Classroom Routines I will have room helpers, jobs for the students to do daily.

I will have 7 jobs that students will each get a chance to be for an entire week. I will rotate them out every week. One job will be a messenger, where that student takes down any papers I need brought down to the office. Job two will be lights manager, they will be in charge of turning off the lights when we leave the room and turning them back on when we get back. They will also turn off the lights when I am teaching and need to lights off. Job three will be line leader. They will lead our line when we walk to and from different places. Job four will be calendar helper. When they walk in the room in the morning their job will be to write the date up on the board next to our calendar and then help me when it is time for calendar. Job five is paper passer, when I have papers to be passed out they will pass the papers out. Job six is board eraser. They will erase the board at the end of the day. The final job is lunch helper, they will help me count up how many people want each lunch choice. These are jobs that I will have in my room, however if I happen to get a pet or plant I would have a plant helper to water it everyday and a pet helper to feed the pet everyday. Jobs will be adjusted based on grade taught and daily routines. Lunch will work dually as attendance. As students walk into the room there will be a magnetic board against the wall that says, "What's for lunch?" It will have two or three sections. One for cold lunch and then depending on how many hot lunch choices there are, I will have one or two more sections. It is important to get the school lunch menu to be able to write these options out ahead of time and attach magnets to them. I will switch out the lunch options each morning before the students come into the room. Students will each have a tag with their name on it and a magnet on the back. They will all be at the bottom of the board. In order to sign in and tell me what they want for lunch they will move their magnet to the option they want. I will record (with the help of my lunch helper) how many are for each choice. This way, I can see which students are absent as well. I will always double check with a head count. One area that I want to be firm on and set a routine for right away is how to enter the classroom. Students will be expected to come into the room in the morning, with their things put away in their locker, and sit down in their desk quietly. I will have a morning activity for them to do for the beginning of class. It can be something related to what we will be working on later in the day or it can just be an activity to get their brains moving. Most mornings students may have a lot of energy and have a lot to say. Morning warmups are a great way to channel all of the energy while still allowing them to talk to other classmates (about/within the warm-up). I will have a different activity for each day of the week. When they are finished they can silent read. Another example is when there is a constant morning routine category each week, but I can switch the activities within them. The activities are as follows: Magazine Monday, Tune Up Tuesday, Word Search Wednesday, Think Outside The Box Thursday, and Fidget With it Friday.

Magazine Monday is a time where students can look through magazines I will provide. They will all be kid friendly and educational. Highlights magazines or National Geographic for kids would be different options. This allows students to come in and quiet down, but also look into something that interests them. I will make sure to switch out my magazines frequently. Tune-up Tuesday will be skill based and working on something we have been doing in the class. It could be reading poetry with a partner. Word search Wednesday is exactly what the title says. Students will have a word search with relevant words that we are talking about or practicing in class or could be our spelling words for the week. This could also be high frequency words, sight words, student's names, etc. Think outside the box is when I will provide them with the beginning of a shape or some lines together and they will have to make an object other than the one I tell them not to do on the sheet. The final day is "Fidget With it Friday". Being the last day before the weekend, kids often a little more energy then usual. Fridays will be hands on activities. One example would be playing with their own individual cup of Play Doh. They will make words out of the Play Doh that I will write on the board for them to do. This could be done with pipe cleaners as well. I will have my own class library. Students can use my books during silent reading time, or when they read out loud to others. I will have several bins with my books separated into topics like: dinosaurs, space, biographies, mysteries, animals, sports, etc. I want to have several different categories so that students can explore different genres and topics that they may not have access to outside of school or be naturally interested in. Also, the more topics of books I have in my classroom, the better I can cover different student's interests. I will ask students to have a fiction and nonfiction book with them in their desks at all times. We will go to the library once a week so that they can get new books and my library will always be open to the students to take books to read. It is important for students to know what is expected of them when they finish work in the classroom. I do not want them to be distracting other students who are still working

