their parents through their strengths and areas for growth than it is a five year old, but it is completely possible and something you should definitely give a try!  Let me explain some subtle and not so subtle differences between Student Led Conferences (SLCs) in the primary and upper elementary levels.

PLAN and COLLECT

There is no getting around it.  Planning is essential to helping students succeed during their conference.  They need to know what specifically they are good at and what they can improve on.   This requires more guidance and structure for younger students and should probably be done in a small group or individual conference.  Checklists are helpful at the primary level and portfolio analysis is necessary with older students.

Checklists help primary students identify strengths and areas for improvement so they can effectively tell their parents how they are doing in school.

Upper Elementary students benefit from reviewing their portfolios and choosing work samples that highlight their strengths and areas for improvement.

PRACTICE

Role playing with both the younger and older kiddos is so very important.  Many students may have never had a conversation like a conference with a parent before and so they will have a mix of emotions.  They may feel anxious, nervous, shy, scared, etc. because they don’t know how their parents will react to what they are saying.  By practicing what they will say, giving them sentence starters, and a guide to what they will do during their conference will help them with the unknown a little.  With the itty bittys you will probably need to practice this way more than with the older students.

Primary student SLC booklet

Inside Primary student SLC booklet

Upper Elementary SLC student booklet

Upper Elementary SLC student booklet

If you choose to have a student booklet that will walk the students through what you want them to do and discuss, I highly recommend making it like a scavenger hunt (see above) where students use a stamp to mark what they have completed.  This approach has students of all ages showing parents quick tasks that they have mastered or work samples that show their ability.  I recommend using centers they know well.  In my primary edition, I include the following centers that you may wish to use.

Organize, Sort, Count Center for Kinder

Roll, Write, Compare, Chomp! for Kinder

Reading & Writing Center for any grade.

Reading & Writing Center for any grade.

SIT BACK AND WATCH THE MAGIC UNFOLD!

Once you have planned and practiced, it is time to let the headache that parent conferences usually is walk out the door.  Once your SLCs begin, make sure to monitor the conversations, but bit your tongue from interjecting too much.  I usually try to stand in earshot, eavesdropping, so I’m not making myself a part of the conversation.

You can find the following two products in my store here:

EDITABLE Student Led Conferences (SLC) Starter Pack (Featured in the March 6, 2016 TPT newsletter!)

EDITABLE Kindergarten Student Led Conferences (SLC) Starter Pack (can be adapted for K-2)

Have you used SLCs?  What grade and tips for success do you have?

 

New Year’s Resolutions

Join us as The Classroom Clique shares their New Year’s Resolutions!  This year is a little different for me because typically at this time of the year, I am frantically thinking about how I can do things differently (read: BETTER) in my classroom, but because I now only have a classroom of one, Jackson (soon to be one), my priorities and goals have also changed.

Since I no longer have an income, I have really set some strict goals for myself when it comes to my store.  Here are my top three:

• Develop and create at least 3 new products that are timely, thorough, and most importantly useful each month.  This means that I will have at least doubled my store’s inventory!
• Now that I have an awesome new logo, thanks to Kristen at Chalk & Apples, I need to update all product covers so that they are reflective of what you get when you buy them! They pretty much stink right now!
• I will continue to revamp my new blog design and regularly post relevant teaching and coaching tips here.

I really feel like I have no excuse to not be in the best shape of my life and frankly I am in the worst!  After having Jackson, I lost a ton of weight during the first three months (I actually got to pre-baby weight) mainly due to stress since baby J was quite sick and was still in the hospital.  Once he came home and things gradually became more like they were, just now with a baby, and he continued to become stronger and healthier, I gradually gained all that weight back.  I was within 6 pounds of my goal weight, but now am back up to about 18 pounds. Ugh.  Things have recently been further complicated because Jackson is now eating solid food and will eat way more if I eat with him, so in an effort to plump him up, I am also getting fatter! Double ugh! I was given some Christmas money and am looking on Craigslist for a jogging stroller, so I can ditch the baby fluff by my birthday in July.

Get a house.  After moving back to Southern California this summer from Dallas, my husband and I were shocked to see how expensive it is here for housing.  We were away for a little over 3 years and prices seem to be back to what they were right before the housing bubble burst and everything went south for real estate!  With that said, I boomeranged back home and brought with me my husband and baby!  Yikes!  My mom and stepdad are amazing, but I am sure they want their quiet house back!!! 🙂

During the duration of this blog hop (Friday, Jan. 9, 2016-Monday, Jan. 11, 2016), I will be giving away my How to Write and Reach Your 2016 Goals for FREE!  Happy New Year and I hope that this year is the best one yet for you and yours!

Check out what other goals The Classroom Clique has for this year by clicking below!

An InLinkzLink-up

How to WRITE and REACH your 2016 goals

As the confetti settles and we face the bitter fact that winter break is coming to an end and we can’t binge on Netflix all day, most of us start reflecting on the prior year and how we can change for the better for the new year ahead.

Making new year’s resolutions is common place, but this usually translates into lofty, unrealistic ideas that we would love to accomplish, but usually by the first week of the new year have gone out the window!  Instead of setting resolutions, I try to focus on realistic goals for myself, my class (when I’m teaching), and my business.

Winter break is a natural stopping point, just like the beginning of the year, so why not reflect on the goals set at the beginning of the year and set new ones for the year to come.  I set deadlines to meet these goals and have checkpoints throughout that period of time to make sure that I am in fact on my way to meeting that goal.

I recommend that you go through this process yourself before trying to teach your kiddos to do this.  Then you will have an example to show and hold them accountable too.  Below is the process that I follow to set goals for myself.

Step 1: Categorize and Prioritize

I have so many things that I want to do and do better  than I did before, but keeping in the mindset of REALISTIC I have to narrow that list down and categorize.  I start with big broad categories like work or school.

Step 2: Narrow Broad Categories to Specific Goals

Then I narrow down those broad categories into more specific topics and goals within those topics.

Step 3: Rewrite Specific Goals as S.M.A.R.T. Goals

I make sure these questions are answered in my rewritten goal.

• Specific: What specifically do you want to accomplish?
• Measurable: How will you know if you accomplished it?
• Achievable: How can the goal be achieved?
• Relevant: Is this important now?
• Time-bound: When will your goal be met? When will you monitor your progress towards this goal?

Step 4: Map It Out on a Calendar

Finally, I make a plan to reach these goals by determining when I will start working towards these goals and how long it will take, realistically, to reach this goal and set an end date.  Then I will add to the calendar dates that I will check in with myself by rereading these goals and reflect on what I need to do to continue on the path of reaching this goal.  Grab these goal planning pages for your students and yourself here.

How do you establish and reach your yearly goals?