Classroom Management that Doesn't Break the Bank Part 1

I'm a huge fan of classroom economies and have been using and creating them for the past four years.  

 

If you're unsure what I'm talking about, classroom economies are an intensive based type of classroom management system involving fake money that kids can earn and loose money based on behavior, and they can use their money to purchase things within the classroom.

Over the years I've been asked if I feel that I'm bribing my students or teaching them bad habits through monetizing tasks and behaviors instead of relying on intrinsic motivation, and I think the age and perspective of my student is a huge factor in why I feel comfortable using a classroom economy.

I teach 6th grade and my students respond very well to the idea of school as their "job," so getting paid for certain aspects of school (coming to school on time and prepared, being a good roll model to younger students, turning in their homework, and doing their classroom jobs) really resonates with them.

However, there are certain things I won't pay students for like doing their work in class or being respectful to me and other students. They can also get charged a fine (usually $10) if they break our classroom rule of "do nothing to keep others from learning." 

 

"How do You Create Worksheets?"

 I recently had a student teacher reach out to me with the question "How do You Create Worksheets?"

I wasn't the first person they had asked, but they gotten a lot of very general answers like "in Power Point" or "on Google Slides." However, I got the impression they were looking for something deeper, more of a how to than a where.

I wanted to share my answer in case anyone else out there had a similar question.

 I start out with a basic 7.5x11 Power Point Slide since you can put the elements flush against the edge of the slide and still end up with a gutter when its printed off, and Power Point is also easy to upload to Google Slides if you decide you do want it digital.

 

I like to keep my lines clean, but I did invest in some cute boarders to keep things visually appealing. After I've fitted my boarder to the page I like to start things off with a catchy title that I can reference any time I need kids to get something specific. Every writing project and recurring worksheet I use has a title. 

When I'm setting up the formatting, I'll often use several text boxes across the page to break things up and create a visual transition from one part of the task to the next. For fonts I like to use something crisp like Calibri or Comic Sans (my fav because of its readability and formatting for the "a") since dyslexia is very common in the community where I teach.

On occasion I'll use a little black and white clipart along the sides to spice things up, but I usually find it just clouds the "lines" of the layout and makes it hard for some of my students to follow the flow of the worksheet.

For variety and inspiration, here are a few examples of worksheets I've created.

This is one of my more recent worksheets. Here is the basic template I created to base all my vocabulary mapping worksheets off of. Having a base template for each type of assignment helps create a cohesive flow and gives the tasks consistency.

 I like to keep color graphics out of my worksheets, but I like to add a pop of color into some of my reference sheets, especially if the images are "busy" since I can use the colors to separate things out a bit.

I throw in a little Word every once in a while for very basic or highly compartmentalized worksheets because I prefer the table function in Word to that in Power Point.

I like to spice up my creative process here and there to keep things interesting, but these are my tried and true building blocks for creating worksheets and other things to use in my classroom. If you're trying to get started creating your own worksheets and have other questions about the process please let me know, I love to talk teacher shop.
    

How to Greive for Someone you Never Knew

I was sitting at a table eating lunch 600 miles from home when I heard the Kobe Bryant had died. This morning all I knew about him was he played basketball and several of my 6th grade students shout out his name with something unexpected happen.

You make a 3? "Kobe!" 

One of your classmates brings random cupcakes to class? "Kobe!"

Your friend asks a girl to mini prom and gets turned down? "Kobe!"


Even knowing next to nothing about the man other than he's famous, he played basketball, he died in a helicopter crash, and his daughter with him the one thing I did know about his death was that it would devastate several of my students and I wouldn't be there to help them through it. I almost immediately picked up my phone and fired off a text to my teacher bestie and my sub.

Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash today. Could you kind of keep an eye on how if at all that effects my kids tomorrow?

Other than that my plan was to by and large ignore it, but then I went on Facebook; the words no fairy tail ever started with...

