Juice Box Bully - Creating a Community in Your Classroom

Hey there!  So, 4 days into the new school year and I am LOVING my new class!  I think one of the best things about our job is that we get to "start over" each year and we get fresh, new, precious faces, to work with!!

One of my major goals the first day of school is to build community and make my classroom feel comfortable and inviting!  I want them to WANT to come back the next day!  How do I do this you might ask?  Well, I am happy to tell you!  ;O)

I won't go into everything right now, but I will tell you about one lesson I did!  Now, since I teach 4th grade, kids are kind of on the brink of "finding themselves."  They are testing out who they want to be and what friends they want to surround themselves with.

Have you read Juice Box Bully by Bob Sornson and Maria Dismondy?

This book was first brought to my attention in one of our Mentor Text Linkies but I couldn't find who linked it up!!  If it was you, let me know so I can give you credit!  I'm so thankful!!!

This is a great book!  I can't even tell you how great!  You'll have to trust me and get it!  Especially if you teach upper grades!  This was the last book I read on the first day.   My goal of reading this book was to let my class know that we are a family.  We will not tolerate bullying.  Period.  I have very sweet kids, but I wanted to equip them to feel empowered to SAY SOMETHING if they saw any type of bullying.

I read this book and we talked about it as we went.  A brief synopsis from me is that there is a new student to a class named Pete.  In his old school, he was made fun of (bullied) so when he came to his new school, he immediately started bullying the kids before they could bully him.  However, the students of his new school had made a "promise" and would not allow the bullying.  In the end, they become friends with Pete and he stops being a bully.

We had great conversation about this.  My students picked up pretty quick (before the book explained) that Pete had obviously been treated badly to treat others that way.  We tried to troubleshoot how to get Pete to be nice.  They came up with some great solutions that were very close to the book.  I was so impressed!

After reading the book, we read the promise that the students had made when they first entered the class.  I typed it out and they also signed a class poster.  On top of that, I had them sign an individual piece of paper with the promise on it to hold them accountable.  The poster is now hanging on the wall outside our classroom (as you can see by the picture at the top of the post).

As a follow up activity, I had seen an activity called Friendship Salad by Terri Izatt that I found intriguing.

Now, I knew this was for kindergarten, but I thought it was an amazing idea!!!  You use fruit to make a friendship salad!  I don't want to give away too much information because this is her pack, but this was the best idea, for real!!!  She has a really cute story that goes with making the salad!  It's visual and kinesthetic and I knew the kids would "get it"!!!!

We made our salad and this is what it ended up looking like:

As we were making the salad I had the students use Terri's cut and paste activity.  They pasted as we added each fruit.

And as we pasted, I had them write the friendship attributes on the back of the paper.

My kids, 4th graders, seriously loved this!  As we made the salad, my picky self, was like, uhhhhh, wow...I'm not sure they're gonna eat this.  And then, there was the seriously sweet smell of it.  But, I called each table up to eat and guess what?!?  They ALL wanted some and they LOVED it!!  

(Annnnnnnnd, it doesn't help when you can't see their happy faces but I just wanted to prove to you they did eat it.  And even if you can't see it, they were smiling ear to ear!)

For morning work on school day 2 I had a brief questionnaire about the first day of school.  One of the questions was "What was your favorite part of the first day of school?"  Several put friendship salad!!!!  

Another question asked "What was something you learned on the first day of school?"  Several put something about Juice Box Bully like "My teacher wants us to behave and to help other kids behave" and "We should not bully anyone.  We are a family."

Hellooooooooooo?  Can you see why I already LOVE this class?!?  Precious!!!!!!  LOVE LOVE LOVE!

I wanted to link this up to my sweet, sweet friend Joanne's linky because I really hope it sparked student motivation to be great role models and citizens.  

Make sure you check out all of the motivation linked up!

I can't wait to share more about what we're up to this year.

How do you build community in your classroom?

Classroom Reveal- Monday Made It

Hey there!  I just wanted to pop in and show you a bit of my classroom!

We all know how we work sooooo hard to set up our classrooms so that they are a comfortable and inviting space!  To parents, it may not look like a lot, but we know the time and effort that went into it!  And it's all for the love of the children who will walk through those doors that first day!

