Next school year, I am definitely going to . . .

I've been following Kim at Finding JOY in 6th Grade since I started this blog last summer and I am so excited to participate in her first linky party - What will YOU do differently? I'm also excited because this is something that I do every year anyway. It seems like once state testing is over my mind starts to think about all the end-of-the-year tasks to complete as well as all the changes that need to be made for the next year. I've always got a post-it with ideas jotted down or a list going on the computer.

Some of the items are small, for example, I need to buy some screw eyes (you know those screws that have a loop on the end) to install in my window area for hanging student work. And some are a bit heftier, like being a team leader! Two of our amazing 5th grade teachers (half our team) are transferring to another school in the district so I have been asked to be team leader next year and not only will I be a first time team leader, but I'll have two new (to the district and grade-level) teachers to help.

Here are some of the other big items on my list for next year.....

Have you ever tried out something that you saw online or heard of from a colleague and it just didn't work for you and your style? This has not been the case with Class Dojo and Class-Yes. I tried both of these strategies out in the the last quarter of school and I am glad that I didn't wait until next year because they have both STUCK. Both have worked wonders for my chatty, too-often-off-task class, and I will DEFINITELY be using them next school year.

In the 5 years that I have been using a classroom economy system it has evolved and improved each year. But it is still far from perfect. I still haven't figured out what changes I am going to make yet, but I need the system to be more streamlined and take less class time. My bankers had been using Google Docs (now Drive) to manage bank accounts, but something happened with our district's filter (?) and suddenly Google was unavailable to the students. So my bankers had to use my computer, which you can imagine was a pain. I recently stumbled upon mykidsbank.org. I set up an account and toured through it a bit and it looks like a great alternative. Each student has their own account, but I can also create teller accounts so that my bankers are able to enter checks. I also love the bank note generator. They can be created to have any amount of money and each have a one-time-use code. I will DEFINITELY be using this site as part of my classroom economy improvements.

Marzano is the new model that our district has adopted for teacher evaluation and the buzz for next year is to include more student data tracking. This is great, because I had already been planning on making this happen in my classroom. I've seen several great resources online and on TpT and I will DEFINITELY be investigating them and planning a system for my new 5th grade class.

Eeks! One of the challenges of moving to a new grade level (even though it isn't entirely new, it's just been a few years), is the different topics, especially in social studies and science. I relied on my new team to give me the lessons/activities they had done in the past, and to make sure we stayed on track. But that fell through the cracks, especially in social studies. Prepping for JA BizTown took a lot of instructional time as well, and that set us back. We should have covered American History starting with the first people and ending with the Civil War. Instead my class ended with the American Revolution. We never got to Westward Expansion and the Civil War. We will DEFINITELY be covering everything next year!

Thanks for the awesome linky Kim!

JA BizTown

I have been using a classroom economy system for about six years now. I had heard about JA BizTown and thought it was a fabulous idea, but it was pricey. If you have never heard of it, it is from the Junior Achievement organization. They have a well developed set of lesson plans that encompass economy, jobs, banking, etc. The culminating activity is for students to visit BizTown, a simulated town that is run by them for the day. A few years ago the 5th graders at our school went and my 6th grade colleague (who also used an economy system) were super jealous. Now that I have joined the 5th grade team we decided that this year we would go.

Last night my team and I left school immediately and headed across the Valley to the BizTown location for a tour and training. JA BizTown here in Arizona has two town simulation areas and I am SO EXCITED to go!

Each town is sectioned off into businesses and students all have a bank account and job for the day. As a business they have to decide on a business plan for the day, they take out a loan from the bank (which they have to pay off by the end of the day) and they even write advertising for their business. Students get two paychecks and breaks to eat and shop. There is a newspaper which puts out a paper that day that the students can purchase. There is a news station that creates advertisements and broadcasts on the town's TVs. Students send and receive mail. There are goodies for them to buy and each business only accepts one form of payment (cash, check, or debit). There is even a town mayor that has to give a speech during the town meeting.

