Class Dojo!!! It is Awesome!!

I really enjoyed blogging through the summer.  As soon as school started....well, if you are a teacher you understand.  I must hand it to the teachers that can keep up with it all.  Common Core changes have really kept us busy at our school.

But here is what I want to share:
An awesome website that could be the answer to every teachers problem in dealing with classroom behavior!

Class Dojo:  Great Classroom Behavior Manager

It is a totally free website.  Setting your class up is simple.  You can assign students a private number where they can go home and change what their avatar looks like.  The next day, the class can see their new avatar. The students love it!

Another perk of Class Dojo is the fact that parents can check behavior daily via phone or computer.  The parents can see the percentage of positive and negative dojo's students receive.  Class dojo even individualizes behavior so parents can see why the child has negative dojo's . Examples include, disruptive, unprepared, etc...). You can also add your own behavior tags to personalize it to your classroom.  Another great thing is that you can leave comments to parents on what specifically the child did to receive a negative or positive dojo.  This is great for documentation purposes.  I can use it on my projector and keep it on my whiteboard when I am not using the projector for anything else.  If I am using my projector or Mimio, I can easily click on the Dojo window that is open and bring it up to add or take away dojo's.  When giving positive and negative dojo's, Class Dojo gives a postive and negative sound to go along with the dojo.  If students get loud in the classroom, I immediately start giving postive dojo's to students who are on task and the students get quiet immediately.

One of my main concerns was how to keep up with dojo's when students were in the hall, cafeteria, etc...Dojo can do this also.  If you have a cellphone, you can pull the website up and as you add or take away dojo's from your phone, it keeps up with it on the website.  When student's return they can see if their dojo's have increased or decreased.  I usually tell them in the hall, "That is a positive Dojo for Sally for walking quietly in line." or "Joe, you get a negative dojo for talking in the hall and being out of line".

We have worked out a reward system.  When a child gets to 10 dojo's per day they are rewarded with a prize, if they get 50 in a week, they get a larger prize on Friday.  

The students love it and I have seen a lot of them work hard to get their dojo's.

The parent's love it because they can see how their child behaves through out the day and see comments on behavior.

Teacher's love it because it is great documentation when behavior arises that must be dealt with on an administrative level.  (Reports can be printed and sent with the child if child is sent to the office.)  It also shows students immediate rewards or consequences and brings them back to being on task without me having to say a word.  

If you have any questions or problems when you start using Class Dojo, because how can you not start using it, emailing the owners of Class Dojo from their website has always been a positive experience for me.

I was excited to see this linky.  Since this is my first I hope I do it right.  Thanks to Ms. M I can share 4 new things I will try for the first time this year.  With Common Core coming along it seems like a season for something new in all aspects of teaching.

Ms.M's Blog

What will I try that is new to me and my class this year?  Well, lets see!

1. Anchor Charts!!  

Though I have used these once or twice through a year with my 4th graders I had not used Anchor Charts as much as I did when I was teaching a younger grade.  I really plan to put major emphasis on anchor charts this year.  I really feel that this will help my students continue to see and refer back to past lessons, skills, and give them a visual reminder of the content they have learned.  I have came across some really great teachers that use anchor charts and, thanks to Pinterest, I have found some wonderful anchor charts I hope to use this year.  My favorite blog on anchor charts belong to Tabitha and Chloe from Math Workshop Adventures . They have a huge assortment of anchor charts along with activities they use in their classrooms to go along with their anchor charts.

2. Mimio Capture

I wrote a grant and have had the Mimio for about a year and a half in my classroom, but I haven't had time to sit down and hook up the Mimio Capture part if this interactive board.  When teaching summer school this summer I decided I was going to pull it out and use it and WOW!! What an awesome tool I have now to go along with my new anchor chart craze.  Not only can the students and I create an anchor chart on the white board as I am teaching a skill to them, but when we finish the anchor chart, I can print it out for them to have a copy of it in their binders.  I was so excited about this new piece of technology that I just could not contain my excitement!!

3. B.U.I.L.D.

Thanks to one of my favorite blogs Adventures in Teaching, Cassie has given me permission to share her B.U.I.L.D. idea that is being used in her classroom.  It is a way of using the Daily 5 in a math class.  Though I have blogged about this before, I am still finding ways to incorporate this in a 4th grade classroom.  I have come up with a few things that I have shared in a previous post, but still would love to hear more ideas and suggestions on the topic.

4. STORIA

Oh, how I love this new app from Scholastic!  What a great way to bring content area reading into a Math/Science/Social Studies classroom.  This can be downloaded onto a computer, iPad, and "Coming Soon" to Android devices.  What I love about this more than any other reading app is that not only can the students read from their computer or iPad, but they can also choose to have Storia read to them.  Some books are also "Enriched Ebooks" which allows students to play games and answer questions while reading the story.  I downloaded the book Count to a Million which is an enriched ebook and my Summer School students absolutely loved using it, answering the questions about place value, and playing games while reading the book.  I can not wait to use this app in my classroom for the upcoming school year.

