Spark Student Motivation Saturdays

Today I'm linking up with Head Over Heels for Teaching for Spark Student Motivation Saturdays. 

One thing that I'm using to motivate my students this year are incentive charts. Luckily I've found charts that match my theme. I'm not using them for behavior though. We all know that sometimes students don't like doing homework or just don't want to do it. So I'm using my incentive charts to help motivate them with that. 

Every day that my students do all of their homework, they'll get a sticker on one of the little yellow dots on the chart. Then, when they fill up all the dots they'll get a homework pass.

I've used this method in the past, and it's helped immensely to cut down on missing assignments. And, in case you were wondering, the passes were ones I designed as business cards on VistaPrint when I was able to get the 250 business cards for free, so its also a very inexpensive motivator as well which is always a bonus.

What do you all do to help motivate your kiddos? Be sure to check out all the other great links for tips and comment below and let me know if you have any yourself!

Back to School Blogger Exchange

I was a part of the Back to School Blogger Exchange that Covered in Glitter and Glue hosted. It was like a Secret Santa for teachers for the start of the new school year. We each got paired up with another blogger and were told a little bit about them and then got to go shop for some stuff for them. My partner was Marisa from My Classroom Is My Runway. Her blog is awesome so make sure you check it out. I was super excited when I got my package from her and couldn't wait to get into my house and open it.

Sorry all, I'm keeping my address hush hush for now lol.

Then I opened up my package and read the cute note that Marisa wrote me. I absolutely adore that she even put graphics on it that match my classroom theme!

Finally, I dug into all the goodies she sent me. I am in love with everything and am already planning uses for everything in my room (especially the paper lanterns...they are totally adorable and I have the perfect spot to hang them near my curriculum corner and the dry erase pockets which I plan on using in my differentiated centers).

I really got a ton of awesome stuff... pencils, paper lanterns, a cup, stickers, erasers, post its, bird labels, bookmarks, nameplates, and dry erase pockets! I'll post a picture once I get my lanterns up so you can all see how awesome they look in my room! 

I must also take a moment to extend a very big thank you to my blogger exchange partner. THANK YOU Marisa! 

Be sure to click on the button at the top of this post to check out everyone else from the blogger exchange and see what they received too!

Classroom Setup...A Work In Progress

It's been a week since I was first let into my classroom. Alot has gotten done, but alot more needs to be done too...which makes me stress because we start our Back to School PD and training stuff on Wednesday, so my set up time will be limited. I still haven't gotten my class list yet, but I should be getting that next week and then the kiddos come back to school on August 26th.

So... here's the progress of my room...

First I built my shelves and sorted my books into their categories and bins (labels still have to be laminated and attached). I also built a garment rack to hang my flip charts/anchor charts from (at $9.95 it's way cheaper than the $300 it costs to buy the easel that hold chart paper)

Then I started moving around furniture... I moved these bookshelves and created a curriculum corner. I'll keep textbooks, reference books, etc over here as well as use it as a place to store my student centers and task cards.

I also moved my student desks into the set up I wanted them in. I will have 25 students in my class so I decided to go with groups of 5.

View from the doorway

View from the library

I kind of did things backwards and set up my desks before installing my bulletin boards, so I had to go and move everything around and now my room feels uber chaotic...

This will be my math bulletin board

This will be my social studies board

The small board is going to be for calendar, student jobs, etc and the big one is for reading and writing

And finally today I got the boards covered with fabric and put up the border too. I tried my hardest to get the fabric as smooth as possible, but as you can see the fabric won that war in a few spots. Hopefully once I get some actual stuff on the boards the wrinkles won't be as noticable. The goal for tomorrow is to get my room looking neat again and then work on actually getting some stuff on the boards.

Math Board

Social Studies Board

Reading/Writing Board

Calendar/Jobs board

Five for Friday

I'm joining up with Doodle Bugs for the Five for Friday linky party. So....here are my 5....

1. Moving in to my classroom.

As of yesterday, we were all able to start moving in to our classrooms. Unfortunately, the rooms haven't all been completely painted/cleaned/etc yet, so not all of us (including me) are allowed to set up our desks or put stuff up on the walls yet. I did at least get alot of my stuff moved into my room...

Ignore the way the bins are set up...they are out of order and not yet properly labelled.

2. My sharp pencil dispenser.

I jumped on the bandwagon and surfed through Amazon and found one of those acrylic straw dispensers, added some of my alphabet stickers to it and turned it into my pencil dispenser. 

3. Target sales/dollar section

I went to Target the other day, and got 2 class sets of composition notebooks and 10 books for my classroom for $40. The notebooks were bundled in packages of 5 for $3 and the books were in the dollar section!!! They were good books too...junior adapted editions of classic stories!!! The dice in the picture I got at Dollar Tree..packages of 10 dice for $1 each. I plan on using one class set of the notebooks for interactive math notebooks, and I'm not 100% sure what I'll use the other ones for, but I'll come up with something...I'm actually thinking of using it as an interactive writer's notebook for grammar and such...we'll see how it all turns out though. 

