Door Signs-Pirate Theme

I had my first training for the year today. I was lucky that several teachers from my school were there, so I had lots to catch up with them:) It also made the training go by a lot faster than it would have! Going to this training today just made me realize how close we are to starting school, and I will be dragging my feet in the sand to go back this year! I've had such a wonderful summer with my family, and I have LOVED it. It was truly one of the most relaxing summers I've had in a while!

So with that little wake-up call, I decided I needed to start working on more things for my classroom!
This is for all my pirate-theme friends! I made my Where Are We? Door signs with pirate kids:) There really isn't too much to say about it since I already posted about them here!

If you like these, you can get them in my TpT store HERE.

OR you can get them in my Teacher's Notebook store HERE. 

Back to School Phone Book

Hello blogging friends! I worked really hard the past few days to get this out to you guys before some of you go back to school very soon! I kept up my iPhone theme from Mother's Day, and decided to make one for Back to School! It made sense to me since each app could represent something different for the kids to work on the first day! I'm really happy with how it turned out, and hope you like it, too! I'm planning to have it laying on their desks when they come in the first day. This will help keep them busy while I sort out their supplies, talk with parents, etc. Here is what is on the phone:

Rules-students come up with rules for the class, or there is a page where you can give them the rules.

Schedule- your daily schedule

About Me- questions for kids to answer about themselves and their family

Reading & Math- reading and math surveys. Also a page about their favorite book.

Grading & Homework-your policies on grades and homework

Travel- they tell you how they get to school

Glance at the Year- they write down what they want to learn, or you can tell them what they will be learning and they will circle which ones they are looking forward to.

About Your Teacher- questions for you to answer about yourself

Just for Fun- a few pages for the kids to complete for fun (word search, coloring, following directions)

You can get this in my TpT store HERE

OR

You can get this in my brand new Teacher's Notebook store HERE.

I hope you are all enjoying these last few days of summer! It's always so sad to see it go:( I saw this and thought it was pretty funny and TRUE:

I'm off to spend a beautiful Saturday with my family! 

Behavior Chart Freebie!

Hello! I just wanted to post a freebie for you!  I created these to use for my behavior chart, but then I decided to have a pirate theme in my classroom this year. SOOO I'm not using this anymore, but thought someone else might be able to. This is for one of those charts where the kids clip up or down depending on their behavior! One thing I didn't like about my chart I used last year was that red, yellow, and orange were technically "good" colors. This really confused my parents!! Ha! So I made this one where the positive colors are green, blue, pink, and purple. The negative colors are yellow, orange, and red. Print these out, glue to cardstock/construction paper and attach all the pages together!

If you want to download this, just follow the link HERE. Let me know if you use it! 

Dollar It Up!!

Have you seen this floating around? I laugh out loud because THAT'S ME!!! Target got me again tonight! I went in with my family to pick up groceries for the week and happened to walk by the dollar spot...

**Must apologize for these pictures. Our "nice" camera is broken, and I was too excited about my purchases to wait, so I used the trusty iPhone!

These dry-erase boards are perfect for my classroom store! 

A pocket chart!! Definitely not the quality you would find at Lakeshore, but STILL!

How cute is this?! Going in the store.

Batman and Avengers pencils for the boys

My kids are always needing to borrow erasers (especially April-May) so I bought these so "my" erasers would be easy to spot! 

Sorry for this horrible picture, there was a terrible glare! Whiteboards with lines! 

More bins, but they have 4 equal-sized compartments. Perfect for pencils/markers.

More cute erasers!

I also got some Dr. Seuss pencils. They have lesson plan books, grade books, more boxes, erasers, magnets, etc. I might have to go back...luckily my husband was super sweet to walk around with the kids while I browsed, but I didn't' want to push my luck:)

Classroom Jobs Update

I just wanted to write a quick note to let you know I added 6 more job labels to my Classroom Jobs set! So if you have already purchased it, be sure to download the new one! Here is what I added:

 I can't believe I forgot to add this one!! I have a jar in my classroom labeled "compliments". Whenever my class receives a compliment ("Good job standing quietly," "You're class was great today!" etc) they get a marble in the jar. Whenever the marbles reach the top, I give them a party. The kids LOVE this, and it really gets them to work as a team. I also tell them if they work together and behave for a substitute, I will give them 3 marbles! One person is assigned the Compliments Monitor job. The kids know whenever they receive a compliment, this person will automatically put a marble in the jar!

