Back to School AT LAST!!!!!

Back to work AT LAST The longest teachers' strike in B.C. history is finally OVER!  We're able to get back into our hastily-abandoned classrooms this morning. Three days to put things in some kind of order for kids' arrival Monday. Not much chance of classroom makeovers here this year.....

We learned in mid-June after we were at school that it would be our last day on the job until an agreement was reached. I'm SO happy to get back to work!

Here's what my calendar looked like when I walked into my classroom after 3 months. 

It was like the education clock had stopped cold. And I guess it actually did. 

Here's my classroom looked like.

 This needed tidying, but THIS is a bigger problem:

Yikes!

While we were off I made a few things to use this year at school. I posted about Incentive tags here. Last week I finished up a bundle with tags for every month of the year. 

I also made a mini bundle of Fall tags:

Click  here to go to TpT if you'd like them.

Loving my laminating machine. It's getting quite a work out the last few days as I get things ready to go back. 

This is what my classroom looked like after a few hours of work today. It's surprising what you can do in a few hours.

It's much better, but I think I'll have some weekend time.  My so-called desk area still needs quite a bit of organization.  I got rid of my desk last year in a bid to save room. I was totally disconbobulated for a few months, but eventually came to love it. 

More incentive tags and an October freebie

I'm going to talk more about these wonderful tags that work so well in my classroom. They have so many different names - Brag Tags, Behavior Tags, Behavior beads. Whatever they're called, I've found they are great for student motivation. This year I've decided to call them Incentive Tags because it sounds more positive than Behaviour Tags (which I used to call them).

I blogged about how I use them for Math and a freebie Math tag here.  

I used the tags last year together with my clip chart. Students got ONE point if they finished on GOOD CHOICES, TWO points for finishing on WAY TO GO, and THREE points if they ended on STAR STUDENT (I didn't dock them points for being in the red because I thought that might be too discouraging and have the opposite effect than I wanted).

I kept track of their points each day and a couple of times a month I'd give them chances to use their points to buy tags. I saw a great idea a couple of weeks ago from Elementary AMC that you can see here. She made classroom money to give out for the points. I am going to try giving out the money at the end of each day instead of juggling their points on a sheet, which was time consuming and could become confusing at times. This way each student can keep their own "money" and they'll know exactly how much they have to spend. With my tally system they were constantly asking how many points they had. 

I had some tags that were suitable for them to get for their points, but I needed more. I didn't want them to buy the reward tags that were for specific behaviours or accomplishments, so I decided to make monthly tags that they could buy. I couldn't believe how popular these became. The kids liked them so much that several months I ended up making two different tags. Here's a look at the October tags.

I made them in sheets of 20 tags. I'm going to put them in my TpT store soon, but if you'd like to get them free they're available  here for a short time. Just print, laminate, cut apart and hole punch and they're ready to distribute. 

I checked out the chains that I'd seen other teachers were using to hold the tags, but they're pretty expensive in Canada. So I made lanyards from parachute cord that I got from Michael's. 

Tie a loop in one end and tie a clip like this to the other and you're ready to go. 

I'm linking up with Joanne from at Head Over Heels for Teaching for 

To see more ideas for inspiring your students check out other blogs on this topic here.

Behavior Beads

I am excited to share these Behavior Beads with you today. They are from Run! Miss Nelson Has The Camera.  I think they are a great alternative to the Reward Basket that I've used for many years, but have never been completely satisfied with.

Here is a link to Miss Nelson's TpT store where you can find all the sets of Behavior Beads including a bunch of freebies. I couldn't decide between the Primary set and her original set for my grade two's - there were some in each that I wanted - so I asked her to make a customized set of 9 for me to go with the original set that I settled on to buy. (I couldn't resist a bunch of other sets, too...).  Here is a sample of 3 of the 9 customized tags in the set she made for me.

Other tags included in the set are Kind Kid, Top of the Chart (for use with behavior clip chart), Awesome attitude, Ready to Learn ( for use with behavior clip chart or for when students are displaying "ready" behavior), Looking and Listening (I have them show that they are listening by using listening eyes and hands), Perfectly Polite.  I am just so pleased with the way they turned out and feel a thrill every time I see them that I had a small part in their creation.  I am also happy to see that other teachers have downloaded them and have commented about their usefulness.
You can grab these at TpT on sale today by clicking here.  

Can you tell that I can hardly wait until school goes back in to start using these in my classroom?  I think that the kids are going to be really excited about getting them.