Day 2: Helpful Hints!

Hi Everyone!  I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin' for Day 2 of the "We Are Thankful" linky party.  I was SUPER excited about this topic for a variety of reasons.  First and foremost, I LOVE checking out everyone's amazing tips and hints!  I feel inspired when I see what is working for other teachers.

Today, I'm going to share a few things with you that I hope are helpful.  The first is a repost from last March but it is something that has saved me SO  much time. 
I used to use rolls and rolls of tape to hang masterpieces in the hallways at school. We have these terrible cinderblock walls.  To make matters worse, our district turns off the ac/heat on the weekends so everything that was taped is on the floor by Monday morning. It would take FOR-E-VER to hang everything. So this year, since I was going with a purple and blue color scheme, I laminated purple and blue paper, hung it on the wall (well actually I rubber cemented it :)) and attached clothespins. And voila, when you need to change out the work you simply unclip the work and attach the new work. This has been a HUGE timesaver. No more hours and endless pieces of tape. 

Here is a pic from Mrs. Terhune's First Grade that shows how she did it with a different color scheme but you get the idea.

Seriously people.....you NEED to do this.  I've had the same paper up for two years now and not a single one has fallen off the wall!


The next Helpful Hint is from a post I also did last March.....I was a busy bee back then!

I wanted to post a new behavior management system I started in my classroom after reading a FABULOUS blog post from The Teeny Tiny Teacher. You can read the post here. Well I only read the post a week ago but I fell completely in love with and had to make it right away! The general idea of this management technique is simple.....positively reinforce the students when they are doing something good. You do this in the form of "Gold Tickets" which are really pieces of yellow construction paper. I still find it funny that kids buy into this stuff! Anyway, you reinforce them constantly (I have over 200 gold tickets!)
"Oh Jennifer, I love how you are sitting." BAM, gold ticket.
"Michael, you are working so nicely." BAM, gold ticket.
The first hour of the day when I implemented this I had kids getting gold tickets probably every other minute. If they smiled or told me I was the BEST teacher, they got a gold ticket. Not really but you get the idea!

I jazzed mine up a little from the Teeny Tiny Teacher's but I'm just a little

OCD that way :) Sorry, I can't get the pic to rotate!

I made up a location to house the little nuggets of pure teacher bliss (aka: gold tickets.) This probably took the most time up front and even that didn't take too long. Here is the pic of that:

In the picture they look like McDonald's french fries

but I promise you they don't in person!

Now you may be wonder why the kids are magically morphing into angelic little children. Is it simply for a yellow piece of paper you ask? Why of course not! This, my friends, is why these little gold gems are working wonders in my classroom:

I hope these tips have been helpful to you!  Don't forget to jump on over to Blog Hoppin' and check out all of the other amazing ideas!  Just click on the picture below to get started.



P.S.  Deanna Jump commented on my blog post yesterday.  Can I just tell you it MADE MY DAY!!!!  Okay, I'm done being star-struck!