This is the student who brings me a band-aid when I need one to give to another student, runs to the nurse for me when I run out of first aid supplies, and they also know where I keep my nurse passes so they can grab one for me when I need to fill it out! It saves me a lot of time, and keeps me from stopping what I'm doing to grab a band aid for a small paper cut:)

This person pulls down the screen for me when I need it! This way I'm not walking back and forth to the front of the room, AND I don't have 5 different kids asking me to pull the screen down!

On another note, my wonderful mother convinced me to open up a shop on Teacher's Notebook! I'm slowly but surely adding things to my store over there! I will still have the same things in my TpT store, I just know some people prefer Teacher's Notebook, so I'm trying to help reach everyone! Here is the link to my store: Stickers and Staples at Teacher's Notebook.

Hope you all had a great weekend! We took a little mini-vacation! It was so nice to get away from the "norm" and have fun with my family:) It also means I should be doing a lot of laundry and unpacking today...but I'm choosing to work on my school stuff instead!! haha

Have you seen these?

I was on pinterest tonight, and I just LOVED these ideas! I wanted to share in case someone doesn't have pinterest, or of you haven't seen them yet! I've pinned them on my "school" board. I'm also doing this from my phone, so hopefully this post comes out okay!!

GENIUS!!!!! This is one of those moments where I'm blown away at the simplicity and practicality of an idea that I NEVER thought of! This is going to save me tons of arguments in my room:) (Or me trying to keep up with who's in line for the computer)

Setting of a Story

Every year, one of the first things I teach is setting of a story. I ALWAYS think to myself that it will be a breeze, and I can kind of fly through it. THEN good ole' January rolls around and when I ask my kiddos what the setting of a story is, I usually get...CRICKET CHIRP...aka nothing. Maybe a few will remember, but not enough to satisfy me! So this past year I decided to look up more activities for setting to help kids remember. I ran into some really cute things here and there, but it was hard to find a bunch of activities for setting! Everything had setting combined with story elements, which is definitely understandable, but not what I was looking for. SO I decided to sit down and come up with my own activities for teaching setting. It seriously has taken me 3 weeks or so to finish this because I added activities to the packet as they came to me! I ended up with 6 activities/worksheets. Here is a preview of what I came up with:

There are about 8 different pages of these. Students must look at the pictures and decide where and when the scene is taking place. They also have to tell what clues led them to their decision! 

This is an activity where students are given one of these cards, and they have to write clues about the picture. They will read the clues to the class, and everyone has to guess their setting! There are about 20 different cards.

This is the sample page I included in the packet. I chose to use this page so you could get a better idea of what I was talking about, but the blank one is included in the packet! Students will come up with a setting, draw a picture, and write a short paragraph about their picture (without revealing the setting). The boxes will be cut out, mixed up, and everyone will have to match the correct boxes back up.

 Several different characters are given, and students write a story about that character and create a setting for them! 

Brochures about 4 different settings for students to create!

Students will take the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and change the story. They will create a new setting for the story, which will probably force them to change the characters, scenes, etc. (you can't have bears at a beach!)

I hope these ideas are helpful, and if you would like to purchase this packet, you can do so HERE!

Setting Up My Classroom...

My mind has been on creating things for my classroom! I think I mentioned earlier that I'm doing a pirate theme this year. I'm REALLY excited about it, and I know that several teachers use a pirate theme, so I'm hoping to stalk look at other blogs for ideas! In the meantime, I'm thinking of procedural type things I can create to make setting up my classroom a little easier when I go back to work. Here are some things I've done:

Behavior Chart

You know that really popular one where the kids can clip up or down depending on their behavior? I found that last year, used it, and L.O.V.E.D it! Having a way to reward my kids who always followed the rules was awesome! Not to mention how many time I was able to put my class in check simply by saying, "Jack you may clip up!" Well since I'm going with a pirate theme, I wanted to use the same idea, just with cute pirate sayings/clip art. Here is what I came up with:

Sorry for the HORRIBLE photo! I made this at home tonight, and I had to use my iPhone to take the picture! I used "x's"to separate each color because last year I had SO many kids think they could be sneaky and put their clip halfway in between two colors (hoping I wouldn't know??). Every student will begin on green, and will move up or down the chart depending on behavior. 