nor do I want them to get distracted and hyper after they finish with nothing to do. Students will always have a silent reading book that they can grab from their desk if they need to switch out their book when they are finished they can take one from my class library. My reading and writing block will be organized into the daily five organizations. Within this organization it starts with a focus lesson (mini lesson) that will be taught for 10- 12 minutes. This is when the processing strategy is taught. Next we will have our five daily stations that students are pre assigned to. The stations are: read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, writing, and word work During this time the teacher will have a small group of students to work with where they will assess and confer with students. The second focus lesson, will be shorter then the first but still ranging from 6-10 minutes. Then students will go back to doing the dailies and small pullout group with me. To close, it is essential to have a closure. This will come in the form of a share and reflecting time, for about 7- 10 minutes. The way this works out, they will have ten minutes for each station before they need to switch. Read aloud will occur at different times later in the day outside of the daily 5 organization, but I will read out loud every day. I will read out loud after lunch and recess each day. It is a good transition after students getting to run around to coming back to the classroom and needing to calm down. After talking about an organization where there are a lot of transitions I think it is important to address how I will structure my transitions. I will make it a game and have a reward system for them. I will time them and the goal will be to complete our transitions and to be ready to learn in under a minute. I will put the time on the board for each transition we do that day. For every transition under a minute they will get a star. If transition time is over a minute they will not get a star. If they get 5 stars it will count as a point towards their class total points. There are a few times that I will award class points and this is one of them. Once we get to a selected amount (like 30) we will have a reward. An example could be a read and feed, where students come to school on Friday in their pajamas. They will bring a snack and a book and will spend majority of the day reading. When students are older, it should not be as necessary to reward them for transitioning well. I believe they can still be rewarded or given incentives, however, students should be expected to act appropriately and keep their voices off when transitioning. I will have two bathroom passes. One will say girls and have the girl symbol and the other will say boys and have the boy symbol. This will be helpful and save students of embarrassment (like ESL students who may still struggle with reading) when the symbol along with the word is on the pass. They will be attached to lanyards. This way, it can go around the student's neck and they will not lose them or forget them in the bathroom. I will have these hanging up on hooks near the door. When a student needs to go to the bathroom they need to go to the door, grab the appropriate lanyard and hold it up. I will look at them and nod. Students are not allowed to get up to go to the bathroom while I am talking, unless it is an emergency.

I will have laminated cards with the gradual release up on the board each day. I will have them in a stack so that only one is showing. I will change it throughout the day to show students which part of the gradual release we are currently working on. With younger grades we will have calendar time each morning after students finish their morning warm up. On the white board there will be a calendar where the students practice saying the days of the week, the date, the month, and the year. In fact, it a class job for a student to write out the long version and shortened numerical version of the date as soon as they come in the classroom for the day. Students also go over the weather and keep track of how many sunny, rainy, snowy, etc. days there have been. One thing I will do as a math activity will be that they will count how many days of school they have had with money and straws. So first they would add straws and they would have clusters of tens, fives, and ones, that they would change when they had enough (like five single straws they would bundle with a rubber band and put it into the five straw area). This will be done with money too. So if it were the 131st day of school they would have to make $1.31 using the least amount of coins. All of the students would be involved in this process, but the calendar helper would help with different parts of calendar time. Consistency is important to the students. I will have the schedule up on the board each day when the students come in the room. It does not have to be overwhelming, just a simple layout of when students will be going to specials, lunch, and having different subjects throughout the day. An example of what mine will look like is below:

Dismissal is an important part of the day. Whether this is dismissal at the end of the day or before lining up for lunch or specials, there needs to be a procedure. I will discuss with the students during the first week of school on how I will dismiss them. That means that they will not dismiss themselves, other students will not dismiss them, and the school bell will not dismiss them. We will practice this on the first few days of school until students get the hang of it. At the end of the day when the bell rings I will have them sit in their desks until they are all silent and then I will dismiss them. This is in no way punishment and will not happen daily, but in order to manage your classroom. I will often have them go out to their lockers before the bell rings at the end of the day to get their backpacks and coats on. However, I want them to be aware of dismissal procedures and be listening to me for the cue to leave as opposed to when they want to or a friend tells them to. Students also need to know that when they come in from activities like lunch or recess they are expected to come inside and calm down and sit in their desk. There will

