Sneak peek! Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh my!

Here is a little snippet of our day today! We are still working through our animal unit by writing animal reports. The kids have worked really hard researching, drafting, editing, and now publishing their reports. The chimps used this outline to help them organize their writing. We will wrap up this project tomorrow and begin presenting...finishing just in time for our field trip to the Exotic Zoo!

Instateach!

Okay everyone...so I totally missed last Five for Friday! We had an extremely busy weekend full of fun though! I guess the real world trumps the virtual world at times. =)

Anyways I read about this new linky party that What the Teacher Wants and Apples and ABCs started that gives bloggers an excuse to post more pictures through Instagram (like we really need an excuse!) It's called #teachertalktuesday. So I'm going to use this party to get started using Instagram...I know I know I should have started a year ago!

Follow me by clicking the snapshot of my pup after Barre3 class or simply type jeanachapman in the user's search bar. Be on the lookout for snapshots of what's going on in our classroom tomorrow!

If your a blogger, don't forget to join up for a little Insta action and share your pics with #teachertalktuesday!

Five for Friday...one day late!

Okay, so I'm already off to a lazy start on this Five for Friday thing because I am posting one day late, but I guess late is better than never! I am going to attempt to participate in my first linking party with Doodle Bugs, so here goes...

1. This week we started our animal unit and I am so excited because I love, love, loveeee animals! It is so fun to teach and the kids really enjoy learning about them. I used Hope King's On a Safari Unit to supplement my curriculum. Our favorite activity was making these adorable Animal Classification Wind Socks. Not only did the kids get to draw and be creative, but they also defined each animal group. See Hope's unit for more details on how to do it in your classroom!

2. We were also studying linear measurement so the kids and I went outside on a beautiful day to participate in Measurement Olympics. I got this amazing idea from Amy Lemon's blog, who by the way is such an amazing inspiration to me so if you don't follow her, do it now! I get tons of my ideas right from her blog! We flicked, kicked, blew, and spun cotton balls and then measured the distance from the starting line to where they landed. They kids had a ball and became great little measurers!

We quickly found out this activity is a lot more difficult when it's windy!!

3. A little over a month ago my husband and I moved into our first home. We have been having a blast getting everything set up just the way we like it and there is still so much to do, but today we got the last piece to our new living room furniture set! I can't wait to see it complete, well almost complete. We still haven't been able to find an entertainment console we like that fits the theme of this room!

4. Okay, so my sister introduced me to this new workout called Barre3 and I absolutely love it! It's a mix between ballet barre, Pilates, and yoga and the workouts are seriously so relaxing, but extremely rigorous. They have studios popping up all over the country and there are now two in Austin. I haven't tried a class in the studio yet, but they have a large variety of their classes posted online that you can watch anytime and anywhere for only $15/month!!! I started their 28 to Great program and I am already seeing results! I've never had a workout that I actually can't wait to get home and do! Give it a shot...I promise you'll love it!

5. The hubs and I played on a softball team for this first time this season and had a blast! Our last game was Tuesday, but we are looking forward to playing again in the fall...summer in Texas is way too hot! Here's our amazing team...

Okay, that's it for now. I am starting to get the hang of blogging! I am linking up with Doodle Bugs today! 

Dojo for your mojo...

Okay everyone, so throughout my first year of teaching I have been introduced to and inspired by tons of fellow teachers through blogs, TPT, and Pinterest. I can get online and read and look around for hours at all the wonderful ideas out there. With that being said, I have decided to give a go at it myself and share with the world or really anyone who wants to read my ideas or things I'm trying in the classroom. Although I am sure a lot of my posts will mostly be about teaching because it's such a huge part of my life, I also hope to write about my life adventures as well! Thanks for reading and feel free to share the love!

Right around Spring Break I could tell my normal classroom management system just wasn't working as well as it had the first half of the year. I was becoming easily frustrated and losing patience quickly with my students because they just weren't behaving like I knew they could. Then I was introduced to Class Dojo during one of my new teacher workshops.

I knew right away this type of change was exactly what I needed! Now, I'm sure a lot of you have heard of DoJo before, but this was the first time I had even heard of it and I immediately knew I wanted to give it a shot. It is basically an online point system that the teacher uses to reward students for good behavior and deduct points for poor behavior. On the website each student receives their own "dojo" which is a silly looking little avatar. Before introducing it to my class I came up with a few ways to integrate it into my management system already in place to help motivate students to want to earn points. For example, I told them that everyday their goal was to get 10 points and if they reached 50 points by the end of the week they would relieve 5 "chimp change" to use at the treasure box on Friday. (We are the Chapman Chimpanzees so chimp change is our form of tickets or tokens.) I also told my kiddos that they could receive points for getting a 100 on their math, spelling, vocab, and DOL quizzes.

Little did I know I probably didn't even need to integrate the points in this way because as soon as I introduced it to my Chimps they immediately fell in love with it and became the perfect little angels I knew they could be. Ever since I started using Dojo our transitions have been faster, we've had much more time to learn, and the kids started treating me and each other better.

Anyways, there is a lot to learn about Class Dojo and it is pretty self explanatory once you get on the website and browse around. Here are a few of my favorite things about it...

1) Simplicity of being able to give or take away a point and take note of why the student was rewarded/reprimanded with just the click of a button. I keep Class Dojo up on my computer, smart board, and iPad almost the whole day so it is always within reach when I need it. Even the kids can give or take away points from themselves if I have it up on the smart board.

2) The kids can connect at home to change their Dojo and see their daily report of how they did that day.

3) Parents can easily connect to see how their student is doing everyday in the classroom. Dojo will even send out a weekly report to all parents every Friday without you having to do anything. This is such a great way for parents to really see how their child is doing and to stay connected with the teacher.

There are tons more features but I'll have to save those for another post because this one I'm sure is already too long. Check out the website at www.classdojo.com!

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy using Class Dojo in your room!