"Caught" Being Good & Peek At Our Week

We moved {FINALLY} into our new house this week!! I'll share more on that soon :) But we have been without internet since we moved. Some wonderful people are scheduled to come over tomorrow and get us back online...PTL!!!  I'm hoping to make up for the lack of blogging this week with a double duty post - a holiday survival management tip & visual plans for the week all rolled into one!!

Bless their hearts, I know they just needed to run out their wiggles out!! But the weather this past week has left my class with one indoor recess after another. Pair that with the knowledge that Christmas is just around the corners and well, we need a little *EXTRA* motivation to keep it together this time of year. To try and ease their jumpin' jingle bells I ended up kicking one of my favorite classroom management tricks from this year into high gear!!

Basically anytime I "catch" my kids being super ON POINT , I try and snap a picture of them on my iPhone. (I use that thing all day at school...if I don't set alarms for guided reading it's over-!!) My favorite time of the day to do this is during center rotations, when they're supposed to be working hard independently. Once I've collected 4-5 pictures I will e-mail them to myself and call the kids to the carpet so that we can  shout out our most recent batch of kiddos "caught" doing the right thing!

The first time I complied all the pictures into one using  Insta Collage app. They thought this was THE coolest thing!!

"How did you DO that!?" they asked as they tried to find themselves on the screen. :)

I can't tell you how much they LOVE when we sit down to see who has been "caught". When they see themselves the smile on their face is just priceless!!! I typically do this about 1-2 times a week, but like I said, I kicked it up a notch last week. We were checking in daily!! Ha! This week I started handing out these little seasonal notes to accompany this gig. I told my class that our elf, Snowball, made them for me to pass out. Isn't he sweet!?

And this week, Snowball will be getting in on the action too!!Elf or no elf, you can download both versions of the tags here.But remember - this can work all year!!  And I love that it doesn't cost me a DIME! :)

Ok, switching gears for a moment. I'm trying my hand at my first ever visual plans...eek!! I'm not committing to these on any kind of regular basis. Just getting my feet wet over here today. Thanks to the ever fabulous Kelley Dolling for sharing her template with me!!

You can click any of these images below to go to the Google doc with direct links to everything you see.   

 

A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Who says teaching those standards can't be sprinkled with loads FUN?! I loved Tracy's Thanksgiving e-book, so I'm very excited to read Elf in Training this week. Alisha's Merry & Bright pack reviews all kinds of skills. I'm going with contractions & retell this week. And Friday is ALL about Polar Express in 1st & 2nd grade. You can read all about our magical day last year HERE. 

 Lots of seasonal writing to help decorate the walls this week.


We started with Kelley's Math pack on Friday. The kids gave this one two big thumbs way up. 
 I used Katie's math centers last year, they tie right in with out Polar Express shenanigans!

Truth be told I'm SAD to be wrapping this one up!! We've had a blast traveling around the globe!!!

 But I'm already hard at work on our January Science/SS Common Core travel plans! 
Arctic Adventures is coming early January!! Stay tuned. :)

I know that I really like looking at other people's visual plans, so every once and awhile I'll try to see what I can piece together over here. But for this week I just wanted to show you what will be happening in our room in case you're looking for a few more ideas on how exactly to survive make it to THIS point in the week....

 

Who's with me!? ;)