Data Binders

I m so excited about how well my Data Binders did last year!!!  The kids absolutely LOVED their DB's. As I get ready for another school year, I thought I would share a little on how I set them up. How we use them and a few tips on making them practical in a busy classroom.

This will be my third year fully using Data Binders with my students.  Each year I get a little bolder with how I collect data with my little ones.  This past year we had "Data Day"  which was usually on Friday during our intervention time (data collection and self monitoring are all a valuable part of the intervention process).  During this time, we would complete our data charts, add work samples to the binders and have our Celebrations of Success.

Setting up our Data Binders was pretty easy this year.  Each child got a 1 inch binder and 12 sheet protectors.  I created a sheet of "TABS" that they attached to the sheet protectors.  Experience has taught me that the best way to attach these is to put a dot on the page in the place that you want the tab to go before you copy it.  I have my students color the tabs specific colors before cutting them out.  I recommend copying the tabs onto card stock and laminating it. Glue dots are great for attaching the laminated tabs.  (Even though, my parent helper last year used heavy packing tape to attach the tabs and covered the entire tab.  It worked WONDERFULLY. )

Combining WBT and ClassDojo

I am a novice at Whole Brain Teaching but after attending the National Conference and following Farrah Shipley on Facebook, I am an energized believer!

My classroom is a very High Tech/ Kid-Centered environment, so it was important for me to maintain this atmosphere when integrating the teaching strategies of WBT.  I was already a Class Dojo FANatic so I knew that the system I developed MUST include this as a key component.






So HERE is what I came up with:

This is our class behavior board.  It combines WBT, Class Dojo, our class bead system (from my Cub Scouting days) and Our District's required color system.

The most important part of my classroom is the Super Improver Wall.  Each week I run a Class Dojo Spread sheet report and look at the behavior with the least points.  This will be our focus behavior for the following week.  I set a point goal for this behavior and my students work hard to meet the goal.  If the goal is met, each student gets a star on their Super Improver Card.  Students can also earn stars for meeting personal goals (tying shoes, mastery of a difficult skill, improving a personal behavior.).
Once they get 10 stars, they go to the next level.  Each level comes with a different set of privileges and classroom responsibilities.

Since I do not do a treasure box or give prizes for behavior, I have established a bead system to help my friends  keep track of and show off their accomplishments. My friends  love wearing their Bling to lunch on Fridays and to assemblies.  Click Here for More on my First Grade Bling.










On our Class Dojo Screen, my students are held accountable for our 5 class rules (from WBT).  As the year goes on, I add a couple of specific things that are constantly coming up.  Usually these are set a a class goal, so they need to be on our Dojo.

(Yep.  That's a TV!  I bought a TV in a pawn shop for $45 and connected it to an old laptop.  Now our Dojo Home is on display all day.  The kids love to check themselves all day.  )

It may sound elaborate, but it is actually pretty simple.  I find that taking a few minutes at the end of class to review our day on Class Dojo and award beads and stars really helps my students feel like they have accomplished something in their day.  It also sends them home with something to tell!!!

Thanks to two GREAT & FREE programs, my classroom is an 

EXCITING place to be for ALL of us!!!

Ps.... Do you Go Noodle?

First Grade Bling

My little friends LOVE earning things.  At the beginning of the year I give each child a piece of plastic lacing cord.  I get mine on Amazon pretty cheap over the summer.   I also give them a book ring for easy opening.  I tie a simple slip knot on each end so that one pull of the free end will allow them to adjust the knot with ease.  I show them how to push the beads on and adjust the knot. After a day or two, no one needs help putting beads on the necklaces.

   Book Rings

Plastic Lacing Cord

I LOVE to pick up special beads for them to earn!  Just recently, I found some CUTE CUTE CUTE buttons in the shape of flowers that I gave out for good behavior on our field trip.  The kids FLIPPED.  I also found some ADORABLE jungle animal shaped beads that I am going to give out for those who do a good job on our animal research project. 

