Celebrating AR Point Clubs {freebie alert!}

Do you do AR at your school?  If so, how do you display your students' point progress?

We do ours as "point clubs"... for every 25 points, students achieve a new point club.

This year I made a cute hanging display for my point clubs.  I'll be adding small Post-It notes with student names as they achieve levels in the club:

These are attached with brads and it's hung on one of my closet doors.

You can snag a copy too!  This is pretty tall... it's probably 6 feet or so, so you need a big area (or to print more than one per page) to display this.  Or, don't assemble it and just hang each page in a line or whatever configuration you want!

Click the pic below to download and let me know what you think in the comments!

We Won the Amazing Race!

So, I have, quite possibly, the best elementary school librarian ever in my school building.  She is so in tune with what kids want to read, is constantly adding new books to our library, and works so hard to make sure kids are acknowledged for reading successes and accomplishments.

For reading month, she orchestrated a month-long "Amazing Race" complete with daily challenges where a student from each classroom had to listen to a clue on the announcements, race to find the "marker", find the question inside for his/her classroom, race back, read the question, write down the answer, and return it to the library for bonus points!

Kids completed a reading "passport" that had them reading 7 different genres and taking tons of AR tests... each class had a marker on this bulletin board in the hallway and she moved the pieces along the path according to how many points the class had accumulated.  Each grade level needed a different number of points to move a continent.  We needed 50 classroom points to move to the next continent...

Here's another view of the bb...

The kids checked it every morning before school and couldn't wait to leave at the end of the day to check it again!

Each grade level had one winning class... the class that reached North America first!  It was mine!  My kids were so excited... we had to wait until an assembly after spring break to find out who won and mine were on pins and needles!  One of my girlies said, "Yes!  I always knew were were awesome!" when we took our trophy back to the classroom!

All together, for the month of March, here is how many books were checked out of the library, AR points were accumulated school-wide, and how many words were read by students in my building...

Do you see those cards between the points and words signs?  Each class had tons of those squares- the "vehicle" on them matched each class' marker on the main BB.  For every 100% on an AR test, students wrote their name on the paper for their class and dropped it off at the library.  Those are hung all up and down our hallway.  It's pretty impressive!

I'm proud to say that my 3rd graders got almost 600 of those points in the month of March!

How did you celebrate Reading Month in your school?

Pie, Pie... Me oh my!

We just finished up an AR incentive at school where, for every 25 points earned, the students got to choose a teacher and throw a pie in their face.

The pie day is tomorrow... and we're currently under a lake effect snow warning until tomorrow morning... so... I wouldn't mind if you sent a few "Boom boom for snow"s my way.  Or wore your pjs inside out.  Or put a potato by your alarm clock.  Or a spoon under your pillow.  Or flushed some ice cubes down the toilet.

You get the idea.

I wouldn't mind pushing the pie day back a few!  Not that I don't want my TWELVE pies smashed in my face... but... you know what I'm sayin'?

Do you have any AR incentives at your school?  The first marking period, they got to throw a water balloon at the principal for every 25 points and my building earned over 100 water balloons during the marking period!

AR Bookmark Freebie!

It's Sunday!  We're getting ready to go have brunch with my parents... how snobby sounding is that?!  ;)  My lovely mother got a Groupon and we're capitalizing on it today!  After that, it's heading in to school for me for the rest of the afternoon.

One of the things I'll be working on today at school is making copies of an AR bookmark for my students.  Each student will get two copies of the bookmark- one for school and one for home.

I'll have them fill it out tomorrow by writing their name, coloring the circles to reflect the AR levels they can read- some kids will have only two, most have three, and one of my students has four so that's why there are so many circles!- and then they will declare their weekly reading goal by writing the number of picture books and/or chapter books they want to read and test on weekly.

One of the ways they can move up in AR levels is by passing a certain number of picture and chapter books (which depends on the color of the book), so I'm hoping this will serve to help them set their goal and to be a handy bookmark too!

I have my own personal AR soapbox, which I have put away for now... so, enjoy the freebie!  :)

Just click on the pic to download from Google Docs!

I've done a few other AR related posts lately... if you missed them, click HERE to read more!

For some reason I've never blogged about this AR freebie- it's in my TpT store:

Enjoy the day!  Fortunately the Lions aren't playing today so there's one less bit of stress on this gal for today!

AR Book Check Chart Freebie!

This picture of my AR Book Check Chart generated a lot of buzz after I posted it the other day... now that I look at it, it's super ugly!  I should have coordinated my paper colors better!

I can't take credit for it.  My amazing 4th grade teacher friend made something similar for her students and I knew I HAD to do it in my room too.

So here's how it works:

At the end of the day on Friday, it's one of the student's jobs to make sure everyone has three of these slips- picture book 1, picture book 2, and chapter book.

As students take quizzes on books they have read independently the following week, they remove the slip if they pass the test.  If they do not pass (80% or higher), they cannot remove the slip.  They can also not count books that I read to them for this.  This is for independently read books only.

This has helped me tremendously!  As an easy management tool, it allows me to just glance at the chart and see who needs an extra reminder or who has been working their tail off!

