Pom-Poms for Cheerleaders: Classroom Management

 

Behavior Management may be one of the single most important pieces to building a successful classroom environment. Being an inclusion teacher for many years provided me with a first hand view of various behavior support strategies; from clip charts to classic token economies. Honestly, there are many effective ways to support good behavior within the classroom! My favorite behavior systems, including my own, incorporate both immediate reward and immediate consequence. 

Introducing the "Pom Pom" reward system! 

Kids recieve a pom-pom for positive behavior and choices. They lose pom-poms for poor choices. Kids place their pom-pom balls in a clear cup. When the cup is filled, they recieve an award! 

You can see our cup chart to left. It's a shoe organizer from Walmart with clear plastic cups in each pocket! 

Reasons I love my behavior system:

1. Emphasis on the positive. I reward children ten times more than I take away. With a simple clip chart or color card system, you can only award so many times before they have reached their max. Kids in my room can fill their cups over and over throughout the day to recieve their reward (treasure box). 

2. The pom-pom bucket (pictured above) can be carried around the room, down the halls, assemblies, etc. This allows me to continuously monitor and award great choices. Kids simply put the pom-pom in their pocket until we get back to the room! 

3. You can throw them at children without any danger of injury. Haha! I love to pepper children with review questions during transitions or a quick five minutes, quickly tossing them a pom-pom for paying attention or participation! 

4. Research shows that immediate reward or consequence is one of the best ways to manage classroom behavior. Student are tangibly receiving something or tangibly taking something away. 

5. I love to give pom-poms to cheerleaders! To foster an energic and encouraging classroom environment, I love to heavily reward kiddos for cheering one another on! (Read my other post about Awesome Losers). 

The shoe organizer is from Walmart and the pom-poms were bought at Hobby Lobby; easy, cheap, EFFECTIVE! 

May I take your order?

Before entering into the realms of third grade general education, I was a special education inclusion teacher for grades K-5. While I participated in many different models of co-teaching, the main part of my day was spent teaching a small group in various general education classrooms. Most teachers would have 3-5 centers in their room running; one center would have the regular education teacher working on a standard and the other would have me working on something different (skills or spiral reteaching). Students would rotate at specific intervals through each center.

One question that I have heard posed on various occasions is this; "How can I effectively run centers without additional adults in the room to help?"

Ironically, the third grade classroom that I am now teaching is not the inclusion classroom, even though our students are heterogeneously mixed between homerooms. This means that I still have low students (Tier 3 RTI students) that need small group attention and remediation, but without the inclusion support of special education personnel. 

How do I address the need for small group attention without the convenience of additional help?

I use Menu Boards! 

Below are the top five reasons to use Menus for small group work, especially when there is not additional help for center time. 

1. Student Choice  You can read more about the impact of student choice on motivation here. Learning Menus allow students to choose from a list of pre-selected, pre-taught choices in order to accomplish a set learning goal. 

2. Accountability Most of my Menu options have an accountability piece (something written down or turned in). I do not grade Menu work. However, I do check it occasionally and reward students that follow directions and work hard! This helps me to make sure that students are not simply hanging out, drawing pictures, or writing random information; they are actually learning!

3. Independent Center Menu boards allow teachers to have an additional center where students are learning without the help of an additional person.

4. Planning Once Menus are set up and students are trained on how to use them; there is very minimal prep work! At my Word Work Menu, I change spelling words once per week. At my Vocabulary center, I change academic vocabulary once per week. Lastly, I give one multiplication test per week so that students can move to the next level of times tables for my Multiplication Menu (from 2s to 3s, etc).

I will emphasize that students must be explicitly taught how to perform each task on the Menu correctly. I have seen first hand teachers that quickly throw a new center activity at students, only creating more chaos and confusion than learning experiences! 

5. Routine I feel that routine is highly important to effective learning centers. Having the same expectations for center work each day minimizes confusion and time lost teaching new expectations or procedures. My students would know without me in the room how to do Menu work, because it is a consistent routine! They sit down, choose a Menu option, and do that option the entire length of the 15 minute center rotation. A SUB COULD RUN GROUPS IN MY ROOM BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS CONSISTENT! 

6. Multiple Intelligences I tried to make sure that each Menu covers two or more of the Multiple Intelligences. Using multiple intelligences to plan lessons or do center work increases the chances of my students being bought into their learning, and therefore, the chances of them learning the material! 

Below are pictures of my Menus and the Menu centers. Menu work can be adapted according to the age of your students and with your end learning goal in mind! For early elementary students, it may be a good idea to pair each Menu option with a picture of the expectation. Older students can handle more Menu options and higher expectations for Menu work. 

Groups vs Teams

Most of my education experience comes from teaching special education inclusion in an elementary setting. During this time, I grew to understand the importance of student grouping within the classroom and how it can help boost students to their next level of learning! 
I am going to describe to you the two types of groups/teams that I run in my classroom and explain why this method of student grouping works great for my kiddos. 