A lot of teachers were talking about what if anything they should do to address, acknowledge, pay homage to the life and death of Kobe Bryant. The responses were a mixed bag and everyone had their own reasoning to back it up. Lets just say I learned more about various aspects of Kobe Bryant's life than I ever wanted to know.

Then I started getting texts from parents whose kids had been effected and coworkers who were unsure how to address the whole range of reactions they knew they were going to see in their rooms on Monday. I could name at least 2 boys off the top of my head who would be devastated, who according to parent texts already were beside themselves. Then on the other hand, I knew at least 2 other kids who would be next to clueless, perhaps even more so than I was. Add to that a wide range of kids with past traumas, dramatic kids, and kids who would be unsure how to feel about the loss not only of a person but of a commonly used expressive tearm, and I realized that I had to do something to give those who needed an outlet and outlet while respecting those who didn't feel the need to grieve.

So, between conference sessions I created a basketball acrostic poem using the word "baller," which like Kobe is a common term used in my room both as a replacement for cool and to describe someone who plays basketball. After a lot most angsting and debate than should have gone into choosing a graphic for an acrostic poem I settled on basketball faces showing a wide range of emotions.

Baller Acrostic Poems

In the end I intentionally made the prompt very open that students in our basketball centric town can use to express their feelings and opinions about what has happened, basketball, their favorite basketball team, their intramural basketball team, or even their own experiences or love for basketball.


Just being able to tell coworkers and parents that, even from 600 miles away and even though I couldn't physically be there for my students, I had a plan seemed to help, not just them but also me. If you need a resource for next week, a place for those affected to get their feels out while still giving those not affected a way to avoid being forced to talk about feelings they don't have for a man they don't know, here's a link to my Baller Acrostic Poems, which I'm marking as free for the rest of the week to make it easier for any teacher who needs an activity like this to gain access to it.

My Word of the Year

I'm not sure how I feel about this whole word of the year thing, mainly because I'm afraid I'll forget it before I'm able to focus on it.  I saw a post in a fitness group of someone asking how others had decided on their word for 2020, and just like that a word came to me, whether or not I wanted one: balance.

My whole life I've always need to be working, be moving, constantly. In high school I was the one knitting hats while our volleyball coach made our team watch the competition play, and in college I was that group member, the one who would sew regional costumes for our Heifer International presentation. Even as a teacher if I'm not teacher I'm creating projects for my students. 

It used to bother me how people talked about the fact that I always had to be busy like it was a negative. I've come to understand that isn't a bad thing. It's made a lot of things in my life possible. It's helped me build a career, a reputation, a home, and a side business that has helped my husband and I have 3 temporary children in our lives. It's made me the sort of teacher, friend, and temporary parent that brings light to the lives of those I care about.

However, that only works if I balance my drive; if I apply it to the different parts of my life in equal measure: health, work, business, hobbies, and family. 

Maybe now I'll be able to remember my word the whole year through. I'd say something lofty like "I'll use this blog to hold myself accountable through weekly check-ins," but that's a little too lofty.

Treading Water, not Just a Pool Safety Technique

Treading water come up the other day in a thread about things we can do to make teaching easier, but it wasn't actually one of the tips.

My initial reply had been about how making masters of everything I know I'll need for the year and organizing them in hanging file folders by week with daily Monday-Friday folders for copies inside each of the hanging folders has really helped me. Then I talked about how it took 2 weeks of hardcore setup, but after that it was like a huge weight was lifted and my weekends became a time for me to work on projects and keep up with my own things.

It seemed like a helpful piece of advise at the time. It came from my heart, and I truly thought it would help them since it had helped me so much. Who knows, maybe it did help some people, but for at least one it was a painful reminder of what they saw as a shortcoming. We talked back and forth for a little while talking about where we both were as teachers both with 6 years teaching with but me having taught in the same grade/same school/same room for 3 years while they'd been switched all over the place before they finally commented they felt like they were treading water.