either be a prompt on the board to get started on something, they may work on homework or in-class work, or silent read. I will have a bulletin board that says, "All Done?" Students will look at this board when they are all done with an activity or project in class while the rest of the class is still working. It will have a list of ideas for students to work on when they are completed. This could be items worked on in class that not everyone finished, activities to be practiced daily like spelling words, or silent reading. I will have a token economy in my classroom. Students will receive tickets for good behavior. I will give tickets out at random instead of using them as a bribe to get students to act properly. Instead, if I see one student reading well around other students that are not, I will go to that student and explicitly say, "I really like how Johnnie is reading his book quietly and not talking to anyone else," and then give him a ticket. Students take note of this and want to get a ticket as well and will often change their behavior. If they change their behavior and are consistent with that behavior I will reinforce their behavior with a ticket. Tickets will usually be given out on an individual basis, however if a group or pair is working well together, they all have the opportunity to receive a ticket. I will have a class store that is open every Wednesday. Tickets are a great incentive, however I do not want my students to be dependent and only act properly for the purpose of receiving a ticket. I will have a list of prices for different items they can buy when the class store opens. I will have students help me create a name for our class store and tell me different things they would like. For example, if a lot of students would like to eat with me during lunch, I could make that an item that is worth more tickets. I will have some items they can get with a low amount of items like erasers, bracelets, toy bugs, etc., but also different rewards that students will have to save up for like lunch with the teacher, sit by your friend for the whole day, extra computer or iPad time (if resources available), etc. I will not take away tickets, but I will not award tickets for bad behavior. I will have an area that I will place assignments done in class each day so that if a student is absent they can go to the day they were gone and pick up the assignments. This is a great tool because students have to take accountability while they were absent by going to the bins and taking different items that they missed from the day they were absent. There will be a bin for each day and I will replace those items on the following weekday, so on the following Monday I will switch out last Mondays work for this Mondays work. The items that I take out will go into an, "Extras," crate nearby. This is helpful if students are gone for more than a week or just when students just lose different assignment. Along with make-up work I will need an area for students to turn in their work I will have all work turned in in one bin. I will take things out of it throughout the day if it gets too full or too keep assignments organized. I will have a bin for students to place their work in labeled, "Turn Me In!" Above this bin I will place a sign on the wall that is a stop sign saying, Stop! Is your NAME on that?. It is a reminder for students to write their name on their work as students may often forget to do this. At older grades this may not be necessary as it is more expected from them.

Each student will have a mailbox in my room where they will put their papers throughout the day to bring home, or where I can have the paper passer put different announcements to be sent home with each child. Sometimes there are mailboxes built in with the classroom, which I could use. If not, I will bring in something in that will serve as mailboxes. It does not have to be overwhelmingly large. Each student just needs a few inches of space to be able to keep their papers in throughout the day before collecting them all at the end of the day. They will each be labeled with their name, which I will attach with Velcro so that they can easily be moved each year when I have new students. One thing I will do in my classroom (especially for younger grades) also is to have a classroom mailbox that would look like a regular house mailbox. I will have sheets of paper near it title, "Warm Fuzzies." Students will write down "warm fuzzies", which are nice things they saw someone doing or things they like about each other. Overall, they will put positive messages in here. They will put them in the mailbox. I will read them out loud on Fridays after our morning warm up. I will go over appropriate times to go up and write these. Only 2 students at the most may be over there writing at a time, but you may take it back to your desk to write one and then go up and put it in the mailbox. This promotes a positive atmosphere in the classroom and students love it. I will have a large mason jar. I will put a small sparkly fuzzy ball into the jar. When we fill up the jar we will have a class party. This is a great way to promote a warm and safe environment in the classroom where each student feels loved and cared for. I will have a chart on a bulletin boar that describes different numbers corresponding with different sound levels. 0 will say quiet, zero talking. 1 will say whisper. 2 will say quiet talking. 3 will say normal voice. 4 will say teacher voice. Finally, a 5 will be an outside

