iReady Incentive Ideas: Ways to Boost Student Engagement

This year, my school district implemented the iReady program across all grade levels. It has been an ever evolving journey to find the right fit and engagement for my students to get the most success out of the lessons. Throughout the year, I have been tweaking and changing the incentives in our classroom to get the maximum benefit of the program for as many of my students as possible. Here are a few things you need to know before we continue:

1. iReady is required for 45 minutes in BOTH reading and math each week per my district.

2. We only use the diagnostic tests and adaptive MyPath lessons. 

When we started using this program at the beginning of the year, my students weren't very interested in completing their lessons. There was no incentive for them to complete them. I needed to find something quick. I searched the internet and Instagram to get ideas and then tweaked a few to work for my classroom.

INCENTIVE #1: PUNCH CARDS

Punch cards serve as a tangible and visual reminder of the progress and effort students are making to reaching their goals. It motivates them to complete their iReady lessons consistently. Here a few ways I have implemented them effectively in my classroom:

Set Clear Goals: The goals must be achievable and reasonable. My students must complete 45 minutes of BOTH reading and math lessons.

Celebrate Milestones:  If they reach the goal, they get $1 of our school wide money called Cougar Cash (total of $2 possible for completing minutes). On Friday morning, I have a "mini-conference" with each student. They bring me their punch cards from the pocket chart. We quickly look at how many lessons they passed and mark their punch card. When they have passed 10 lessons, they receive $5 of Cougar Cash. Once they fill up a card, I check it off so I know they received their money and they can take it home to show their family members. 

INCENTIVE #2: REWARD TAGS

Reward tags are another way to incentivize students to reach their goals. It adds an element of fun and excitement to the learning process. Here are a few ways to incorporate them into your classroom:

Establish Clear Goals: Define the criteria for students to earn the reward tag. My students get one for every 30 lessons passed. 

Showcase Success: Display student reward tags in the classroom to show off their achievements and learning goals. As they collect the reward tags, you are building a sense of accomplishment and pride for each student. 

Are you ready to get started with iReady incentives in your classroom? Grab the reading and math punch cards and reward tags by clicking on the image below.

I hope you can use some of these ideas in your classroom and adapt them to work for you and your students as you embark on motivating your students on their iReady journey. 

Poetry Keepsakes

Are you looking for a great bulletin board display for the end of the year? A meaningful keepsake that will melt your parents' hearts and make them tear up a bit? Then this is the activity for you! Our self portraits and All About Me Poems are one of my most favorite activities I do all year! I love to have them on display for Open House if possible too, 

We start off by drawing self portraits of ourselves. I teach the children about proportions, spacing, using the entire piece of paper etc. We draw everything in pencil first. Then, we use oil pastels to add color to the drawings. My students learn to smudge and blend with the oil pastels to create a smooth skin tone. They love learning how to blend and mix colors to find the perfect blend.  

After we complete our self portraits, I introduce the kids to our poetry format. I give each student a copy of the template. We complete each line one at a time. This can be done as a whole group or small group. You know your students best. I complete it as a whole group. We brainstorm ideas for each line. This seems to get the ideas flowing and gives the kids inspiration to write about themselves. 

You can grab this FREEBIE template for the poems HERE.

Once the students complete the rough drafts of their poems, I type them and print them on bright colored paper. I mount them on black paper to make them POP and stand out.

I display them next to their self portraits and.... TA-DAH! A beautiful display is created. At the end of the year, I put these into each students' art portfolio and they take them home to their parents. 

MLK Activities and a FREEBIE

It's hard to believe we are already half way through January! I just went back to work this week. We had an incredible three week vacation and now reality has set in. My teacher planning wheels are in full gear. 

We jumped in with both feet and started learning about Martin Luther King Jr. I was able to get some of the activities done that I had planned, but our learning is going to continue for several weeks. Tolerance and acceptance of others is not a one month lesson! 

I started off the week by reading this book about Martin Luther King Jr.'s life. It was just the right amount of informational text for my kiddos. I hooked them, but didn't lose their interest! Win-win!