If you click the pic below, you can get a copy of the cards I used (just run them on three different colors of paper and laminate) and the sign hanging above my pocket chart!

Enjoy!

And... sale reminder at my TpT store... 20% off until the end of tomorrow!

Repenting! And Pocket Chart Pics

OMG.  I love my job.

This is how my conversation with one of my sweet little friends went at the end of the day:

me:  Third graders, there are so many pencils on the floor!  Let's pick them up.  I want them.  Please put them in my pencil cup.
sweet little friend:  Mrs. Bainbridge, you are a sinner.
me- laughing:  what?
sweet little friend:  Mrs. Bainbridge this is serious.  You are breaking one of the Ten Commandments!
me- trying not to laugh:  Which one?  Do not take pencils away from kids?
sweet little friend:  Mrs. Bainbridge...
me-  Which one am I breaking?
sweet little friend-  The last one- thou shall not covet thy neighbor's things.  Those are not your pencils, so you should not be wanting them.
me-  Oh.  Thank you so much for sharing that with me.

*LOVE*!

So... to change gears a bit... here is what I have done with three of my Target Pocket charts:

1.)  classroom jobs chart (on the left)- what I was using was a little too cumbersome.  I like this better!

2.)  RRJ sweet treat chance chart (in the pic above on the right)-  if you do your RRJ each night for the week, you have a chance to get a sweet treat during one secret week of the month!  If you aren't sure what I'm talking about... check out my RRJ blog posts!  If you don't do your RRJ, your name gets flipped over and you're out of the running for the week... but better still get that RRJ done!

3.)  Keeping track of AR tests taken during a week- on Monday, each student begins the week with three papers behind their name- picture book 1, picture book 2, chapter book.  As they do quizzes during the week, they remove one paper and I can see at a quick glance who I need to give some extra lovin' and support and reminder and nags to!

So, that's that!  Just 20ish more charts to figure out what to do with!  Hope that helps you with some ideas!

And remember not to covet thy students' pencils!

Lunch Bunch- Whaaaaat?!

I recently received an e-mail from a teacher wondering what in the world my "lunch bunch" is that I do on Fridays and I thought you might like to hear about it as well!

"Lunch Bunch" is when students who have earned the privilege to come, can bypass the cafeteria and eat their lunch with me in our classroom on Friday.

Yes.  Earn the privilege.

To be able to come, you can either be directly invited by me OR you can do one of the following:
*make some kind of amazing, wonderful, stellar choice
*fill in one side of the AR test log sheet (they write down the tests they've taken and their scores)
*complete a level in the 100 Club
*write up to an increment of 500 on number scrolls (500, 1000, 1500, 2000, etc...)

When a student earns the right to come, I give them a sticky note and they write their name on it and put it on the "Lunch Bunch" poster on our bathroom door.

Here is the sign I made at Vistaprint last summer...

And here it is being used by my Lunch Bunchers...  I'll have tons of friends in for lunch this Friday!

We love "Lunch Bunch".  It gives us a time to eat and have conversation together, work on manners, laugh, and just get to know each other better.  We get to talk about all sorts of random things and, as an adult, nothing is sweeter or more hilarious than listening to conversations between 1st and 2nd graders!

Last year I also had two girls that I ate lunch with every Wednesday in the classroom.  These two girls worked on social skills with me while we dined together.  It was kind of a "fake" situation that I created for one of the girls to be able to make a friend- inviting the one that needed the social skills and the other who I thought could be a good friend to her, and it worked really well!  I plan to begin this with one of my sweeties this week too.  Eating together with kiddos is a very non-threatening way to truly get some good conversation in and work on manners and social skills!

My kiddos get so excited and work so hard to get to come to "Lunch Bunch".  I have one who has taken over 100 AR tests this year (13 gets you "Lunch Bunch") because she just wants to come and eat with me!  She's got sticky notes up on the chart for the next three or four weeks out!

So, if you are able, you should try it!  If you need an incentive for something in your classroom, this is a good one.  And it's a super great way to build community, work on manners and socializing skills, and just have fun with your kiddos!

And, just because, here's a copy of my AR log.  They keep these in their folders in their Daily Five book boxes and just come show me when one side is filled up.  When the whole thing is full, I file it away.  We love pulling them out to see how many tests we've taken!  :)  Now, I don't love AR and that is a totally different rant blog post, but if I have to do it, at least I can enjoy hanging with my kiddos!

On a side note, I just posted a project on Donor's Choose that I would LOVE to have funded!  I've had loads of luck with Donor's Choose thanks to extremely generous people- some who I know and others who are strangers!  I know sometimes they send out random gift cards (my mom got $125.00 in gift cards from them once that she posted to one of my projects!) or offer special promos to earn credits to put towards projects... if you have some laying around and don't currently have a project to fund, I'd love it if you would keep me in mind!  :)  I put a project up to get a Mimio Pad of my own so I don't have to worry about the possibility of potentially having to share the ActivSlate that I'm using in my room!  Yes, I'm being selfish!  This would get me my very own interactive pad so I could ensure being able to keep one in my room at all times!  Anyway, here's a link to my giving page if you do happen to have any codes or unused gift cards- Mrs. Bainbridge's Donor's Choose Giving Page.