For part of my newsletter each week I feature a Leader of the Week! This is a student voted by the kids. It is someone who has exhibited the qualities of a leader all through the week. I find that kids are thoughtful about who they choose and because I ask them to be specific about these leader qualities it is also a reflection piece for each of them.
Here is the form I am using to have my students nominate a leader! I hope you can find a way to use this in your room!
Meanwhile, I need some help facilitating more leaders in my classroom, in the afternoon at least. So I have 26 kids in the morning and then in the afternoon I have 38. The kids are bonkers, I tell ya! I figured that some of it was the transition piece. They don’t each other all day and then are thrown into a room together and expected to stay quiet. The last couple of days I allowed some time for them to talk right when we return from lunch. I was hoping that this would help to get some of it out of their system. I am guess I am just asking for some ideas, some creative ways to keep 38 kids engaged and on task. Any ideas are certainly welcome… please!!!
What a challenge! I only have 31 at most right now. Rather than expect them to be quiet the moment they walk in, I set a timer and have an activity that starts the second the timer goes off that requires quiet. They have two minutes on the timer to copy the days agenda into their planner. Then when the timer is done, we do mental math. I say a problem, they have 3-5 seconds to write an answer then I say the next one. After we do 10, they correct it. The first few days I started when the timer went off even though they were still talking. They shushed each other and got upset about missing problems. I just told them I don't repeat it so they've learned to quiet down. I hope that helps, Hope.
Thank you for the freebie!! This is just what I was looking for! I have 24 kiddos in my ELA group and I thought that was a lot!! 38? Whew!
My students are VERY talkative this year and I started implementing a behavior plan I used a couple years ago (didn't need one last year). I set a goal of no more than 2 "tallies" on the board for the 80 min. ELA block. The class gets a "tally" if the noise level gets too loud during transition time or whenever and they don't respond immediately to my body language cues or chimes. If they do not exceed 2 tallies in a class period, they get a star on the wall and once we reach 20 stars, we will have a class with a "free time" of 20-30 minutes. I told them that we will save much more time than this in the course of 20 class days if they don't waste time talking excessively whenever they want. So far, they have received a star for 6 days in a row and I am being pretty tough on them. Works like a charm:) Hope that gives you inspiration!
~Holly
Fourth Grade Flipper
Thanks for the freebie! This looks like a great idea. I can't wait to try it out!!!
Shelly
thelandofglitter.blogspot.com