Still waiting...

for my placement next year! I am sure 99.9% of you have gotten yours, where is mine?? My principal has decided to wait to tell me and I have already been out for summer for a week and a half! I am getting antsy over here! I honestly have no clue if she will leave me in first grade or send me somewhere else- it's making me a little anxious (but these pool days are helping me overcome that!).

So, since I can't really plan like I want to right now I can start reflecting on this past year, starting with my behavior management technique. If you look back here, you can see these behavior management sticks that I used this past year. Basically, the sticks had a happy side and sad side. If the student had to move their color then they moved a velcroed color from one side to the other. They kept the sticks in their desk.
To refresh your memory, here are some pictures:

Here are my thoughts:
Positives:

• The color they were on for the day was very private. It wasn't displayed for the whole world to see when they came in my classroom. 
• Students had an opporunity to move their color back if they got back on track (something I haven't done in the past). 
• I didn't have to make a whole display to take up room on a wall of cards or sticks to be moved. 
• They were cute :) and fun to make!

Negatives:

• I had a few stinkers that liked to play with them (because they were little people). 
• I had a few very unorganized students that lost them! (Only 2 (which I thought was awesome) out of 23!)
• I realized that I have a bad memory! Yes, without the visual reminder I had to depend on honesty until specials. We had specials at the end of the day, so the kids were suppose to leave their behavior stick on their desk while at specials so I could color in their behavior chart the appropriate color. Unfortunately, I would forget why they were on that color (sometimes). I didn't have THAT many behavior problems but you know there are those days where it seems everyone is getting in trouble! 
• If I decide to do this again next year, I need to make new ones.

So, I think I will be changing it up just a bit for next year. I need the visual display! After checking out many blogs and ideas I have decided to go with Erica Bohrer's management plan. Erica uses a warning board. This will be very helpful to my memory :)

Courtesy of Erica Bohrer

In addition to this board I always use a monthly calendar to display behavior for parents to sign nightly. I keep the calendars to help determine citizenship awards (based on behavior) for each 9 weeks. I have already created the calendars for the upcoming school year:

My school uses the three R's: Respect, Responsible, and Ready as main school rules, so I incorporated these into the calendar. I have created these calendars for every month and am happy to share. These are in pdf form and may not line up with your school's calendar. If you are interested, click here to download for free :)  UPDATE: If you want an editable version, click here.

Looking a little cloudy here in Nashville, so I guess I will take a break from the pool and do something domestic today!