This Post is a Biggie! Winners, TWO Freebies!, and Something Cool!

As stated in the title of this post... it's a biggie!  Full of winners, freebies, and something super cool that you HAVE to try!

First...

Congratulations to Amanda at Sweeties in Second, Jennifer at Herding Kats in Kindergarten, and Stacee at Tiggerific 2nd Graders... you've each won 35 custom brag tags and chains from imagestuff.com!  I'll be getting a hold of you later today so I can get you in touch with the fabulous Kim at imagestuff.com so you can order your tags- Stacee @ Tiggerific 2nd Graders... you didn't leave your e-mail so you need to contact me at christina4062@hotmail.com!  Thanks to everyone who entered... I hope I have helped introduce you to an amazing product you can use in your classroom to motivate and cheer on your special kiddos!

On to the TWO freebies!!!!!

My third grade team is departmentalized and we wanted to keep consistency between how our students do certain things in our classroom.  So we came up with five "things" they might need to ask for and assigned a number 1-5 to each.  If a student needs to use the bathroom, they hold up 1 finger.  If it's an EMERGENCY bathroom request, they hold up 2 fingers, 3 for drinks, 4 for pencils or tissues, and 5 to ask or answer a question.

Then I made a poster set that (in my humble opinion) is SUPER cute!  You can click the picture below to grab it at my TpT store!

Next freebie...

I have had this sign hanging in my classroom since I began teaching in 2006.  It hangs by the door and, at the end of the day, kids LOVE to say one of these to me and, if they do, I'll say one back!  Over the years, more have been added and kids have even come up with a few of these (J came up with "Have a great day, blue jay!" and C came u pwith "Toodeloo, Kangaroo!").

The kids especially love it when they say the one to me that I had on the tip of my tongue to say to them... then they get to see their teacher get tongue tied as I quickly try and think of a different one to say!

You can click the picture to download it at my TpT store!

Neeeext... something cool that you HAVE to try!

Hate it or not, I am an incentive-y teacher.  My students have lots of opportunities to earn 1 M&M (did you know a kid will do anything for 1 M&M... or 1 Nerd?!  I hear big kids will do the same for 1 McDonald's french fry!) or a clip up or a point on Class Dojo or a trip to the prize box.  I am an "intermittent praise" kind of gal, but I do love doling out my incentives.

Well, I didn't want to do a prize box this year with my 3rd graders.  One- it gets expensive.  Two- when things get hectic on a Friday morning, prize box is easy to forget to do and that makes for some sad kiddos.  Three- where do those prizes end up?  Probably shoved in a desk or forgotten about completely.

So, when I came across Tori's idea during a Monday Made-it a few weeks ago, I knew I had to try it.

Tori made scratch off cards for her kiddos... you know, like scratch off lottery cards and underneath is the prize they win!  I don't have a specific time in mind for when I'll hand these out.  I think I'm going to use them as "Caught ya being good" type of things.  Or, on Friday when I hand out the rest of my awards, I may give out one or two of these too.

Anywho, Tori offers you to download her cards that are pre-made on her blog and some MORE on her TpT store for FREE FREE FREE!!!!!  But, since we are departmentalized, I won't have my class all day long, so I needed to make my rewards a little more specific to my time constraints.

I used some of her ideas and some of my own too.  You can see one page of my rewards below.  I also added: get a stamp or sticker, choose a fun place to sit during Daily Five, skip morning work, choose a greeting (during Morning Meeting), sit at my table, your group gets 1 extra free choice minute, I'll buy you a bag of popcorn, and you can choose where you want to sit at morning meeting.

But, even though I need to make my own, I LOVED how Tori's looked so mine are very similar.  She was kind enough to allow me to share my (her) design with you.

 

She gives a full tutorial on her blog about how to make these, so I'm just going to give you a quick one.

And... last but not least...

This is of interest to 3rd grade Treasures users only.  Everyone else, feel free to head straight to GO and collect $200.00.

I just added a set of focus wall cards for 3rd grade Treasures to my stores.  The set contains cards for each week's story title and author, genre, comprehension skill or strategy, vocabulary skill, and grammar skill.  The cards all define the topic and most give an example too.

You can check them out if you're interested!  This image includes one card from each week of Unit 2 and the preview file contains all of unit 1 so you can see what's included with each week.

Check it out on TpT          or          Teacher's Notebook

So, there you have it!  A blog post full of great things!  I'd love some bloggy lovin' if you download my freebies.  It's been quiet over here lately... I think everyone must be back at school with kiddos or back at school getting ready for kiddos!  Me... I still have until September 4th until kids come back!

Have a great weekend, friends!