A Big Hello from Angie at The First Grade Scoop!

Hi all! This is Angie from The First Grade Scoop here! I'm so excited about this collaborative blog and getting the opportunity to share with you and learn from others here, too! A little bit about me... I'm in my sixth year of teaching first grade in an urban school in Chicago, and I LOVE it! The little ones are truly where my heart is. (Although, confession: My first year of teaching I taught eighth grade departmentalized science. Yikes!) I married my high school sweetheart (our eighth anniversary is this August) and I have two sweet kiddos of my own at home - Avery, who is 2.5 years old, and Declan, who will be one on June 1st. When people say time flies, they mean it!

I thought I'd stop by to share with you a little about how I use my clip chart, which believe me, is my saving grace at this crazy time of the year. (What is it about warm weather that makes us all a little crazy sometimes?!)

(Excuse my messy closet! This is dangerously close to my corner. You know how some people have a junk drawer in their kitchen? The corner this is near is my junk corner!)

I tried having kids flip cards a couple of years, but I struggled because I didn't feel there were enough opportunities to really reward kids who did a great job in class. And I tried tickets for good behavior, but then I always felt kinda sad when the kid who earned one ticket all week got their name pulled for a prize and the kid who had like 1,352 in the tub didn't get picked.

So I made my clip chart, and it's worked wonders!

I printed my clip chart (snag it FREE here) and glued it to a couple pieces of black posterboard, then laminated it. At the beginning of the year, I labeled clothespins with kids' names (I prefer just numbers, but my kiddos this year really struggled to remember their numbers... Hence the name label also). I have 29 students, and they all fit on the chart if I put half of the clothespins in each direction. Kids can move up for good behavior, or down for poor choices. The beautiful thing is, it allows students the chance to recover from a mistake.

In my room, getting on pink is a BIG DEAL. So those kids get to stick on a rhinestone (Jo-Ann or Michael's carry them) as a sign they've reached the top.

At the end of the day, my students color a calendar they keep in their homework folder with the color they ended on for the day.

(See more about these calendars here.)

If you're interested in these communication calendars, stop by my TpT store to snag them for free!

Hope this was helpful! Thanks for reading, and I look forward to learning more from you all and posting more soon!