Sometimes there’s no time to turn the laptop on, projector, connect everything…so when I want to go over everything quickly or on the go, I turn to my little cards. All I did to create these was print out my slides two-to-a-page and put them on a ring. So simple, but does the job!
Now that they have learned the rules and we have gone over them a million times (this helps to prevent problems so you don’t have behavior issues to begin with.) I then bust out our clip chart. I LOVE using a clip chart. I started using one after a saw the success that my teaching partner was having with her class. Some people aren’t fans of the clip chart. I say it’s all in how it’s used. I think if it’s used just to point out the bad, it’s not going to help anyone. I try to use it as an incentive to following the rules. My goal isn’t to bust the bad kids and have them clip down (although sometimes that’s needed) my goal is to catch those kids that are doing the right thing and have them clip up.
When a student clips down, it’s also important to remind them that they can always go back up again. This keeps students from breaking down and giving up on the whole day. The possibility is very real that they can go back to green and very likely go above green.
LONG ago I used the green, yellow, red card system and did not like that one bit. The reason being that the kids that behaved just stayed on green the whole day…every day…all year long. The ones that broke the rules were the ones who got to go up to change their card. That seems to defeat the purpose of having a behavior chart. It felt like it was reinforcing negative behavior. Not good.
My behavior chart looks like the one below. I also created a chevron one. I am a fan of both polka dots and chevron by the way 🙂
Now how to communicate how each student did each day with parents? Well, I used to send home a parent log and the children colored a circle for the color they got to that day. Unfortunately, these got lost right around Tuesday or Wednesday (even when I gave out prizes for holding on to theirs). I knew I had to make a change. The change I made was to create these small notes that get to go home with each child every day. They are formatted four to a sheet, but can be shrunk down to an even smaller size using your printer settings. Parents love knowing how their child did at school. The red ones rarely go home because if someone got to red, I will most likely call home. But sometimes I can’t get a hold of a parent, so I will write a note on the back and ask for a signature. EASY parent communication! My favorite part is handing out the pink and purple ones. The students feel so proud! Again, the goal is to send out positive ones because the children had all day to get back up from yellow, orange, and red, throughout the day.