TYPE 1: Groups
I know what you are thinking... Duh!! Let me explain. I run groups twice per day, each time for one hour. We run groups in the morning for reading and again in the afternoon for math. Each group goes to four different centers (I will explain these on a later post.). 
My groups are set up homogeneously, also known as ability grouping. I use data from a variety of sources to create my groups; skills-based data from RTI screening and both formative/summative classroom assessments based on standards. I know its not technically data based, but I have also been known to move a kid or two up or down a group because of personality mixtures (Can't have two crazies in one group!). Below are some photos of my group work in action!

TYPE 2: Teams
Teams are seriously one of my most favorite things that we do in our classroom! Teams are heterogeneously mixed. I use the same data from our groups and spread kids from each level of ability into seperate teams. We use teams for projects, competitions, etc. When I first introduced my class to groups and teams, I explained to them that groups are for independent work, just at different stations around the room. Teams are for TEAMWORK (mind blown, right?). I explicitly taught students how to work as a team, and have created various team jobs that are changed every so often. The kids absolutely love working with their teams! Teams are awarded for winning, being Awesome Losers, and for teamwork! So, one team may win all three awards or it could be spread between teams, depending on performance.
Another side note, I heavily trained my students on the differences between the two types of groups (without telling them they are based on kid data). They know automatically what team they are in or which group to go to, and the different expectations for each! 

What do Alabama football, Minions, the Odd Squad, and a guy named Kevin have in common? They're our team names! Each team got to create their own! 😂

How do you use grouping or teams in your classroom? 

Some photos of teamwork:

     

Awesome Losers

Ok. How many of you like to lose? Anyone? That's what I thought. Losing is not ever fun, but especially if you love your team and you worked hard to win!
A little insight into my teacher brain, I LOVE to play games to teach. I feel that using games or competitions in children's learning creates an incredible classroom atmosphere! The only downside that I have discovered is that when students engage in competition, there is always a team that DOESN'T WIN.
<<<INSERT MAD FACES, STOMPING FEET, AND HATEFUL WORDS>>>
I have a simple, yet interestingly effective, remedy; teach your kids how to be "Awesome Losers". How do we lose awesomely?
I teach this strategy at the beginning of the year when we are learning new routines and procedures. I start by explaining the difference between losing bad and losing awesome. Bad losers (sore losers) stomp their feet, use hateful words, pout, cheat, argue, etc.
AWESOME LOSERS, however, congratulate the team that wins! Mind blown, right? It is something oh so simple! Nevertheless, if you neglect to explicitly teach it to your students, you will end up stopping games altogether due to students being horrible at losing.
I should also note that I like to heavily reward my students for being awesome losers. Sometimes really great losers receive more of a reward than the winning team!
Ever heard of teaching the WHOLE child? My kids now know how to congratulate others, lose with grace, and keep playing the game! Win, win. I mean lose, win. Or lose, lose? hmm..

Abracadabra: I Made Our ___ Disappear!

Here is my first REAL classroom centered blogpost! I am a little nervous to start sharing the inside of my teaching brain with you all.. feels a little like sharing my toothbrush..

My first adventure into the realms of teaching third grade was to make our DESKS disappear! All of the great educational bloggers that have went forth before me have done a "Classroom Reveal", so here is mine!

Below is a video with more details! 

http://youtu.be/exRnBvLgW48

Most of our day will be spent in centers during instructional time. However, when we do whole group instruction or independant work, students will use bath mats and clip boards to do their assignments! The bath mats can be spread around the room for testing, placed into clusters for small groups, or put together in the front of the room for lectures or videos! 

Can't wait to see the faces of my students when they come back after break to see their desks have disappeared! I anticipate that I will have to heavily focus on teaching them the new routine of a new style of classroom! I'll keep you posted! 

Teaching and Flying

In my mind, being a great educator is a lot like being a skilled commercial airplane pilot. We both go to school to learn how to fly our airplanes (make our students soar). We both have to continually study and learn advances in the art of flying (educational pedagogy.. and state mandated changes). A good pilot constantly monitors data (data), and makes sure their passengers (students) are safely on their way to their intended destination (success). Also, like piloting, education is hard; really hard, and important; really important. I mean lives are at stake here people! 

I actually believe that being an educator is one of the most hard jobs on the planet. We constantly must learn new things, never reaching the pentacle of knowledge or skill in our area. This blog is not intended to be a display of a person that "knows it all". I am simply sharing my classroom, while I learn and grow alongside everyone else in the field of education! 

My name is Lauren Tate, and I am a third grade teacher at a low income elementary school in rural Tennessee. Most of my experience comes from teaching special education for five years, and most of what I know comes from working with highly skilled teachers in an inclusion setting for students in kindergarten through fifth grade. My principal called me about a month ago and asked if I would be interested in transitioning to a general education third grade position after Christmas. I am excited to take on this new task, and most of my blog posts will be centered around sharing this new learning experience with you! 

Below is a picture of my family! I am married to the most amazing man on the planet, Tyler. We have a one year old baby boy named Ty! 

Question (Foreshadowing): Do pencils still disappear in a classroom with no desks to stash them in? (My next post will explain more! Stay tuned!) 

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