Mystery Student, ABC Countdown, Fairy Tale Winner

I don't know about you, but kids definitely have "spring fever".  They were not my normal sweet class last week.  I have been more stressed the past week than the beginning of the school year.  It is CRAZY!  I decided I needed to do something different because obviously what we had been doing wasn't really working anymore.  The idea of the mystery student came to me.  I have seen pins about this on Pinterest so I am not claiming this as my own idea, but I am putting my own twist on it.

In our building, we have a building wide behavior system.  {I posted about it here and here.}  It is our Tier 1 for behavior interventions.  It is really nice to have all students on the same system especially when you are the teacher on recess duty!  In addition to this, I also do a class positive behavior system where we can earn class rewards.  This means that we have to work together as a class to earn the reward.  I am using this "Sweet Behavior" idea from Jessica Williamson.  Every time my class gets a compliment from another teacher or myself they earn a cupcake.  Once we have nine cupcakes on the board, our helper pulls down one and we earn the reward on the back.  This has been a system in place since Day 1 of kindergarten.  We are going to beef it up a bit now though.

Each morning I am going to pull a student's name and hide it so no one can see who our mystery student is for the day.  Then at the end of the day, I will reveal who our mystery student was for the day.  If that child did not move any sticks, then we earn a cupcake.  If he/she moved sticks, then no cupcake for the day.  We can still earn them for compliments though.  So now we have two ways to earn.

We discussed this as a class last week and I went to each student and asked, "Can you try your hardest to help us earn a cupcake?".  Of course, each and every student answered with an enthusiastic, "YES!"

Thursday was our first day having a mystery student and I will admit that I rigged it a bit.  I just wanted my class to feel some success and motivate my other students to want to help the class.  So, I pulled a name of student who has moved 2 sticks ALL YEAR LONG!   He didn't move any on Thursday so we earned a cupcake.  The class was so excited and this little guy was so proud of himself!  :)

Friday, I did not rig it at all and the student who was picked unfortunately had moved two sticks so we did not earn a cupcake.  The class was very gracious about it as I had prepped them about what to do if we don't earn our cupcake.  So proud of how they handled it.

I also wanted to tell you about my ABC countdown I do at the end of the year.  I got this idea while I was in college observing classrooms.  One teacher told me all about it and I was hooked!  I knew this was something I would always do in my classroom.  Starting 26 days from the last day of school, we do a letter a day from the alphabet.  For the most part, each day's activity is at the end of the day.  Students may only participate if they have good behavior {if they move 3 sticks in one day we have to send home a note to parents so that was my limit for this}.  Some of the class favorites are King for a day, Queen for a day, Ice Cream Day, and Popsicle Day.  I am not buying something for every day, but I do want it to be exciting to motivate my students to have the best behavior they can.  All it takes is one day of missing out and then they are usually back on track.  {At least, this has been my experience in the past!}  If you would like to see my full ABC Countdown, please click on the image below and you can download it.  This is same exact paper that I send home to the parents.

We started today and celebrated August birthdays.  Tomorrow is Bubble Beach Day.  The students will bring in beach towels and I am providing bubbles.  Hopefully it is nice enough that we can go outside......I think there is rain in the forecast!

Last, but not least we need to find out who won Elizabeth's Fairy Tale Unit.  Once again, I can't figure out how to get the graphic for the random number generator.  Sorry folks, but I am exhausted and after trying for about 15 minutes I gave up!  The winning number was comment number 1 which means Amy Swan you are the WINNER!!!  Congrats!  Elizabeth should be emailing you soon.

I am going to bed now.  I know it's only 9:15, but this lady is exhausted.  I started coaching my daughter's softball team tonight and that wore me out!!