"Get Back to Your Seat!"

How many times a day do you hear yourself say (or shout), "Get back to your seat!" or "Raise your hand"?

Probably more than a hundred times, and more than likely, you're saying it to the same student, over and over and over and over.... What do you do?

I am a HUGE fan of self-monitoring. If you don't know about this strategy:

 "The ability of a student to self-monitor his or her performance is a natural step toward becoming independent, which can only happen when students take responsibility for their own behavior and essentially become “agents of change” (Hanson, 1996; Porter, 2002; Rutherford, Quinn, & Mathur, 1996). Self-monitoring is defined as the practice of observing and recording one’s own academic and social behaviors (Hallahan & Kauffman, 2000; Rutherford, Quinn, & Mathur, 1996; Vaughn, Bos, & Schumm, 2000). Being able to self-monitor reflects a shift from reinforcement by others to self-reinforcement of appropriate behavior (Hanson, 1996). " 

Click here for the full article

By fifth grade, students should know the basic rule to not leave their seats without permission. We have many students who are up from their seats several times a day, as well as students who constantly ask to get up for the bathroom, water, sharpen their pencil, etc. during the middle of a lesson. The disruptions are just totally outta' control!

Tomorrow we are going to start using tally cards. These can be used for any reoccurring behavior at any grade. Whenever the student is doing the behavior, you just say, "tally", and they will tally on their index card. For some students who have multiple behaviors, they may need more than one tally card or a tally sheet. Every day, they get a tally card and tape it to their desk. They write the behavior they are working on and set a goal (i.e: less than 5 tallies). Implement a reward system for making their goals. We did this in second grade and it really, truly worked. Made our lives so much easier too.

Example of a student's tally card (she needs practice with the > sign ;)

Now where do you put all of these tally cards? I have seen teachers file them for the week or month to use at parent conferences, but we wanted the students to be responsible for them. I made this box for students to drop the cards in every day. Each day there isn't a card from the student, they miss 5 minutes of recess. 

All I did was take an old tissue box and cover it with card stock. I traced the box onto the card stock and cut then glued it onto the box. Added two index cards and boom! Done within twenty minutes. Again, our goal is to make the students completely responsible! They must get a tally card in the morning and turn it in by the end of the day. In 2nd grade, students had to take their tally sheets home each day and have a parent sign/write comments. 

SUPER easy! 

Boomwhackers! A Classroom MUST-HAVE

Have you ever heard of Boomwhackers? 
Before last week, I hadn't either! Boomwhackers are percussion tubes that are tuned to musical pitches by length. They're also colorful which makes them so much more fun.

Obsessed with ROYGBIV!

For my Integrated Arts class at UCF, we had to create a math lesson with arts integrated, but really, the students have to learn through the arts, not just with. 
What's the difference?
When I think of with the arts, I think of arts and crafts, like creating a colorful book describing the water cycle. Although this incorporates art, students are not learning through the arts. However, creating a song to describe the events of the life cycle of a butterfly is considered through the arts.  Also, consider the fine arts: music, theater, visual arts, sculpture, literary arts.

Ok, back to the Boomwhackers/Math lesson.  My fifth graders are learning place value and some of them are having a really difficult time when asked what place a specific digit is in. After reviewing their homework from the night before, I broke out the Boomwhackers. 
Make sure students "bang" or "strike" the Boomwhackers on their hands, legs, etc... Not on each other :) Or the table or corners of desks. Because they are plastic, they bend and crack easily and this totally messes with the tuned pitch of them.

I made this poster as a key and each color coordinates to the Boomwhacker.
This also taught students the different notes of each one.
For this specific place value lesson, as a class we assigned
each color a different place value position.

 We used the poster above to go over the different colors and sounds. We also talked about pitches and how our voices can make high pitches and low pitches. Our musical learners shared some great knowledge too. For the younger grades, I would definitely spend more time explaining pitch.

Then I wrote a number on the board. START SMALL! 

For example, 6.43

The ones group (teal) struck their Boomwhackers 6 times.

The tenths groups (yellow) struck their Boomwhackers 4 times.

The hundredths (red) groups struck their Boomwhackers 3 times. 

I had to count for them in the beginning to get them all on the same beat.

So for 6.43, I would count:
 "5,6,7,8:
1,2,3,4,5,6,
1,2,3,4,
1,2,3."

This helped A LOT.

Once they get the hang of it, start using larger numbers. We also played with the numbers too, because obviously a number like 757.757 sounds better because it is a pattern :) Eventually, I didn't have to count anymore.

The students LOVED this lesson, so did my supervising teacher. 

These Boomwhackers are VERY affordable and so useful in all grades!

 I taught a lesson in first grade using these for patterns. In groups, students made patterns out of colored paper (the paper coordinated with the Boomwhackers), then the groups came to the front and performed their pattern. 

Here they are mid-strike! 

Lovin' the Boomwhackers!

Again, mid-strike!

Click here for the Boomwhackers' educational uses, videos, and sample classroom ideas. Enjoy! Pinterest: Boomwhacker songs and ideas