 If a student moves here, they have had an EXCELLENT day.

 If they move here, they have had a great day.

 Every student begins on this label. If they stay here, they have had a good day.

 Broke 1 rule. They get a warning.

Broke 2 rules. They get a consequence.







Broken 3 or more rules. Note home, or office referral.

I created several different backgrounds for these labels because I just COULD NOT make up my mind on what I wanted. So for my file, I left them all in there in case you didn't want to use the colors. These are examples of the different backgrounds to choose from. I just pulled one from each set:

If you like this pirate behavior chart, you can purchase it HERE in my store! 

Where Are We? Door Signs:

I've always loved these signs on other teacher's doors that show where their class is. It sure does make it easy for me to track that teacher down! I'm sure you haven't noticed that I'm obsessed with these cute stick kids from scrappindoodles:) I wanted to create signs using those kiddos, so here are the 12 signs I came up with:

I printed them out, cut around the edge, and glued them to card stock. I punched holes in the top so I will be able to put binder rings on them. I'll hang it on the outside of my classroom door, and the cards will be able to flip around easily on the binder rings! I'll assign one of my students the job of changing this whenever we leave the classroom (probably my door holder)!

If you like these, you can get these HERE.

I hope everyone is still enjoying their summer! I've had a long week of working on things for my classroom...but swimming, splash pads, movies, and family time have definitely been in the mix! Talk to you all very soon!

Classroom Jobs

I had the privilege of having an AMAZING mentor when I was a student teacher. One of the first things she taught me was to give EVERY student a job. Every. Single. One.

Over the years I have seen the value in this as it makes every child in my classroom feel like they are an important contributor to our daily flow and function. They have made my life a breeze, and some days I truly believe my kiddos could run my classroom without me there! It's just amazing. It's also a great way for that one difficult student to know they are part of the classroom like everyone else! Even if they have a bad day, I still expect them to do their classroom job, and many times that seems to help whatever is going on.

I change their jobs every six weeks. I do this so each child has 6 opportunities to get that "dream job" they want. They also know when report cards go home, it's time to switch out jobs! I usually make them fill out an "application." I do this so I know what kind of job they are interested in, and it is an excellent way to show them that they WILL use their writing skills one day outside of my classroom:) It's important to encourage them to list at least 3 jobs they would like to have because the "dream  jobs" get filled up pretty quickly! Here is a little list of some of the jobs in my room:

This person makes sure my library is organized! They return books for me, bring books to the big library, and help make sure books are good condition! 

This person erases the board, and helps make sure the classroom is cleaned up before we go home each day! 

This person passes out all papers at the end of the day that need to go home! 

This is one of the "dream jobs" that I mentioned earlier! There are usually 2 hall monitors. They walk beside the line in the hallway to make sure students are quiet and walking correctly. They have a clip board where they mark an "x" next the the student's name each time they break a line/hallway rule. At the end of the week, if anyone is without an "x" they get rewarded! 

This person is in charge of passing out all the paper! 

This one is pretty self explanatory! The door holder is ALWAYS at the front of the line, unless they are holding the door! They wait until everyone is out of the room, and then they return to the front to hold the next door for us! 

This person is in charge of making sure Absent Folders get put on student desks, and for filling out the Absent Work worksheet for the student who is gone! 

This person makes sure all the computers are plugged in, and all electrical items are turned off before we leave for the day! They will also help me with computers, iPads, laptops, etc. 

This is the person who goes to the board to erase or add minutes for recess. If the entire class is out of control, I will announce they have lost 5 minutes of recess, and the minutes monitor immediately hops up to erase minutes from the board! Minutes can always be earned back! 

This student goes to the board to write down names whenever I need to step out of the room. They also help the substitute on days I am out. 

This student changes the calendar for us everyday. This is a great job to give to one of those students who would struggle with anything else! (you know who they are:))

Believe it or not, we have breakfast in our classrooms! This student is in charge of getting the trash bag for us, and making sure everyone's trash is put away!



I am actually in the middle of creating a new job chart for my classroom this year! Below is a picture of what I have so far. My old one just bit the dust, and it needed a little freshening up! I put the labels on library pockets and then I put popsicle sticks with student names on them in each job pocket. This makes it very easy to switch around every six weeks! 

If you like these labels I have for my jobs, you can purchase them in my TpT store HERE. I also left some of the headings blank so you could add your own job titles if you like!