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It is time for another "Diggin' Into Next Year" series. When you need to KEEP CALM AND TEACH ON, you need to have a
behavior system in place and start early. Read on to find some tips that may be useful in
your classroom.
Today I'm digging into the way I manage behavior. I have used
the color system before, where the students change their color (cards,clips,etc) according to
their behavior. This system is a little different. Before I explain how it works, I
would like to talk about its history, we call it the band system.
My colleagues
introduced me to the band system before the year started, I had not heard of it
before so I went to Pinterest,google, and TPT to find out how it worked. Since I did not
get any results, I asked my friend where she got the idea. She believes she
either saw it at a conference or dreamed about it! If you find it anywhere, could you please let me know. I would love to give credit to the author.
I have a bucket where I keep the bands. I created the charts according to my classroom theme. I also created one for my friend who has an owl theme (and that teaches English).
How does it
work?
We use
the whole brain teaching rules
as the basis. Students get 3 bands each morning, they loose a band if they are
not following our 5 rules, and get one if they are making good choices: helping
a friend, good attitude, good choices, standing correctly. At the end of the day, they record how many bands they have in their planners.
What if...?
1. What if
the students wants a particular band color? They can't
get a particular color, everybody gets three and the students are not allowed
to "trade" them with another person, or they will loose a band.
2.What if its
too tight for their wrists? It is perfect
for our 5 and 6 year old students. Also with time, they expand and fit even the teachers wrist.
3.Is there an incentive or tangible reward? Not always, the students sometimes get to go to the treasure chest but each teacher decides if they want to have a reward or not. I believe each class is different and this past year, my students were not motivated by prizes, they liked 5 min of extra recess, taking their shoes off, having lunch in the classroom, etc.
This system worked well for me last school year, especially when all of the teachers in kinder have the same system. It is consistent and simple. We use dot a dot paints to quickly record the color on their planners each day. It dries fast and it lasts the whole year!
Find them here
Every child is different I would like implement individual motivational ideas next year. Reading other blogs in this series have definitely been helpful.
At the end of the year I implemented a little mini store in my class. The last month of school was a little hectic, my students were a little antsy and I needed something different. I created a mini mall in my class. Each day, the students earned a dollar if they had more than 3 bands at the end of the day. On the last week of school, we open our store.
Half of the students were sellers with badges, store signs, and a manager and cashier and the other buyers (then they switched).
We even put elevator music! Each store or table had a different things, all things I did not need anymore and left over snacks, since we have snack each day. They had a lot of fun!
If you would like a copy of the signs, badges, paper money(if you don't have the play money already), I will have it soon on TPT, follow my facebook page, twitter and/or pinterest and I will let you know as soon as it is ready!
My fast finishers "bucket":
All you need is a tissue box and popsicle sticks. I created 35 activities for my fast finishers. Each monkey has a different subject: reading, math,writing, help in the classroom (help a friend, sharpen pencils, etc).
I emphasize that they have to do a good job before saying the finished an assignment, when they do, they simply go to the bucket and pick a card. I introduced this in December (when all of my students were already reading) and they loved it.