Then I used the vocabulary cards from my Martin Luther King Jr. packet to help with comprehension and understanding. We followed up with a vocabulary review page that we used in our ELA interactive notebooks.

As we were reading different books about MLK's life, we created this classroom timeline. It is a great visual reference for my students. I have seen several of them getting up and checking the timeline while they are working on follow up activities. A teacher's dream! 

We also started working on a paper bag interactive books about MLK's life. Oh, how the kids L-O-V-E-D this activity. It was engaging and meaningful because they were in the process of learning about MLK's life. I prepped and stapled the paper bags ahead of time for the kids. They colored and cut each of the parts. Then, as a class, we assembled the books, so there was little room for error.

All these activities can be found in my Martin Luther King Jr. packet. 

And now it's time for a FREEBIE. Here is a True or False Flap Book to kick start or add to your Martin Luther King Jr. activities. It can be completed whole group, in partners, or independently depending on your group of students. 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope everyone enjoys their long weekend! 

New Year Resolution FREEBIE

It is hard to believe that 2015 is coming to an end and 2016 is just around the corner. Most of us are just fully  emerged in winter break and can barely think about anything except making sure our alarm clocks are turned off! 

However, some of us are planners! Me.. Me...Me!!! In preparation for the New Year, I created and prepped these resolution crafts for my kiddos to complete the first week we are back from break.


All the templates are included to create a boy or girl New Year's Resolution booklet.


All you have to do is copy the templates on white paper. Next, choose if you want your students to write a personal resolution or a school resolution. I am going to make an anchor chart  and have a discussion with my class, so they have ideas about what resolutions are and what they mean. Finally, cut and staple the pages together to make your booklets.

You can grab this activity with all the templates for your class too! Just click on the picture below and grab your FREE copy! 

Happy New Year everyone!

Making Math Fun!

MATH... Oh, how I love thee! I am super excited to be linking up this month with some fabulous bloggers to bring you tons of fun math strategies and games.

I love to teach math. I am always looking for new ways to engage my students and get them to embrace the new ways of the Common Core strategies and how to explain their thinking. This can be so difficult for so many students. They can tell you that 10+2=12 but they can't tell you why. Well, those days are over in my classroom! I always tell them, I don't care what your answer is, I want to know HOW you got it. PROVE IT!  

1. MATH CRAFTIVITIES:

Anytime I can incorporate math and a craft, I DO IT! We just finished up our addition and subtraction strategies unit. I wanted my students to PROVE they learned the strategies I taught them. I used this little craft to bring fall into our classroom AND have them review their addition strategies. 

You can use this template to incorporate whatever math strategy your kiddos are working on at the moment. Students can show how to make 10, fact families, arrays, skip counting etc.  It just brings a bit of fun into your math lessons. The kids don't realize they are working on math and they tend to be more focused and proud of their work. 

Click the picture above to grab your {FREEBIE} copy of this activity to use with your students too.

2. INTERACTIVE MATH NOTEBOOKS

One of my favorite math strategies, that is always a home run with my students, is to use INTERACTIVE notebooks. My students squeal with delight when we work in our interactive notebooks. I don't think they actually realize they are using their math knowledge when we are creating pages in our notebooks. 

I love the activities because they are perfect for independent practice during math centers. During center time, I always have my students review concepts I have previously taught. This gives them a chance to review and practice what they know. 

We also use our notebooks to  work on problem solving skills. Each problem solving page asks the students to identify what is being asked in the word problem, draw a picture to show their thinking, write a number sentence and the answer. However, what is MOST important about the word problem pages, is an explanation of HOW they solved the problem. I love this part because it makes my students think and explain. When they can do that, they are more likely to understand and retain the concept being taught!

Are you ready to get started with interactive notebooks? Check out this FREEBIE sampler with a few activities that will get your students engaged and excited about math. 

Sight Word Activities for Beginning Readers

Let's face it... sight words are tricky! Kids struggle learning them and we struggle finding fun and creative ways to get our students to learn them. It doesn't matter what grade I teach, first, second, or even fourth grade....I always have students who are struggling with their sight words.