That comment knocked me back on my heels for a second. I was born and raised in Alaska, and every summer for most of my childhood my mom sent me to water safety and swimming classes where we were required to learn how to tread water in case we were ever in a plane or boat accident and needed to stay close to the wreckage. In terms of teaching I’d always viewed treading water as a negative, but looking at it in the context of swimming and water safety, was it really?

Treading water gets a bad wrap. Sometime a situation comes up where as much as we'd like to forward progress isn't an option. Treading water lets us bide our time until we're in a better position to start swimming. We'll get back to that sweet-spot; we just haven’t yet

During that conversation I realized I’d been treading water too, so I tried to really think about and write down what was causing me to feel like I wasn't making forward progress. It turned out they were things I could do something about, and as I’ve worked I started to feel that sense of treading water drop away as I’ve started moving forward. I’m sure as I move through this list that more things will come up, but I’ll cross that bridge and tread that water when it comes up.

In the end I feel like treading water may be more a sign of growth than anything else. Realizing we’re treading water means that we a goal, a place we want to get to, and we realize we aren’t progressing towards that goal.

My Big Adventure

We're about to start our 7th week of school, and I feel like I'm just now getting my first day off. I have all of my handouts printed out for our big Language Arts unit assessment printed off and all of my math, social studies, and science lessons organized and ready for the week. It's even a short week, which I don't think actually impacts anyone's workload, but who knows, maybe that's why I'm finally getting a day off. I'm horrible at taking days off or even time to myself in any manifestation, which is probably one reason I do well teaching in bush Alaska, not getting out to see my family and friends or have a basket of onion rings for sometimes nine months at a time. Another reason is that I was raised in an Alaskan village a lot like the one I teach in now, in fact even smaller, so it's not really all that different for me.

Underscoring my problems with taking time for what's mine, I actually started this blog last year, and this is actually my 8th post, I just never finished any of the other posts. Even though it was my 4th year teaching in King Cove, I had just switched grades and was experiencing my first year teaching 6th grade. I was also working to establish myself as a Teachers Pay Teachers seller, and taken all together it was just too much for me to do all at once. Who knows, maybe it still is, but I'd like to think that the mere fact that, even seven weeks in, I'm finally taking a day off, admittedly badly, and making my first post means that maybe in my 5th year of teaching my dream of being an organized teacher with a classroom that's all together, a TpT store, a few hobbies, and a little time to myself may be within reach, even if one of my hobbies is my own classroom. It still counts!

I'm not entirely sure why I decided to start this blog last year; I think it just felt like a good idea, but it took me a year to realize why it felt like such a good idea. I knew that unlike a lot of teacher blogs coming out of Alaska I didn't want it to be about the adventure of teaching in Alaska, because Alaska is home so I don't think it'll ever be the adventure to me it is to everyone else, which is kind of sad in someways that I can never see my home with the same excitement as everyone else. I'm sure my life in Alaska will come up as time goes on since life in Alaska goes hand in hand with teaching in Alaska, but for me writing a blog about my teaching adventures would involve moving somewhere exotic like South Dakota or Texas.

However, over the past year as I've gotten to know a few other teachers on TpT through product requests I've discovered that as much as I love my job teaching 6th grade sometimes being one of only two 6th grade teachers in an entire district can get a little... dry. Sure I talk shop with my twelve K-12 co-workers, and everyone is really understanding that I've very work minded and most conversations with me will be able my classroom. But since we all teach something different and are around each other for months at a time a lot of times it feels like there's no one for me to discuss my teaching ideas with or hear about new ideas from without sounding like a broken record. Through TpT I discovered that what's always seemed so normal to me, teaching in Alaska, actually sets me apart, but more importantly that I can be part of a wider teaching community, even if it's not in the face to face way I always imagined it would be.

Who knows, maybe this will be a blog about my great Alaskan adventure, my adventure just may not look the same as everyone elses.