I pulled out my handy dandy wood burning tool to make little dog tags for their names.  They really loved it.  I got the tags for $2.99 at Hobby Lobby.  It took me about 30 minutes to get them all burned and drilled.  The kids loved them.  

I am not sure what I am going to do with these bottle caps, but I could not leave them in the store! 

We have a character education program called Early Act First Knight.  If they are chosen to represent our class for the trait, they get a medal from a REAL Knight and I give them a star for their necklace.

These buttons were PERFECT 

for our great field trip behavior beads.
We had to loop them through paper clips
for them to fit.  

These animal beads will be awesome

to reward my kids who really put 

effort into the upcoming animal research

project.

I am really big on my kids giving me quality work.  I give these "Quality Stars" to kids who give me EXCELLENT QUALITY work.

We store our necklaces on our Class Dojo / Behavior Board.  They love wearing them to assemblies and to lunch on Fridays!  They are so proud of the their necklaces.  

OH!!  My favorite part!!!  The PINK Positive Pal bead!!!

Each day during our afternoon meeting, students can give away one pink bead.  They only have one bead to give away and must give it to a friend who has done or said something nice to them.  They cannot keep the bead or give it to anyone who asks them. Some of the kids give the bead everyday and others choose not to.  I don't pressure them but will make suggestions if I observe something during the day.   This is always a favorite time of the day.

I really enjoy finding ways to reward my students for hard work, great choices and good behavior. These necklaces are a CHEAP and versatile way of rewarding my little friends.  

The Apps We Smashed Last Week

I had a GREAT time during my week at TCEA 2015 #learnanywhere!  I couldn't wait to get back to my little friends to try out some of the fun things that I learned!

App Smashing has been a term that we have used quite a bit in my classroom.  This involves taking two or more programs and using them together to make one product.  I am THRILLED to see that even my little Firstie Friends can smash Apps with the best of them!

In the last two weeks, I have been allowing the kids to play around with some of the Apps to see what they would do with them.  By far POWTOON has become a fast favorite!  They love, Love, LOVE making movies! Especially movies with their voices in them.

Powtoon

To SMASH this App, we used AudioBoo, Powtoon and DropBox to create videos from our review of seasons and weather. YES, my FIRSTIES were able to do this!  (I actually guided three of the more tech savvy kids and they helped the others!- It was GREAT!)

First, the kids recorded themselves using AudioBoo.  Since we use Edmodo as a launch for all of our online "Stuff", AudioBoo is the best for voice and sound recordings for us.  There are LOTS AND LOTS of alternates out there. That's a blog for another day.

After their recordings were saved, we moved them to DropBox (Admittedly, I moved them to dropbox to save time and headaches.) I am sure that any cloud service will suffice. Again, another blog for another day...LOL

Once we had our recordings in a place where they were accessible, we started our videos on Powtoon.  The kids had LOTS of fun adding their facts to their videos and putting the animated characters in.  There were lots of laughs all around!!

Check out E's Powtoon on the 4 seasons!  She did an amazing job!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb-94okafaA

The Raspberry Pi Solution

The Raspberry Pi Solution

RaspberryPi.org

Recently, I was wandering through the booths at SXSW in Austin, TX trying not to think of the LONG torturous day that lay ahead of me while my teen-aged boys and their friends were playing games and screaming like 10 year old girls over YouTube stars that I will never remember.  My wanderings took me away from the Gaming Expo over the SXSW CreateATX!  If you are in the Austin area and have even a passing interest in the Maker movement, this annual FREE event is not to be missed. I was excited to see a familiar logo when I entered the main pavilion. The folks from Raspberry Pi were in town showing off their product and giving some great ideas to those of us familiar with it.

If you have never heard of Raspberry Pi, you are in for a surprise!  Raspberry Pi is a fully operational computer!  All you need is a USB mouse, keyboard and some type of   HDMI video monitor.  I now have a couple of these in my classroom arsenal.

