Daily Schedule Pocket Chart

 Today was our first day with electives, or specials, as we call them at my school. It seems only fitting to share this project with you.

So as school wrapped up in June I told myself that this summer would be the summer that I actually created some of those Pinterest pins!  This is the first one that I made that was inspired by my friend Michelle at Apples and ABC's. I used to write the daily schedule on the white board each morning but loved this idea. Michelle created these great pocket chart cards and I wanted to do the same.

 I found this great pocket chart at Michael's for only $2.00. Score! I really liked that the chart was only 14 inches across so it wouldn't take up a bunch of my valuable wall space.

 Only problem was, when I opened it up, it was not nearly big enough to fit all the activities we do each day. Sad face. Who only does 7 things to do in a day? I want to be in that classroom! 

 But wait! Bright idea! If I went back to Michael's (oh okay, twist my arm!) I could buy another one and simply glue them together to get the space I needed. 

 I used my Cricut to cut out letters for the activities we have through out the week. Then I mounted the letters on white card stock paper.

 Here is the final product on the kitchen table.I really like the way that it turned out.

Here it is in the classroom. Doesn't it look amazing? So proud of myself!

Classroom Rules

Today was our first day of school. In addition to unpacking supplies, getting to know each other, and completing beginning of the year assessments we needed some rules!

Last year we implemented PBIS at our school. It is this amazing behavior management system that is school wide. We decided that as a school our motto would be "Be Your Best!"  In order to do that at school we wanted to have our students always be respectful, responsible, and safe.

I have always had the students help me create our classroom rules in order to give them a sense of ownership in the classroom. This year I had them create classroom rules, only this year they had to be centered around our three qualities. Here is how it worked.

I start by passing out lined paper to pairs of students. I then had them write Respectful, Responsible and Safe with two bullet points under each.  Next, with their elbow partners they had to fill in two ways to do that in the classroom.

After that we created a master list on the board to look for some common themes in the ideas they came up with. Ones that are circled are the ones where we saw a common theme.

 Lastly, I wrote the rules out and they are proudly displayed in the classroom.

Here is the bulletin board I created to show off when they are being their best!