#7: Fresh Bulletin Boards that Don't Cost a Dime!
There is no shortage of bulletin board ideas in the online realm. But, sometimes the sheer volume of ideas can be overwhelming. Where to start? And, maybe most importantly, how much do I have to spend to have my boards Pinterest-perfect?
The good news today is that bulletin boards don't have to cost a thing! You can use things you already have in your classroom, office, or supply closet.
I wanted to freshen up my office with a warm welcome off winter break. I remember seeing a bulletin board online that said "Welcome back! The books missed you!"
Being a book lover, I wanted to bring this to my office. I considered how I was to display books... photocopy front covers? Tack actual books to the wall? Nothing was clicking, until I realized many of my hardcover books had dust jackets! I love books, but I find dust jackets useless, and I am embarrassed to admit I've often tossed them in recycle bins. Using the dust jackets on my bulletin board was the perfect place!
Below is the finished product! I can't wait to hear students look at the books!
Update: I had a teacher's daughter come in the office with her mom, and upon seeing the bulletin board, noted that she had never read the sequel to The Day the Crayons Quit, called, The Day the Crayons Came Home. I immediately went to my shelves and told her, YOU NEED TO READ IT!
She ended up finishing it before her mom was done making copies. She then asked for another book to read from the bulletin board.
Dear reader: nothing excites me more than to hand a child a book and welcome them to the possibility of a truly wonderful story. So much of my life has been spent at a library or a bookstore, or with my nose in a book. The biggest impact I can make as an educator, in any capacity in a school, is to share books with students.
Sometimes, classrooms and offices will need a placeholder. I caution to not let walls go bare until the next time you have a bulletin board to put up. There are many free downloads available online that serve as placeholders. I found the one below on TpT and my mom created a cactus out of construction and butcher paper. Easy!!!
#6: Mental Math for a Token Economy
I recently read a great reminder that the human brain works faster than Google in a variety of ways. Kim Marshall writes, "Retrieving a memorized piece of information – for example, 4 x 9 – is much quicker than opening a browser and accessing the times table. In addition, when students go to the Internet for information, they can lose the thread of solving a problem... in fact the National Mathematics Advisory Panel advocates 'quick and effortless recall of facts' as essential to math proficiency. "
For the last 6 months, my husband and I have been using a strategy for our 5 year old son, to encourage great behavior choices. Since we are a Disney family that attends the resort several times a month, our son
1. we never do,
2. it annoys us.
3. sometimes we give in to stop the asking.
#CanIGetaWitness
About 6 months ago, I was tired of the kids' poor behavior choices. As an educator, I have used several strategies throughout the years to encourage better choices with my students. I've used a token economy, clip charts, and Class Dojo. I thought, "what might work with my kids?"
Let's take a quick trip down memory lane... Disneyland once had it's own currency to use in the park. They were called Disney Dollars and you could purchase them at the ticket window. It was an even exchange, and no other incentive other than good ole Disney memorabilia. Disney Dollars were first used in Disneyland May 5, 1987 and stopped May 14, 2016. I never used them, but you can see the images on Google. I found an image with Daisy Duck on it, in $1 denomination, and printed a bunch out. I showed the kids that they could earn "Daisy Dollars" for excellent behavior. On the flip side, they could lose Daisy Dollars when they don't make good choices. On our next Disney trip, I tried to keep track of their paper dollars, but as the day went on, I noticed that my 2 year old did not care about them other than looking at Daisy's picture, and my 5 year old didn't want to hold them. So they stayed in my backpack and I verbalized the amounts they were earning or losing. Over time, my daughter didn't care about earning anymore, and my son was excited to earn them, and bonus, it was a motivator for better behavior choices at home, as well. A few weeks ago, my son got really into Star Wars. About halfway into his journey in watching the eight released movies, he decided he wanted a lightsaber. Lightsabers in one of the gift shops is $29.99. Given how infrequently my son plays with his toys, I was VERY hesitant to buy him another toy so close to Christmas. BUT, it was a great motivator to use Daisy Dollars.
Fast forward a couple trips and I
Now, if you're not familiar, A token economy is a system of contingency management based on the systematic reinforcement of target behavior. The reinforcers are symbols or tokens that can be exchanged for other reinforcers. There is research behind it that shows parallels to real life application, as well as building math skills in written form.