Click to find out more about Raspberry Pi

While talking to one of the reps for this company, I found that the philosophy that I had developed was right in line with the company's-- this device could possibly be the answer to the problem of families not being able to afford a computer.  Raspberry Pi is not going to be a threat to any high powered desktop by any means, but it can definitely give families access to the internet, experience with coding, access to streaming media and some limited gaming.  Personally, other than running the online version of Minecraft, I haven't found many things that I can't do on the Pi. (Raspberry Pi comes loaded with MineCraft Pi- a version of
MineCraft formatted for the Linux OS).

The Raspberry Pi costs about $40 on Amazon.  At this price, I really don't worry if the kids do something to mess it up.  I simply reformat the MicroSD card and re-install the operating system.
I found a few places online that sell touch screens for the Pi and am in the process of making little tablets for my kiddos.  I also have one dedicated purely to running my ClassDojo on a TV that I got really cheap at a pawn shop.

There are many other uses for Raspberry Pi-- especially if you are into Making and Tinkering. I found so many things that I want to try with the Pi on Pinterest but there are many websites and youtube channels dedicated to programming and creating with the Raspberry Pi.  If you have one (some) and have a cool use for it, drop me a comment or if you decide to give this product a try drop back by to let me know how things are going for you. Check out my Pinterest Board if you are looking for ideas.

BTW......One other thing that I am tossing around is hosting a "Build a Pi"  computer class where our families can pay $50-60 and walk away with a ready to use computer.  My biggest obstacle (in my mind) is that people will not want to pay that much... BUT if they will be walking away with a touchscreen computer, maybe it will soften the blow...LOL. What do you think?

Grand Central Station

A visitor to my classroom asked me how in the world I keep up with six reading groups, four math groups and all of the little projects that we have going on.  One of my little ones piped up and said "It's like Grand Central Station in here!"  Of course the person had NO CLUE of what the student was actually referring to until I gave her the tour of our project/problem based learning environment.

So here is our
GRAND CENTRAL STATION

This board is about three years in the making and still improving.  In my classroom, students are given projects and items that they are to work on through the week to practice skills or apply those skills into practical problem solving projects.  Visual reminders of  what they need to accomplish are placed on the board as they are assigned along with a basic example and options for publishing or sharing their learning.   

For each assignment, I make an example of basically what should be done. students are encouraged to go above and beyond what I did in my example.  The assignment is given a number and pinned to the board under the subject and "I can" objective for that assignment. 

Once an assignment is complete, students place their products in the basket with the corresponding number.  Sounds complicated but it has been a LIFESAVER!!!  Students no longer wander around looking for a place to put things, AND if there is ever a paper found around the room, students put that paper in the basket for the assignment.  If a paper is missing, students check the basket first and are usually relieved to find their papers.

The baskets above are for turning in any assignments 

that do not "live in" a journal.  Below are our journal

baskets.  We have 6 different journals that are used daily- 

"Reading (I keep those with my Guided Reading things), 

Word Study, Science, Poetry, Math and Writing 

(those are kept in the Writing Bins)

Below the turn in baskets, are our individual work tubs.  Here is where they keep any work in progress.  I also put extra practice or challenge work in these if I need to.  (I am almost ashamed to draw your attention to these-- such a mess!!)

Objectives for assignments are pinned to the board near the assignment so that students (and visitors) know what we are learning with each project.

My students are really into technology and using
the computers/devices to publish their work.
I try to give them a variety of ways to publish their writing.  I have made a picture icon for each of our programs/apps and slip the featured app in the clear pocket.  Students can always use other approved apps.

"App Smashing" is the new buzzword in my classroom.  Even my little ones love to see what they can come up with by mixing two or more apps.  Here I given them visual reminders of the programs to use and a challenge "SMASH" along with some of our "Anytime Apps" that they can use at any time during the day.

Free choice reigns supreme in my classroom.  My students are given the freedom to pick what things they want to work on and when to do that.  (Sometimes it does come back to bite me because they are very strong minded little people.  But, I have to weigh the overall benefits to allowing such freedoms. So far the benefits have FAR outweighed the negatives. Our little corner of the world is a happy and safe place where my students can make their own choices and experience the effects of those choices (positive and negative) in a safe and nurturing environment.