Ever have difficulty getting your kids to work cooperatively in groups?  Getting tired of putting out multiples fires at once from your groups bickering over who’s going to color the frog on the poster (or any other animal, really).   

Here’s a solution I have to assist in helping students focus more on being productive rather than arguing with friends.   Assign a “role” to everyone in the group.  When each group member has a role, the student knows what he/she is responsible for, and you don’t have the members fighting over who’s in charge.
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Do you ever have a hard time getting the kids to get themselves ready for the day?  Are your students scrambling to pack up their belongings in their backpack at the end of the day?  

I have a simple solution to that problem.  Every morning I play a calm, instrumental song.  The students know they have until the end of the song to get ready for the day.  Getting ready for the day means, putting their lunch away, sharpening pencils, getting everything out of their backpack that they need for the day, putting their backpack away, and turning in their homework. These are known as the “Morning Procedures.”  Once they’re ready for the day, they begin writing in their daily journal.
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You can consider this blog Part 2 from my previous blog on color changes.  You may want to go back and read that one before reading this.  

Here’s how I communicate with parents about their child’s daily behavior.  At the end of the day, students get to have “privilege time” (I also have a privilege time blog you can check out to see how it works in more detail).  Students are allowed an extra 15 minutes at the end of the day to have some free time, if they have earned it.  A color change results in a loss of privilege time where the student is responsible for filling out a “Changing Your Behavior” sheet.  This sheet asks questions about why the student changed his/her color, what the child should’ve done, and what they will do next time.  

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Here’s a great method for keeping track of your students’ daily behavior.  I have a color change chart in the back of my classroom.  Here’s how it works.  Every day the kids start on the color green.  If students have trouble following directions, they “change their color.”  Behind the green cards shown in the picture are yellow, orange, purple, and red.  Here is a breakdown of what each color represents (you may want to refer to my blogs about using tickets as a reward system. 

In my last blog I explained how I use tickets as a reward system.

 Here is a list of ways students can earn tickets:

• Any time I catch them doing something good
• Staying on green on the Color Change Chart (see my blog on color changes)
• Winning educational game competitions (for example, if I break the kids into groups and we’re playing a game that helps them practice their spelling words, the winning group gets 1 ticket.)

How do you reward your students for positive behavior?  (Please don’t say candy).  There’s many ways I’ve found effective, but one I’m using this year is the ticket system.  Students earn tickets and can save them up to buy things from the teacher store.