Hi everyone, happy Saturday! Hope you are getting some rest and are not too frazzled over the upcoming hippity hoppity Easter day coming up. While you await the upcoming festivities, sit back and enjoy this little goodie I have in store for you.
Next year my school, no my district is adopting PBIS. Don't know what that is? Neither did I a few months ago. Yet is all any administrator in my district is talking about. It stands for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. Long story short is is all about giving more positive reinforcements than you do negative ones. A 10 to 1 ration is what my admins keep talking about. I know I tend to do this with my kids verbally, but there is a real push to do it in a more tangible and measurable way.
So all year long I've been working on finding a way to give my kids visual positive reinforcements in a way I can keep track of. My school has these fab POP (Positive Office Passes) that the staff uses when they catch the students doing something great. We check off one of the 3 objectives and the kid goes down to the office for a pencil or eraser. Something small. The secretaries make a big deal about it and the students even get to write their names on a poster in the office. the kids LOVE it.
However, at the start of the year I started using these when my students returned their homework. It REALLY motivates them. But also, because I am an ELL teacher and have a lot of students that don't understand English, nor any of our American customs sometimes the concept of Homework doesn't come across. The POP passes help me express that doing home work is good and important. Because of this I wanted to find another system, separate from the POP passes for my positive reinforcements.
Before I go on, I'd like to give a big shout out to a very sweet lady!
Katie Knight from Teacher to the Core
If you don't know this lady she is as sweet as can be, has a very funny husband, The Writing Pad Dad, and a very cute kiddo.
She also creates some pretty adorable and functional activities. One of which fits in perfectly with PBIS.
When I first read Katie's post I fell in love with this idea. Yet I struggled to implement it in my room. I struggled keeping track of the sheets I handed out, and felt guilty rewarding one student for something and not another doing the exact same behavior.
Then I found Terri's awards that coordinate with her Clip It Chart.
Again these were great for general purposes and I did use some with my kids. Even made some tiny ones and kept them on my desk for easy access.
However, if you remember I don't see my kids for the whole day. What if my kids didn't have a great day? Or made bad choices in their time away from ELL and I still wanted to highlight something about their time with ME. Also, I don't use a "Clip Chart". These were wonderful, adorable rewards, and I highly recommend them, but for my room, I needed something more specific.
That is when I found Katie's Shout Out pack.
Then I found Terri's awards that coordinate with her Clip It Chart.
That is when I found Katie's Shout Out pack.
In this pack Katie has created TONS of Shout Outs for students to earn. Take a peek at the table of contents in this sweet pack.
Each award comes in whole sheets and quarter sheets. Being the queen of half sheets I chose the Quarter size to save paper, but also cause my kids love smaller sheets of paper.
I found that I could make copies of several of these that I wanted to highlight in my room and keep them in a place that would be easily accessible to me but also highly visible to the kids. So I decided to put them up on my board.
I found that I could make copies of several of these that I wanted to highlight in my room and keep them in a place that would be easily accessible to me but also highly visible to the kids. So I decided to put them up on my board.
See them there at the top? All I did was copy them on to bright paper, and clip them together with a binder clip. I flipped on side up and hooked it on to a thumb tack on the cork above the board!
(This is an older picture with other awards but you can get an idea of how I store them.)
Here is a close up one I have been giving to the students who consistently turn in their homework.
There is more, remember I said that part of PBIS is measurable/ trackable data on who is receiving these positive reinforcements? Well Katie thought of that too. Included in the pack is a monthly tracking sheet. Saving my time and energy!
Katie has graciously given one of these packs to a reader of my lil old blog here.
Yes, I could make one of my own, but why do so when it is already done for me? I keep this at my table and just jot dow the name and award I handed out. Easy! Are you enticed yet?
Here is your surprise.Katie has graciously given one of these packs to a reader of my lil old blog here.
My question to you is...
What shout out are you most likely to use with your students?
Here is what you have to do...
Oh and yeah, have a great Saturday!
