Do You Dojo?

So, today I was at a meeting where our ELA committee was working on creating some units to use when teaching common core standards next year. While we were discussing what to include in this unit for first quarter, somehow one of the teachers mentioned how she used Class Dojo in her room for behavior management. Now, I had never seen this program in action and as she was showing us, I must admit I was a little jealous that I didn't personally stumble on this little beauty!



Let me tell you how it works, in case you are like me and haven't seen this puppy in action yet! On the website Class Dojo you input all your students' names and assign them an avatar or upload their photos. Then you choose which behaviors you want to use both positive and negative. I used the clip chart this year, so I chose behaviors that I would typically move clips up or down for. Such as, being respectful, participating, staying focused, or on the negative side something like being disrespectful, disruption, or getting out of their seat.





Once everything is set up online you can also add the app to your smart phone and you can award points or take them away from your computer or from your phone. So you can Dojo wherever you Go-go! Lol  I plan to use this next year and will just keep it open on my ENO board all day and minimize it if we are doing something else. It "dings" when you award positive points and "buzzes" if you take away a point for a negative. When the students hear the ding or buzz they are automatically paying attention to see who it is and make sure they don't get buzzed.

The best part of all this is that it keeps the data in the form of a report card so you can easily look back at what their behavior has been like over a period of time. Also, my friend who uses this said she lets the student with the most points for the day choose a coupon from her jar. They say things like sit in the teachers' chair, get a free pencil, take the line leader job, etc.

 I am really excited to give this a try next year. Let me know if you Dojo in your room and if so how do you reward your kiddos?

End of the Year Fun!!

We had a Summer Fun math night at our school that was a blast for the kids! We had different stations that taught them math games they could play this summer to practice math.

We had a beach ball station where the kids got to have a mini beach ball and they would write numbers on the different colors. They would toss the ball in the air and catch it with two hands. Whatever numbers their thumbs landed on they would have to add, subtract, multiply, or divide depending on their grade level.

We had dice game packets for primary and intermediate and we gave them those and a set of foam dice. These are games we had already been using in our classrooms, but we wanted the parents to have a chance to learn how to play and also to give the kids the materials they would need to play.

We use ixl.com and the EnVision online resources at school, so we also let parents come to the computer lab and see how they work. We had the kids write their logins and passwords on an index card to take with them.

We also had food! One station allowed the kids to make their own ice cream, but first they had to help measure out the correct ingredients.

At each station, the kids would collect a fake coin.They had to have 4 coins to buy a slice of pizza when they were all done. :)

It was a great night and the kids really had a ton of fun!

The last week of school we had 2 awesome days of fun also. We took an all day trip to a park that has water sprinklers and the kids played on the playground, got in the water, and we had a picnic lunch. It was so much fun, and a great way to spend one of our last days together as a first grade family!

Finally, we had our End of the Year PBIS celebration. The kids live for this day! We rent a big bounce house obstacle course. We have a face painting station, the playground, the kids can play "Just Dance" on the wii or sing Karaoke in the gym, and we had the parachute and some relay races. We move from station to station. The only kids who can participate in this part of the day, are those who have had no more than 1 detention and no office referrals for the month of May. After 1:00 we have all made it through the stations.  We had a game of Minute to Win it in the gym. All students were invited to the gym to watch and the names we drew for the kids to participate were those students who had not had a referral or detention all year. The kids enjoyed cheering for their friends even if they didn't get to participate themselves. :)

Here are couple of students playing "Chocolate Unicorn". :)

My last thing to share and then we are all caught up...my gift to my kiddos on the last day of school. Inspired by Pinterest once again...

 I folded a piece of construction paper to make a little pocket. I added a packet of Kool-aid, a crazy straw, a picture of our class, and a letter to the student. :)  
(Sorry I couldn't make the pic turn right side up!)

Well, if you followed this to the end then thanks for sticking with me and sorry for the super long post. We are all caught up for the school year and I am ready to start blogging about some new awesome ideas that I plan to work on this summer! 

Happy Memorial Day!

We had a "Moo-velous" time at the Dairy Farm!

