Behavior Management

OK, we all know that a behavior management plan is a necessity when planning out the new school year.  It's so important to figure out how you're going to mange your classroom and student behaviors BEFORE school starts and problems arise.  Today, I'm sharing how I am planning on managing behaviors this year.

My school is becoming a PBIS school, and within that they are starting to introduce consistency throughout the building.  We now have building-wide rules/expectations, which are:

1. Control your body

2. Control your voice

3. Do your work

These expectations are for every part of the school (classroom, hallway, restroom, special classes, assemblies, etc).  And then within those rules, we can add to it.  For example, under "Control your body" an expectation in my classroom may be "keep your hands and feet to yourself."  I'm really excited about the consistency  throughout the building because students won't be guessing what the rules are for any other class, they will know and they will be held accountable, which I think is VERY important.

Now, if a student does not follow a rule/expectation, we are all asked to follow the same procedure, which is:

1. Warning (give a warning or reminder to student)

2. Re-think (ask the student to think about their behavior or sit somewhere else)

3. Teacher Choice (the teacher can choose what action to take, like, fill out a Think Sheet, miss a recess, etc)

4. Parent Contact (let the parent know about child's behavior)

5. Office Referral

The staff at my school is also asked to come up with at least five different types of positive re-inforcers to encourage the desired behaviors . So far, mine are:

Verbal praise

Treasure Box

Smart Beads*

Positive Postcard*

Bucket Fillers*

You might be asking yourself, "What are Smart Beads?"  Well, I'm glad you asked (play along, now).  I got this great idea from Dandelions and Dragonflies.  This is how I'm going to use them in my room.  A student can earn Smart Beads when they:

Participate when no one else is

Answer a really tough question

Show/share really great thinking

Stand out academically

Fill the Smart Beads bucket with dollar store beads

They can grab a set of beads and wear them the rest of the day.  Of course, we'll be discussing how to be responsible with them (no throwing, swinging them around at recess, etc).  Then at the end of the day, they have to be put back in the bucket.

What are Positive Postcards, you ask?  This is an idea I've heard about from other teachers and then of course, there are some examples on Pinterest.  I will be sending home a Positive Postcard for students that do something exceptional.  I wrote more about these postcards in this post.

I'm sure most of you have heard about "Bucket Fillers."  I think I was one of the last to hear about this.  I heard about it through Pinterest as well as teachers at my school, some of them implemented it last year.  If you don't know a lot about Bucket Fillers, just google it or search on Pinterest... there's a lot of info about it out there!  I went out and bought How Full Is Your Bucket by Tom Rath and Mary Reckmeyer last week and I am planning on implementing a version of Bucket Fillers in my class next year.  I have found that most teachers have a display somewhere in their class with student "buckets" and either fill them up with pom-poms or bucket filler notes, like some freebies over at What the Teacher Wants.  I am starting off slowly by doing a Class Bucket.  When students say or do something nice for another student or if our class gets a compliment by another staff member, I will put a handful of pom-poms in our Class Bucket.  Why a handful?  Because our the bucket is kind of big and if I only used one pom-pom each time, we would need around 700 of those darn things before it gets full!!  Once it's full, we'll vote on a class party!

I'm hoping to write more about some of these as the year begins and I see how they work in my classroom.

Sorry for such a long post, but I wanted to be sure to include a little bit of every part of my behavior plan.

Oh, one more thing... here's a sneak peek at next Monday's Made It project....

I used ALOT of these little guys!