Individual Schedules

Most of the students in my class use an individual picture schedule to help them see what is expected of them throughout the day. I make the word bigger than the Boardmaker picture and try and use pictures of the therapists.
These kits are from Pyramid Educational Products. I have had a set of 5 since 2003 and they are still in good shape, minus some velcro marks. They are so durable and the kids respond well to how visually graphic they make their schedule. If you have a Boardmaker CD (Mayer Johnson), they have a ton of schedules pre-made on Boardmaker share. Best thing is they are free!

Self and Match (Salter and Croce)

I got to go to the Self and Match: Introduction training at the end of June. It was great! I have used Self and Match, know the psychology and theory behind it, but this thorough day training was pretty eye-opening to what I can be doing differently and better for my kiddos.
I would recommend this workshop to anyone looking to improve an individual or class-wide motivation system.
Here is a link to their blog:
Self and Match (Salter and Croce) website

Another Staples Find!

Although they aren't in the dollar section right now, Staples has Lock-Ups brand containers from time to time. These work perfectly for edible rewards (with parent permission) for appropriate behavior. We can put one little piece of candy in there and the kids can hold it during the activity, so it remains visible for them and they have something to busy their hands with. They need some support in the beginning so they don't shake it during instruction, but my kiddos got it pretty quickly. If they want to hold it, it stays quiet, simple as that.
They even twist and lock together!

Staples Find!

I find amazing teacher things at Staples. This morning I got memo-size clipboards for $1 each, and with my 15% teacher summer discount, they ended up being 85 cents! I was able to get a bunch of the same color, so no arguements and the kids can choose what color marker to use.
I plan to use these with scrap paper (cut in half) for letter and sight word practice. They will fit perfectly on my little kiddos laps!

How Multicultural is Your Library?

After a week of an intensive grad school class "Children't Literature", I am finally starting to decompress from the hour commute and really process all that I learned this week. This class and the professor were amazing! I was a suburban teacher in a class of nine urban Philly teachers, and it was really refreshing. I hear of the hardships of Philly teachers often, yet not one of these ladies had a complaint! I was really able to reflect on how much diversity I have in my classroom library.....which is nowhere near where it should be. I can pride myself on having ability awareness and anti-bullying books but I need to add some more texts to really represent diversity. This is a good list of Multicultural books for classrooms.
http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/books/detailListBooks.asp?idBookLists=42

How big are T-Rex feet?

The kids were hysterical when we took off shoes to see how many it took to fill the footprint of a T-Rex. It cracks me up how little kids love to laugh about stinky feet...even though there weren't any! There were some good estimates that came from the discussion. I impressed myself a bit when I cut the footprint to fit all 10 pairs of shoes.

Dinosaurs! Dinosaurs!

Downloaded some great centers from TPT for these next few weeks!
I found these at the Dollar Store a month ago: they are perfect for my kiddos to learn about dinos!