Teacher Shout Out: Mr. B

At our school, we enforce "HALLS":

H: hands to yourself
A: all parts of body facing forward
L: low speed
L: lips zipped
S: space between you and me

I was outside my room DRA-ing students while my co-teacher taught writing when we were interrupted by a rowdy bunch of third graders.  They were waiting to enter another teacher's classroom since we switch students to differentiate based on their needs.  I went down to remind them about our school's expectations and then told their teacher that they needed to work on their voices.

He spoke with them and they were so much better today!

What impressed me even more was this delivery:

I love that he talked with them about personal responsibility and had them take ownership of their actions.   He had them write apology notes for their voice levels and disrupting our learning.

I appreciate that he took the time out of his day to use this teachable moment to talk about how to behave appropriately and be functioning, considerate members of society.  

Huge shout out to him!

Mystery Walker

I've seen this idea all over pinterest and I figured I'd give it a try.

The strategy is "mystery walker".

You can make cute containers to put the names in like picture above, but since I'm pressed for time, a ziplock baggie with little slips of paper works just fine too.

I draw a name and that student is the one I'm focusing on in line.  Instead of always saying "I like how so and so is keeping his/her hands to himself" or using other positive reinforcement strategies, I use "I hope my mystery walker is showing me his/her best halls to earn us student points."  

I don't reveal the gender of the student. 

I've used it for a few days and it's going pretty well.  My students are super motivated to earn student points, which we use for a class competition.  This week they earned almost 20 marbles in their jar, which was very exciting for them :)