Success Criteria for Good Character

Help Your Students Become More Responsible

Free Responsibility Worksheets

Do your students know what being responsible looks like?

Do they understand how to be responsible?

We talk about great character traits like cooperation, respect, courage and optimism etc. but we don't often consider how it looks to a student in our classroom. Take a trait or two each month(s) and make it the focus. For instance, let students set goals about how they will become more responsible. Develop a success criteria with the class and post it for the month or two that the trait will be focused on.

Brainstorm what being responsible looks like with the students and come up with 5 or 6 items to post. It may look lilke:

RESPONSIBILITY
1.  Always come prepared for each class.
2.  Follow routines and rules appropriately.
3.  Complete tasks to the best of our ability.
4.  Take responsibility for our own behavior.
Each time a new character trait is introduced, develop a 'looks like' or sucess criteria with your class and focus on the looks like throughout the month(s).

Want the free responsibility worksheets to use with your students? You'll find them all right here.

Have a great teaching week!

Organize Your Chart Paper

If you don't yet have a SMART/White board to organize your files from one year to the next with ease, this tip is for you.

I used to write out morning messages, problem solving strategies, word work, problems of the day and just about anything worthwhile on to chart paper. Storing it was always a challenge.

Take a hanger and some clothes pins and start hanging all your chart paper keepers. Use the sticky yellows on the side of each to indicate what they're about. AND, if you can have a bracket that shows about 6 inches or so, hang it there where they're readily available.

However, with technology - soon this tip will be redundant.

Do you have a favorite tip? Please comment and share with fellow educators.

Word Walls for Older Grades



For Word Walls

Word Walls With A Twist... Or a Ring!

Sometimes word walls can get too crowded, especially when they're used in higher grades. One trick that works well is binder rings of words.

Simply laminate small cards of words and using a single whole punch, put all the words for each given letter on the binder ring. On your bulletin board, you will need 26 push pins to hang each group of words. This makes the words handy for students. When students need the spelling of a word that begins with t, they grab the ring containing all the t words.

Word walls should be growing all year, those pretty word walls that become static are nowhere near as effective as a growing word wall.

See the ready made words here or check out the word families.

These tips come from great classrooms and sharing helps everyone,  as always, if you have a tip to share, I'd love to hear from you to keep the sharing going.