On to my next post to help catch up the fun from the year...in April my student teacher had to teach a unit with at least 10 lessons. We had already planned to take a trip to a dairy farm and so she did a unit on dairy cows and dairy products. It was so much fun!



We of course started out with a word web to activate their schema.





We let the kids do their own writing based on the things we had learned all week.



We were working on collecting and organizing data in EnVision Math so we tied it in to dairy products.



We also made some really cute cow art...inspired by Pinterest!

There are no dairy farms in our local area, so we took a bus trip to Fair Oaks, Indiana to the Fair Oaks Dairy Farm. If you live anywhere close to this and have not been there....check it out here!! They have tons of things to do there! We went to a cow museum that told us more about cows and the farm. We also saw a 3D/4D movie. The kids loved this because they got 3D glasses but there was also wind, and we got wet a few times. :) They had lunch there and we got to taste milk and ice cream actually made at the farm. And the best thing was going on a cow bus tour to see where the cows are kept and seeing how they are milked. You can even see a calf being born, but unfortunately we ran out of time before we got to see that. It is a definite must for next year!

   

         

After we came back the students got into small groups and each created a powerpoint slide with the help of an adult to create a presentation about our trip and what they learned (Hello Common Core!) and we chose 2 students to present it to some classrooms around the building and even at our Board of Education meeting. They loved it! It was an awesome field trip and we really had a "moo-velous" time!

 

Good to be back!

Wow! I can't believe I haven't posted anything since February! Part of it was being busy with school and family and the other part is just plain being lazy. I have taken pictures of things with the idea of posting it to my blog and then just never gotten around to it. So, this post is going to be a from a while ago and then I will just keep adding posts until we are all caught up. LOL

In March, for ISAT state testing, 1st grade was in charge of being cheering buddies for our 4th grade students. A couple of the things I made for them were...

I made this smile face with our di-cut machine and then stuck the air head in the mouth like a tongue sticking out. LOL



"Don't Worry...Be Happy!"

I also loved these little smartie pants that I saw on pinterest, so I had to make them too! :)



I copied the pant clipart onto blue, red, and yellow paper and then cut out 2 pieces and stapled them together. I then taped the message on the front and stuffed the smarties into the pant legs.



Be a "Smartie" pants on the test!!

On the Monday before the testing began, the 3-5th graders were invited to have a donut breakfast in the gym. The first grade classes practiced a couple of ISAT cheers and read them to the kids. They really liked it! But, the best thing of all that morning was our "Flash Mob". The teachers planned to just randomly start singing "I Will Survive" the ISAT test. It was hilarious and the kids started clapping along. I think we really got them all pumped up and ready for the test. Of course, we won't know until next school year how they did, but hopefully they felt confident and ready to do their best on the test!



Come back tomorrow to learn about our best field trip ever!  It's so good to be back!!

Little Bit of This and That...

Well, I have been too busy to post so here is a little of this and a little of that of what we have been doing in our classroom. :)

First of all we had 100th day on February 1st. We had fun activities with the Kindergarten in the gym. We did things like counting to 100 by 1's, 5's, and 10's. We also grouped the kids into tens and had them dribble the ball, jump rope, and walk in circles by 10's. We then had them jog in place, do jumping jacks, and remain silent for 100 seconds. We ended the activities by having the kids get into the 100 formation. It isn't perfect but hey they are in Kindergarten and 1st grade! LOL

We also created a gumball machine with 100 gumballs inside. Each student cut out 5 gumballs and we placed them into the machine 5 at a time to count by 5's.

This is the machine my son helped me draw. LOL  He even came up with the saying to put inside. Thanks Chase!

Here is our finished product!

We also wrote predictions for groundhog's day. The students had to choose if Phil would see his shadow or if he would not see his shadow.  On Thursday, we made our groundhog craft to hang with our predictions. They turned out pretty cute. :)

Finally, last Thursday the 9th, we had our first official Family Reading Night. We had a theme of "Wild About Reading". We had a jungle theme with monkeys, lions, tigers, bears, and giraffes. We fed the families hot dogs and chips and then the kids went to four 15 min. stations. They could hear the story "Where the Wild Things Are" and the librarian dressed up as Max. We also had a making a book mark station and a room with sight word bingo. Also, we had a room where the kids would listen to the story and draw what they were visualizing. Overall, it wasn't a huge turn out but it was fun!