4. Wet 'n Wild

Two words... Water. Park. When you live in Las Vegas it gets HOT during the summer (we had a slew of days that were between 117 and 120 a few weeks ago) and I was just thankful that I made the decision to get a season Gold Pass. I went earlier this week to the water park and am going again tomorrow (and as many times as I can before the school year starts and my summer is officially over).. I can already hear the lazy river and the wave pool calling my name...

5. Home Depot & Sound Board

For whatever reason, when my school was built (it's only 2 yrs old), they didn't think to put bulletin boards in the classrooms. The past two years, teachers made due with using colored butcher paper and bulletin border stapled/taped/pinned directly into the walls. I For this upcoming year, a coworker came up with the idea of using sound boards to create bulletin boards in the classroom (which is awesome when you keep in mind the fact that actual bulletin boards can cost upwards of $100 a piece). I decided to do the same as my coworker and today we both went to Home Depot to buy our boards. The boards are only $10.95 and the bonus is that for what should have cost me well over $500, I was able to only spend $43. I left 3 of my boards at the full 4ft by 8ft size, and had the 4th one cut at Home Depot so that I will also have 2 4ft by 4ft boards as well. My principal loves the idea because its affordable AND the boards help reduce noise! So once my room gets painted, I'll be allowed to install my boards (more pics to come once they are up on the walls).

So what are your 5 for the week? Head over to Doodle Bugs and link up and let us know!

First Day In My Room...

It's August 1st, which means we were FINALLY allowed into our rooms today. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to do much because the janitors still have painting and floor cleaning to do, so until that is all done, we aren't allowed to do any desk set up, wall decorating, etc. I did take some pictures of my room in it's before state and thought I'd share them with you. I'll take more tomorrow when I go back to work and build my bookshelves and bulletin boards, and of course once we are given the all clear to set up I'll take some then as well. But for now, here's my room as it was when I first got in this morning.

First up...my room from outside my door. I was originally supposed to be in room 49, but got told this morning that they switched my room and put a 5th grade class in 49. I was a little bummed because 49 was a corner room near the bathrooms, but the fact that I'm in room 47 and the number 47 was my sorority number makes me all sorts of happy.

This pic is the view from right inside the doorway. Way in the back you can see my storage closet and my file cabinet. The piles of student desks and chairs are hiding my teacher desk. I do plan on keeping those three items where they are located now because I like the idea of having a little teacher's nook. You can also see the rain gutters the previous teacher put along the bottom of the whiteboard to display books. I've put in a request to have those removed because I really won't use them and they are already kind of falling out of the wall on the one end.

Here's the view of the front of the room from where I plan on putting my classroom library. You can see my teacher desk a bit better from behind the student desks. Also, I plan on using the side of the file cabinet as my display space for my kiddos brag tags.

This is another view from what will be my class library to the other side of the room. In the far corner where the black wheelie chair is, I plan to move the two book shelves that house all of my curriculum materials (you'll see those in the next picture). The horseshoe table I'm on the fence about. I've asked about possibly having taken out of my room, but we'll see... it's all going to depend on space availability once I get my room set up how I want it.

And here is the last spot in the room I have to show you...where I plan on putting my library. The vinyl letters were put up by the previous teacher, but I do like what is says. The janitors may or may not remove them when they come and do whatever painting they have to do in my room. We'll see. I'll be okay either way because I can always just design a poster through Vistaprint with the same saying. The computers will stay where they are (obviously they will get pushed up against the wall though) and the bookshelves in this picture are the ones that I will be moving to that other corner. The shelves I bought today will be the ones I put into this corner. I'm also stopping at Walmart on my way into school tomorrow to see about picking up a rug for this area. And, at some point in the relatively near future, I'd like to get a bean bag or two for my library area. 

So that's my room as of now. Let me know what you guys think/any suggestions you have for set up...this is my first year doing all of this so I'd love to know how you all set up your rooms too!

When Do You Go Back Linky Party

It's that time of the summer where all of us teachers slowly but surely all start reporting back to school, so I thought I would join up with Jessica from Literacy Spark for her When Do You Go Back linky party.

At my school, we (teachers, TAs, secretaries, etc) officially report back on August 14. HOWEVER, with all the crazy that's been going on with the new campus opening and the old faculty from my school moving over to it (or at least waiting to as the building hasn't been fully completed yet), we (the new faculty) have not had the opportunity to go into the building or our rooms at all this summer. The faculty that is transferring over to the new campus should have all of their stuff in the multipurpose room at this point so that it can all get loaded up and moved over within the next few weeks. So, we have been told that we can finally access the building and our rooms starting on August 1, so most of us are treating that like an unofficial teacher report date and are all heading in to get to work on our rooms since that only leaves us 2 weeks before our Back to School meetings, PD, etc all begin and only 13 days before the Parents Meeting on the 13th (no word yet on if they will be coming and seeing the classrooms but alot of us are aiming to have them mostly set up by then just in case). Students report for a Back to School Orientation Day on the August 21 (it's really only an hour so the kids can meet the teacher and see their rooms) and then the first day of school is August 26. 

When do you all start back to school? Be sure to link up with everyone else and let us know!

School Outfitters Giveaway

In case you didn't know, Farley from Oh Boy 4th Grade is doing a giveaway for $100 to School Outfitters. For more info and to enter the giveaway, check out Farley's blog post here.