Most specials teachers can name the day of the week that is tougher than others. (And the day of the week that they wouldn't miss for the world! #AmIRight?)
At one school where I worked, Thursdays were ROUGH across the board - no matter what we did, Thursdays "spun" like the Friday before a break. Kids were wild and wooly on Thursday and the SAME KIDS would come back on Friday friendly and happy to be there. Whiplash!
This year, my Wednesday schedule is turning out to be one of my tougher days. I have a group of kids in the afternoon that try to argue constantly on Wednesday, and come back to me on Thursday morning like little angels. There are differences in time of day, circumstances that happen, and of course differences in body levels (are they hungry? did they just take their medicine? did they just wake up?). Regardless of the issues, we still had work to do and things to learn!
So, today I tried something a little different - double star day!
You might remember from this post that I use a system of stars to track group behavior in my classroom. For the older kids, we do points. Classes set a goal at the beginning of class and attempt to reach that goal during the day.
This year, I added charts (thanks to Sing Play Create!) that track weekly goals. So, for example, if they reach their goal that week (4 stars, or 40 points), they get a smiley face on the chart.
The chart has 8 blanks per class, since I see the classes twice a week this year (wow!). This means if they reach their goals consistently, they can earn a "reward" every 4 weeks or so.
Today I took a page from my old principal and did double star day! It was a HIT! Not only did the kids get excited, but I could move them all closer to their goal (even my roughest classes finally got to move up!!).
At the end of class, I took the total number of stars (or points) earned and doubled it. They were SO excited to get the huge number of points or stars and that's half the battle! As an extra incentive, I allowed some classes to earn "double moves on the chart" - aka 2 smiley faces. This helped me move those classes that were behind a little closer to the same schedule as the other classes (for my sanity!).
I can't wait to try this out with my Monday classes (whom I feel like I never see and they are constantly behind - anyone else?). I'll let you know how it goes!
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