Classroom Management

Miss Kindergarten is having a classroom management linky party.  I was already thinking about posting part of my classroom management system in my classroom.  I just updated and “cutefied” my clothespin chart that I use to chart behavior.  Seems like Abby over at The Inspired Apple had the same idea.  She did it a little differently however.  But you might want to head over there to see what she came up with.

Last year I started the year without a “stop light” chart.  I didn’t want students to constantly be thinking about how other students were doing.  I began by using a credit/debit economy system instead.  I had created a credit/debit book using Adobe Pagemaker.  I no longer have the document since the software I was using was an older version and didn’t work with Windows 7.  I plan on creating a new document before school starts and will share it with you when I’m finished.  Part way into the school year I realized that although I really dislike how students keep track of each other’s behavior, a visual concrete way of tracking behavior was necessary – especially for the kids I had last year.  One of my coworkers introduced me to Clip Chart.  Clip chart takes the traditional stop light chart and expands it to help promote positive behavior. 

I quickly made a chart last year to begin implementing Clip Chart right away.  However I realized as soon as I began laminating that my chart was a little crooked.  I wasn’t going to spend the time fixing it then as I desperately needed to put the Clip Chart in place for my kiddos behavior and for my sanity so I left it as it was.  I added numbers on the side to track credits/debits at the end of the school day.

I have thankfully found a little bit of time this summer as well as a whole lot of inspiration from my fellow bloggers to make this chart a little more presentable.  I found some great scrapbooking paper at Hobby Lobby that worked perfectly.  I just picked out a page of each color and then glued them together.  The blue, pink, purple, yellow, orange, and red are each 6 inches tall and then the green is the full 8 inches.  It might be a little long but it will have plenty of room for those clothespins.  Last year I ran out of space – especially on the green. 

I then went into word and created text boxes for each part of the chart.  I created the text boxes for the numbers separately and added those afterwards.  Then all I had to do was laminate, cut, and punch holes on the top to hang the chart.  I went to Home Depot last year and bought pegboard and had it cut to the size of my bookshelves so that I could have backs to my bookshelves and double it as hanging space.  This pegboard is perfect for hanging my clip chart with the way that I arranged my classroom this year.  I’m not sure where my students will move their clips if they get off the chart this year.  Last year I had the chart hanging with string in my doorway and when they were off the chart they moved their clip on to the string and if they moved higher than that their clip was moved to the internet wire that is nearby.  When someone was “on the wire” this was really good news.  Anytime students moved off the chart I hot-glued a small sequin to their clip.  They loved this of course.  If you would like a copy of the text boxes click below.