Every school year I have a group of students who know their sight words like the back of their hands. But the majority of my students struggle with them. Maybe they can read some of them, but they can't always spell them. Some are even still trying to sound them out, which we know is not possible for many reasons. They have to know them by sight, with automaticity, in order to become strong readers. 

I like to start my school year, reviewing sight words the students should know from first grade. This is a quick assessment for me. It is just one tool I use to help me gauge where my students' skill levels are when they come to me. After I test them, I give them flash cards with the words they need to still learn. I love these flash cards because they have the word written in letter boxes for the students to visually see how the word is written.  This strategy helps many of my struggling learners. 

Learning and reviewing sight words can be so dull and boring. I want my students engaged! I have created several ways of doing this. One way is to focus on a small number of words at a time. Four or five words seems to be the magic number for most of my kiddos. 

This activity helps the students recognize sight words in different fonts, sizes and shapes. Once they identify the words, the students graph how many times they saw each word. 

I also like my students to see the sight words in text. I created fluency and cloze reading passages for this reason. Students need to see the words in context, not just in isolation in order to remember, retain, and use the words correctly. 

Are you ready to use some of these activities in your classroom? Try them out for yourself. This {FREEBIE} BONUS pack of activities is just for you. 

{DON'T FORGET IT! PIN IT!}

Classroom Sneak Peek + FREEBIES

Hello, sweet friends! I feel like I have been missing from the blogging world for a little too long. A few weeks ago my family and I were doing a little vacationing. 

We flew into Seattle and spent a couple days there being tourists and enjoyed the town. Then we took a ferry to the San Juan Islands and spent the week enjoying nature, fishing, and EATING, EATING and EATING some more delicious seafood! I tried to unplug as much as possible. As soon as we got home, it was time to start my classroom prep. So blogging has been put to the back burner until now!

I feel like I could work in my classroom ALL year, without kids, and NEVER be completely ready. I am overly organized and prepared and I still feel this way. Here is a little bit of what I have been doing in my home away from home....

 I love to make my kiddos feel special on their birthday. I created these birthday blooms to do just that. I change what I attach them to every year. I have used crazy straws, mechanical pencils, birthday pencils and more. I keep them in this pot all year. When its the student's birthday, they "pick" there birthday bloom from the pot. You can grab your copy of this FREEBIE by clicking HERE. The file is editable too!

I also have a class birthday board. Once the kids arrive I take a group picture of 

all the kids who have birthdays each month. Then I print and laminate them to have up on our birthday board all year. 

I love our Second Grade Makes Us "App"y welcome door! This is from my talented friend, Molly, at Lucky To Be In First.

I finally found black pocket charts! The heavens must be hearing me sing (cover your ears). Seriously though, I LOVE Them. I put my student "I Can" standards cards in them, so I can easily switch them out AND my administration and students will know EXACTLY what we are focusing on.

 I LOVE, LOVE, L-O-V-E my new behavior chart from Learning in Wonderland. Now, I know, behavior charts seem to be a hot topic lately, but it works for my students and I. I like how students can easily improve on their behavior and move their clips up. It provides accountability. My students fill out a behavior chart at the end of each day with the color they are on. At the end of the week, they take the chart home and have it signed. This provides parents with the information they need and cuts down on "how is my child behaving/doing in class" questions.

 I have very little wall space in my classroom, so I have to be creative and use every surface creatively. My behavior chart is on one side of my file cabinet. I love it because it dresses it up AND I can use magnetic student numbers, instead of clothespins that always seems to break during the year.

I was inspired by Amy Lemons to dress up and label my file cabinets. She has a great freebie you can download. I, however, created my own labels that are similar because I wanted the titles to fit my needs. I don't know why I didn't do it sooner. 

I have prepped my first day of school treat bags. I made these labels last year for all grade levels. You can grab the labels for your classroom by heading over to my Facebook page. Click on the Freebie For Fans tab on the left side of the page.

During special activities our students wear name tags (music, art, theater etc.) until those teachers get to know the kids. I also use them if we are going to a special assembly that is interactive and the presenter would need to call on students. 

These are just a few of the little things that are helping me get the school year off right. I will give you a full room tour next week once school is underway. 

I hope each of you are enjoying what is left of your summer or have kicked off your school year with a BANG!