This is fantastic. I love it. TeachersPayTeachers sellers have a lot of cute and simple templates for this. I don't discount the written form.
My suggestion for this strategy is to make it verbal for early grades. When regrouping with larger numbers, the written form is very important. Showing great behavior or completing tasks may earn more than $1 at a time in the upper grades, so I love this.
I recommend trying the token economy in a verbal/mental math way. This could be a game changer!
#5: Desk Organization
First, purchase this tool box from Home Depot:
$16!!!!!
Next, go over to the holy grail website for teachers: www.teacherspayteachers.com and find your favorite labels.
Search for "toolbox labels." There are so many options! Mine were found here (and they were free!).
I printed on color paper to match my classroom theme and cut them using this slicer from Target...
And after some double-sided tape, VOILA!
#4: Volunteer/parent management.
If you're like me, I love getting help, meeting with families, and promoting active participation in a child's education. It starts with the family. What I don't like is having to try to fit everyone into a schedule and risk overlapping appointments or missing out on having a parent volunteer at all. In the past, I've loved using Remind, a free, text-based reminder for important class information - field trips, picture day, spelling tests, etc. This is a terrific tool, but it didn't set appointments for me. I still highly recommend this site, so if you haven't signed up for this free tool, do it now. I'll wait...
Okay, so now that you're all squared away on that, let me introduce you to:
- Use a simple wizard to build unlimited, free sign up sheets
- Choose from hundreds of professionally designed themes
- Upload your own image or logo to use on your sign up sheet
- Enter hundreds of dates in an instant using our recurring wizard
- Flexible page formats for dates, RSVP, or non-date specific sign ups
- Collect payments for sign up items or donations
- Every sign up contains a comment field for custom responses
#3: Live Data Using Google Forms
education, I'm constantly finding new tools for making this
career a little more streamlined. Enter Google Forms.
Check out this post from a Google Certified Teacher about the treasures found in Forms
My job requires me to keep track of attendance, grades, PE activity, etc. and Excel has never been my friend. Forms makes tracking this info so much easier. Here's what you need to know:
Google Forms is a free tool from Google that allows you to do the following:
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You access Google Forms through the Google Drive screen or the Google Forms web app.
You can use Google Forms with your personal Google account, or through a Google Apps for Education account. With a Google Apps for Education account you can also do the following:
- Require that respondents be from your Google Apps domain.
- Collect respondents usernames.
#2: Pinterest!
I love September. Its officially autumn in my head! School is starting (although we start in August now), and if there's one thing I love, its school. I am a lifelong student and hope I share my passion for education with others. Whether veteran or newbie, Pinterest had better be a bookmark, or better yet, your starting homepage. I can't tell you how many times I had teacher's block and Pinterest had my answers.#1: How Symbaloo will change your life!!Do you have bookmarks on your school computer and bookmarks on your home computer and bookmarks on your smart phone? When you use a public computer, do you wish you had your bookmarks in front of you? Symbaloo accomplishes it all! By putting all your bookmarks on the wondrous Cloud, finding your favorite elusive website is simple.Now that many of us use Chromebooks or other computers in the classroom, we want our students to get to the correct website and in a short amount of time. Enter Symbaloo!First, I create my classroom Symbaloo webmix of websites, called Tiles, for my students to access on my own personal Symbaloo account. Then, I share it to my Classroom Symbaloo account that my students have access to. This is where it takes a bit of time. I log in to each Chromebook or computer, login to my Classroom Symbaloo account:1. SAVE THE PASSWORD. This allows the student to be on Symbaloo without having to enter usernames and passwords.
2. Set Symbaloo as the homepage. If your school/district server won't allow this, then bookmark the Classroom Symbaloo page to the bookmarks toolbar for easy access.
This took me 20 minutes to do 27 computers. Not too bad considering I had to login to the Chromebooks first. But that 20 minutes was the best 20 minutes spent!
Not only does this cut time for accessing certain pages throughout the day, students are excellent tattletales and will alert you if a classmate veered off into a different website.
Here's an example of a Symbaloo webmix I use for my students and families:
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