voice. This is helpful because you can tell your students which level you want them to be at. It makes it more tangible to think about it in levels. This way you can also remind students, you are at a level 4, I need you at a level 2 please. One thing that I will have ready for students to avoid interruptions is having two different cups with sharp pencils and dull pencils. If I am in the middle of teaching or it is supposed to be quiet in the classroom, students may get up and go to the area where the two tins with pencils in them are. On one tin can there will be a happy face filled with sharp pencils, and on the sad face there will be dull pencils. The rule is that in order to take a pencil out they must place a pencil in. Depending on if there is a pencil sharpener in the room or not, I will bring an electronic one and be in charge of sharpening pencils and refilling the happy face tin can. This gets rid of any opportunities for distractions and disruptions when it comes to sharpening pencils. I want to build a community and classroom based on respect. Part of this is not interrupting our friends and the teacher when they are speaking. When I am teaching one technique I will use when students are talking when I am is by saying, "Quick, everyone put a bubble in your mouth." Their will blow their cheeks up with air and close their mouth and refocus their attention. Students must raise their hand to have a turn to talk. This will be the case from day one, so that it will become a regular routine that students learn to do. We will respect one another and one way of doing this is listening to each other. We will also practice being quiet in the hallway. if there are no disruptions in the hallway, this will be an opportunity where I will award class points. I will give them a point (or two depending on how well behaved they are). If they are not well behaved and quiet in the hallway they will not get a point. If they are overly loud and need several reminders to calm down and be quiet in the hallway they will lose a class point. I will never single out a certain student or group of students who are talking, I will plainly tell the class that we could not be quiet in the hallway and therefore did not earn a class point, or may have lost a point. There will be students that are quiet in the hallway every time and therefore I want to reinforce their behavior even if the rest of the class is not behaving. Therefore, I will reward them individually with a ticket, either while in the classroom to set an example or when we return to the classroom. It is important to make the most of field trips. Field trips should not be seen as a day off for the teacher, but as a different learning and teaching opportunity. It is important to make clear to students the behavior rules for the trip before going on the field trip, not after. It is important to review good behaviors for at least a week before the field trip and not just the day before so that they are reinforced throughout the week. It is important to give your students a learning task before going on the field trip. I do not want to lose sight of the purpose of a field trip. When students show up for the field trip I will have prepared them on background knowledge on where we are going and answer any questions they may have. I will provide a task of some sort so students go on the field trip with a purpose. It could be as simple as giving them a list of questions to think about and look into while on the field trip and to answer them afterwards. Follow up is extremely

important. I will spend time the following day discussing the field trip and have some sort of reflection or extension pertaining to the trip. Differentiation: Differentiation is absolutely necessary in a classroom. It will look different every year because it will depend on your students each year. There is not a "one size-fits all" mold to a classroom. It is important for all students needs to be met as well as each student being challenged, which will look different for each student. It is important to plan for all levels of abilities, as I will have students in a range of abilities. One-way to plan for this is to have open-ended tasks where students choose the route they take to completing a task or project. Like I previously stated, differentiation will look different in your classroom each year. The first few weeks it is important to find out what these needs are, whether their content needs to be lowered or more challenging for them or if the process they complete their task in needs to be altered. Differentiation is not done to favor students; it is to give students what they need. It is not a matter of fairness, but meeting the needs of each individual child. What one student needs another may not need. I will make it a top priority to get to know my students. Not only to see their ability level in different areas, but also to connect with each of them and show them how much I care for them. Each student needs to know that I believe in him or her and his or her ability to learn. One thing to do for high ability students is to create extended and alternate tasks. This does not mean extra busy work; we don't want to punish them for doing well. However, you can change the content or process of an assignment to make it more challenging them. This will differ based on the assignment. It is important to get to know your gifted students and see what challenges them. On the flip side, it is equally important to differentiate for learners with academic needs and challenges. There are many ways to helps students who don't understand directions or a task. One would be to include visuals in directions. Language can be hard for some students especially if English is not their first language. Visuals help students to understand what the task is. I can also increase the number of times I repeat directions or practice of a topic that they struggle with. I could read the directions to students when they receive directions for an activity. I could also provide them with a handout while I go over in class so that they can follow more easily. Overall I want to challenge all of my students. As I have stated, this will look different for each student, which is why it is incredibly important to get to know each student and learn what will challenge him or her. I will set high standards for all of my students; they can rise to the challenge.