We started school a month ago - July 31st. I've made some changes to my room this year starting with my rules. I came across the Five P's and thought they sounded great for my students. The 5 P's include PROMPT, PREPARED, POSITIVE, PRODUCTIVE, and POLITE - everything I want in my classroom! I created some charts to hang up in the room, and we reviewed them for the first 2 weeks. So far things are going well. I always have to remind myself to use those words when one of the kiddos isn't doing the right thing. I'm sure it will get better as the year goes on. Here's a pic of the posters.
You can get them for free in my TPT store here.
I found a Beginning of the Year Activity on Middle School Math Rules blog. I just had to do this with my kiddos. I used my white board and used the following statements:
1) Our classroom should be ________________ everyday.
2) My goal for math this year is ________________________.
3) Math is important because __________________________.
They each had 3 post it notes (I used a different color for each class period) to write on. Most of them gave great answers.
1) They said things like: polite, clean, productive, quiet, exciting, fun, on task
2) Answers included: to learn, to do better in math, improve scores on tests, be smarter, turn in all homework, pass ISTEP (our state test)
3) The importance of math: helps with money, you use it everyday, helps you succeed in life, math is everywhere
Thanks for stopping by. I hope to bring you some peeks inside my classroom this year including our work with our Interactive Math Notebooks.