Well, there you have it. My 4 on the fourth that is 2 days late. I Hope I have shared something that can help other teachers and I look forward to seeing how other teacher bloggers will inspire me on this great little linky party!!  Thanks Ms.M!!

Great Lesson Plans from the NSA?  Who knew?

I am always looking for knew ways to present skills and concepts.  So a few years ago I was searching for a new and interesting way to teach measurement. To my surprise I came across the NSA website (National Security Agency) . Who would have thought to look here for a lesson plan?  (Or maybe I am the only one.) What a great unit I found on measurment.  It really incorporated so many things into the unit and IT WAS FREE!!  I would have never gone to this website to search for a math lesson plan, but what a great job the author of this measurement unit did.  There are great manipulative activities that go with the unit.  I did find a few things that once you printed out the activities the measurement that the teacher key had was a little different than the actual measurement.  I went back and measured the items myself and wrote the correct measurement based on what my students would measure.  The unit I used was actually found under the Geometry strand and it was called:  "Measurement:  Using a Ruler to Measure Sea Creatures to the nearest Eighth Inch".  My students really enjoyed the unit which made it that much better.  I will definitely check this site out in the future for more interesting units.

Time to unpack!! No, I haven't been on vacation, but will probably want to go after we begin unpacking the Common Core State Standards.  Seems tedious, but with the help of my fellow teachers there are a ton of resources out there to help us out.  I have wondered though, if this is the "Common Core"  and unpacking consist of stating the objectives with "I can..",  statements based on what we believe the standards are describing, shouldn't these "I can.." statements be consistent across the states?  I have read several "I can" statements from different teachers and different states.  They all seem to differ in one way or another.  Although these statements will be based on the same concept, it does make me wonder how many different ways these standards can be taught.  Will I teach them "rigorously" enough?  One of my wonderful teacher friends found a great little flipbook by McGraw-Hill.  The Common Core-Clarifying expectations for teachers and Students in Mathematics. 

Though I have shown the picture for the Math flipbook, it will not be available to order until June 22nd.  ELA is already available.  It looked like a wonderful tool to use while unpacking and stating these "I can" statements that we will use.  I will definitely buy a 4th grade math book when it becomes available.  It will definitely be a useful tool as we begin to dive into this new curriculum.

An inside look at McGraw-Hills The Common Core:  Mathematics

What have you or your school used to help you unpack?  Let me know!!

MY FIRST BLOG POST!!

I am so excited to join the "teacher blogging" community.  They have given me so much insight and opened me up to a million plus ideas that I just could not wait to join.  So here goes my first post!! :D

Overwhelmed!  That is what I am as I begin to apply the Common Core into my classroom.  There seems to be so many ideas and resources out there that I wonder what is the best.  This summer I have started reading the book The Daily 5.  I really love the ideas "The Sisters" use in their classroom with literacy.  I guess my biggest problem is how I can develop that into a 4th grade math class.  I do plan on using content area books in my math class more often than I have in the past.  I want to know the best way to lay out the day with my students as I attempt to incorporate a method of the Daily 5 in my classroom.

I LOVE PINTEREST!! So I have found this really neat idea from Mrs. Thompson's blog "Adventures in Teaching".  She shares some really great ideas that she uses in her math class.  She uses the acronym "B.U.I.L.D." as her version of the Daily 5 for her 1st grade Math class.  Buddy games, Using manipulatives, Independent reading/work, Learning about numbers, Doing math.  I have shared Mrs. Thompson's picture from her blog Adventures in Teaching below.

Mrs. Thompson's "Build" plan from her classroom.

So, I wonder how I can apply this in an intermediate grade math class.  I have used my white board to brainstorm ideas that can help me incorporate this idea in my classroom.

My "BUILD" Brainstorm

Here are some of the ideas I have for my 4th grade Math class:

B (Buddy Work)

Flash cards, Think Math Investigations, Kagan Games, Cooperative Learning folder games.

U (Using Manipulatives)

We use HSP Math which has a lot of good investigations that incorporate manipulatives.  There are some with each lesson at both an on-level, enrichment and remediation level.  This is my plan for "U".

I (Independent work)

Accelerated Math (This based on their progress) 

Problems of the Day, Spiral Review, Respond to Reading (see below)

L (Learning Numbers)

Math Vocabulary, Fact practices, Independent Reading (Math textbook, content area books) - this may get moved to Independent work.

D (Doing Math)

Study Island, Mega Math, Worksheets, Homework

So, these are my ideas.  Not sure how to make all this flow and still get all the content in for the entire year.  I will continue to research and hopefully receive input from others in the teaching community.