Well, we will see how this week goes with Valentine's Day on Tuesday and then I have a double birthday party on Friday!!  : P











Snow Much Fun in First Grade!!!

We had our P.B.I.S. grade-level celebration on Friday. Since we had been talking and writing about snow all week we decided to create some "snowy" stations for the kids to rotate through. We had 2 stations in my room and 2 in my partner's room. In my room we read "snowy stories" in one station and made "snow" in the second.

We read the story One Snowy Night  and also the The Missing Mitten Mystery in one of the stations.

This was a big favorite with all the kiddos. One scoop of snow powder, 2 oz. of water, and poof....snow!! See the movie below to see it in action. :) 

You can find your own snow powder here...

Across the hall in my partners room they were having "snow" much fun too!

This is a powdered donut, a valentine candy corn, and mini chocolate chips stuck on with white icing. :)

The other station (that I forgot to get pictures of) was face painting. The students could choose a snowman or a snowflake to be painted on their cheek. :)

We really did have a good time! We have our 100th day of school this Wednesday, February 1st, so look for more photos and hopefully videos of the fun we had.





Awesome weekend and a Versatile Blogger Award!!

What an amazing weekend! It started with Friday when my entire class reached the top of my clip chart to Outstanding!!  We had a short 3 day week last week coming back from winter break. Instead of starting a new story we learned about Penguins. So on Friday, we had our honor's assembly and then watched Happy Feet. We also made a Blubber Glove and got to feel how it helps to protect the penguins from the cold.



Photo source: http://www.mrsjumpsclass.com/



We finished the afternoon off with a penguin art project from the Party with the Penguins unit I bought made by Chrisite at First-Grade-Fever.  They were easy for the kids to cut out and put together and they are absolutely adorable! 

Anyway, the kids were fantastic and it started my weekend off just the right way! After school we headed out of town to "Grandma's cabin" at Kishauwau on the Vermilion.  It was beautiful! My family of 4, my aunt and uncle, and my 3 cousins and their spouses spent Friday night to Sunday morning spending time visiting, playing games and having lots of fun and good food together. Hated to see it come to an end. :(  We are already planning our next trip!

When I came back I found that I had been awarded the Versatile Blogger Award by Traci at Dragonflies at First! :)

Here are the rules:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them. 

Thanks Traci for the award! I checked out her site and it is awesome...so be sure to stop by and become a follower!



2. Tell 7 things about yourself.

* I was a receptionist at a doctor's office when I decided to go back to college to get my teaching degree. I continued working full time until I was ready for my student teaching.

* I am a technology addict! LOL My new phone is an iPhone 4S and I also got an iPad 2 for Christmas. I also cannot live without my laptop....well maybe I need it a little less now with my iPad. :)

*I have been married for 8 years to the man of my dreams! I was planning our wedding at the same time that I was going to college, working full time and raising 2 kids. I couldn't have done it without him and I love how supportive he was through it all.

* I love to watch my children in their extra curricular activities...this is the start of a busy show choir season for my son and daughter. We also spend a lot of time at baseball and soccer games for my son and swim meets for my daughter.

* After teaching for 2 years, I decided to go back and get my master's in reading and literacy. My husband really wanted me to go for administration, but my heart isn't in that at ALL! So, I chose to get it in something I could actually use. :)

* My husband and my kids both think I spend too much money on my classroom. I love to make it homey because sometimes I feel like I spend more time there than I do at home!

* I like to be involved in everything...I can't stand to have decisions being made about things and feel like I don't have a voice in the matter. Because of this, I am on WAY TOO MANY committees. But, at least I know what is going on and can speak up if I don't agree with something. :)

3. Pass this on to 15 newly discovered blogs  and let them know they received the award. These are a few new ones that I have recently started following! I had trouble finding brand new sites because it is past my bedtime, but I will post more as I find them.  :)