A place to share thoughts, ideas, gadgets, and giggles from my classroom. 💜

Class Dojo


{Class Dojo} has TRANSFORMED my parent communication! It is also an amazing behavior incentive. Class Dojo is available as an App(iPhone and iPad) and online. Once you put all your students' names in, they each get a personal username and password, so do the parents! Class Dojo uses little monster avatars. With these names and passwords, they can personalize their avatar. The kids love it!


Class Dojo has students earn points for positive behaviors and lose points for negative behaviors throughout the day. The teacher can customize these behaviors.
The teacher also has the choice of how many points each behavior can be worth, up to five points! This goes the same for negative behavior. Bullying is worth losing more points than talking out of turn. 



When a teacher wants to recognize a positive or negative behavior, they can click the students name and check the behavior. Positive behaviors make a ding noise and the negative behaviors get a low oops sound. The student name pops up at the bottom to show what the noise was for.  I keep Class Dojo up on my Promethean Board, as well as my Ipad and cell phone. The students add and take away their points themselves in my room.


Students get rewarded based on how many points they have. We have ours get a reward for every ten points.  I also set a whole class goal of 500. When we reach the goal, the students get a theme party, like popcorn and a movie.

I have coupons for students to "cash" in when they earn one. They are able to save the coupon and use it when they want to! 
10- Bring money for a snack from the snack machine.
20- Use a pen or marker instead of a pencil
30- Bring a stuffed animal to school
40- Wear a hat in school
50- Read a book to another class
60- Choose a student to sit by at lunch
70- Bring something for show and tell
80- Get an recess
90- Fifteen minutes of free iPad time to play any app they want
100- Switch second grade rooms for Daily 5 time

I also let students switch out coupons for a lower reward. Many of the girls don't care about wearing a hat at school. They would rather bring a stuffed animal again! No problem! As long as it is a reward they have previously earned, I let them switch. {Click here} for a free sample of coupons! The full (cuter) set is available in my {store}!






Game Time


Today marks the beginning of our one-hour longer work days.  Because of the number of snow days our state (Indiana) has had this winter (thus far), schools will have several options making up the snow days.  Our school opted for extending the work days by one hour (6 hours = 1 school day).  As you know, kids and teachers are already exhausted at the end of they day.   Not only exhausted, but starving, cranky, and ready for a nap. We decided to be creative and use this time to add a little fun to our classroom.  Today, we had snack, and played a game called SKUNK!  I attended a STEM conference several years ago, and this was an activity they presented to us.  My second graders love it. You can find the PDF version of the SKUNK by clicking, the SMART NOTEBOOK version here, and the Promethean (ActiveInspire) version here .

Here are a few pictures of what our class looked like playing SKUNK:

As you can see, I have a Promethean Board.  I pull up the ActiveInspire SKUNK game on my Proboard.  The students need a blank (or scrap) piece of paper.  They lay their paper horizontal (example on Proboard game) and make columns with SKUNK.  5 letters in the word skunk=5 rounds of play.  
Object of the game:  Students try to score the highest roll on each round (using 2 dice).  Rounds are played whole group, and everyone plays the S round before moving on to the K round and so on.

To start off (after papers are made), all students stand up.  2 dice are rolled (either on the board) or if you don't have a board, regular dice will work fine).  Students decide if they want the sum rolled.  If they decide they do, they write the sum rolled under the round they are on and sit down.  If they don't want that sum, they can remain standing.  The dice are rolled again.  Of course the only players left in the round are the players still standing.  The ones sitting have to wait until the round is over to play again.  Don't worry, it only takes a few minutes to play each round.  Again, students decide if they want to keep the sum of the dice or continue playing.  The catch is that if a one is rolled at anytime, students that are still standing for that round receive a 0 (zero) for that round.  If double ones (snake eyes) are rolled the students that are still standing receive a 0 (zero) for that round and all previous round scores are marked out and a zero is given for those rounds as well.  It really is taking a game of chance (and gamble of course).  The winner is the person with the highest total after the 5 SKUNK rounds of play.


Here I have some students playing the round and some students sitting already.


Finally, this student is adding up all 5 of here rounds to determine her overall score.
The game is really quick (taking only about 10 minutes to play), the students enjoy the game and catch on fast, and it teaches a variety of skills (probability, chance, and addition)
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QR Codes

Super Bowl Sunday! 

Who are you rooting for? 


In our classrooms, our students love QR Codes. QR Codes are those square pictures that sometimes look like a maze, that are everywhere, that you can use your smart phone or device to scan. It usually takes you to the product website. 


Using them keeps our students engaged and active. They can use these during Daily 5 time and during math.
The first activity I use is with Tic Tac Toe. Each week students have to do three in a row for Daily 5 time. Students can use an IPod/IPad to scan the QR code.


QR Code Spelling Practice
 Each board contains:
-Write Spelling words 5 times each.
-Rainbow Write each spelling word.-Use a dry erase board to “order” your spelling words.
-Write your spelling words with all CAPITAL LETTERS.
-Write your word using Scrabble tiles. See how much your word is worth!
-Use magnet letters to write your spelling words.
- 2 Free spaces! Pick another activity from the word work cards!
-Write each spelling word in a sentence.
Each board has the QR codes in a different order. There are 5 different boards.Our kids love them, would yours? Pick them up at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store!! 




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