Our classes are going in January and I CAN'T WAIT! We have about six weeks of lessons to complete before we go and I am ready to dive in!

Check out some of the photos I snapped.

BizTown 2 Farmer's Market

BizTown 2 Bank

BizTown 1 City Hall

BizTown 1 Travel Agency with plane

BizTown 1 Cox News Studio

BizTown 1 Law Office

6 weeks in!

I can't believe that we have been back in school for 6 weeks already! This week we had parent-teacher conferences and they were a breeze. Every single parent showed up as did most of the kids. I strongly believe that students should participate in conferences because it is their education and they need to take responsibility for their learning. I also work with some great families, and it was nice to chat with everyone, and meet the few that I hadn't already met.

Despite conferences going smoothly, the past two weeks have been rough...
* I have now been sick for the third time this school year. I have no idea why I keep getting sick, I've been teaching for ages and I never get sick like this, typically maybe once or twice a year. I guess I need to stuff myself full of vitamins and start juicing regularly again.
* Last Thursday the AC in my classroom broke, again, for the third time this year (are things happening in threes for me?). My class relocated to the library for that afternoon and then spent the next day in an empty classroom on the primary side of campus. For the most part my students did a phenomenal job being flexible and were generally well behaved, but Friday afternoon they were struggling to stay focused.
* This past week has been totally off. Maybe it was the move to another classroom the previous week, maybe it was the two full moons in a month, maybe the honeymoon period is over, or a combination of all of that. My students have been chatty and unfocused. Several received hefty fines as part of our classroom economy system, but they didn't seem to mind. This year I started to include team points and class multipliers as part of the economy system for students to earn additional money, and although this worked a few weeks ago, it was not happening this week. We missed recess to practice the quiet signal and line procedures, and they still struggled.

During conferences many parents told me that they like the economy system and that they give additional consequences at home when they see that their child received fines on their weekly note home. So, it was surprising that I saw them struggle so much. I'm going to try two things next week in hopes that behavior improves. 1. I spent quite some time today setting up a new seating chart. Usually I keep the same seating chart for the quarter, but I know that mixing the kids up at this point is going to alleviate some of the issues. 2. I created a Behavior Reflection form that ties directly into the classroom rules that my students created on the first day of school. I reference the rules often when I talk to the students, but I think actually having to fill out a form will make them understand more deeply how their actions are affecting others.

If students fill out the form and still struggle then I will be having them call home. I'm not one to send students to the principal, but that is an option if I am not seeing improvement. Any other suggestions for chatty and unfocused kids?

Classroom Economy Revamp {Part 1 of many}

I have been using a classroom economy system in my classroom for 5 years now. Our economy system is check based, I don't use any cash at all. Students keep a balanced checkbook register and I have bankers keep computer based register for each student. Students get a weekly paycheck and pay rent, fines, and taxes. They can use any extra money to purchase items from the class store or buy items from our quarterly auction. That is it in a nutshell. There is SO. MUCH. MORE to it, and it can be time consuming. But I love how it ties in the economy (which is in our standards) and math, and it is real-world based! Parents love it and the kids enjoy it too. I've decided that since I have only made a few tweeks over the years, and this past year we came across some issues, that the system needed an overhaul. It's taking me longer than I had hoped, especially because school is less than two weeks away, but I'm sure I'll get it all done!

To start, I made this nice little job poster. In the past every job had the same pay rate, $20 per day. The bankers usually do a phenomenal job, and work more than anyone else, so I bumped them up to $30. I decided to have more of a pay scale this year. Not only did I want to better compensate for the harder jobs, but I wanted to encourage certain jobs and maybe make some jobs (like zoologist) less desirable. We'll see how it goes this year! Any economy suggestions out there?

(I even made the cute striped background!)

Yesterday I went in to school to start setting up. My fabulous sister joined me and we started to put contact paper on my tables. We'll head in tomorrow to finish up (as long as we can locate more contact paper!) and then I'll get to show off the finished loveliness.