I know this is not a traditional Monday Made It, but I do feel like I "made" the room and some of the things in it!  ;O)

I'm pretty proud of my desk space!  Well, not ON my desk, but behind it!  Y'all know I love books!  Well, they were organized, but not really cute.  Here's what it looked like before.

Sorry it's blurry!!  Yikes, right?  I mean they were organized but definitely not cute!  And then there were so many new books I hadn't found a spot for.  So, that's why I did this:

I got the bins (magazine holders) from Big Lots.  I love them!  They hold the bigger, longer books really well!  I did NOT love having to go to 3 different Big Lots repeatedly over the summer to get all of these and I'm not going to tell you what annoys me about this, although you can probably see it.  But I had to use what I could find.  I really wish they would have seasonal items online for purchase.  Oh well.  I still think it looks MUCH better than it did before.

I made those labels for them on the computer.  I really thought I was doing a good job with pictures but I didn't get close enough.

I'm not sure if you can use the labels, but I'm attaching them HERE if you'd like them for free!  It is an editable powerpoint so you can just type in there.  This is the first time I've made an editable file, so I hope it looks okay and works!

Here is the space just in front of my desk.  Please excuse the millions of pillows.  We use those during workshop time.  These amazing Grammar Morphology posters came from Kristen and Ladybugs Teacher Files and I'm so excited to have put them up this year!  I think they are going to be a great tool for my kiddos!

I made the "Parts of Speech" heading for the top of the posters.  :O)

Here is what my room looks like when you walk in.  I mean, you have peripheral vision so you'd see more but this is what my camera saw!  The board straight ahead has geography on it.  As we learn the terms we'll put the terms on the board and use string to label them.  It's our first unit in social studies!

This is what you see when you walk in my door to the left.

Here are my two carpet spaces.  The aqua rug is for whole group instruction at the board.  The zebra rug is for when I'm reading aloud.  I sit on the bench and read to them. The bench is a favorite spot during workshop time!  :O)  We spend almost the entire day on the carpet.  Really.  So when you see how their desks are to the side, that's because we are hardly ever at our desks.  A parent of a student I will have this year, who is also a teacher at another school, came in and said "Your room is huge!"  Well, it is a good sized room, but it seems huge because of all of the space in the middle.  It was strategic planning for the desks!

I have supplies in all of those drawers.  I need to label those next!

This is a picture from standing in front of my desk.  The board on the left is science (matter and the water cycle).  We will also add to that board as we go.  I feel like if you start the year with an explosion of materials on the walls, they'll never really "see" it because it becomes background.  But, if you let them help you put things on the wall, they do see it and reference it!

This is what it looks like when I stand at my kidney table.

And this is what it looks like from the front.

That crazy white space to the right is where they hang backpacks.  The wall is white because as we learn, I move posters, etc, over to that space so they are forced to look at it while they hang their backpacks!  ;O)

Here's another from the front corner!

I did make the pom poms for the tree.  Well, I mean I bought them from Party City and poofed them out.  But that's something, right?  Owls are obviously my classroom theme.  Why?  I just think they're cute!

Here is my classroom library that kids can get books from.  The bins are also from Big Lots and match the ones behind my desk.  The labels are from Kristen at Ladybugs Teacher Files. I obviously love all of her stuff!  I also have her Transitional Words Morphology Posters but I haven't figured out where I want to put them yet!  There are so many and all are valuable.  I may even put them in the hall and let them go out there during writing!

I love my window and my bench!

The day I took these photos (Friday) we were preparing to meet our students for the upcoming year at our registration.  I had these treats on the desk.

I didn't take a picture of the back after I had assembled them.  On the back is a label that says "4th Grade is a hoot!  I'm so excited to be your teacher this year!"  I made the heads with my Silhouette Cameo.  That was a process.  After some help from my friend Elizabeth at Fun in 4B and Megan at I Teach What's Your Super Power? I finally got it.  Totally user error, but it was a learning experience!

Oh, and all of this amazing clipart on my pictures is from Megan  at I Teach What's Your Super Power?  So cute, right???

So.  Here's the ONLY Monday Made It I've linked up all summer!  So sad, I know!  Make sure to go to the sweet and creative Tara's blog for more Monday Made Its!!

Have a great week!  Students come for their first day Tuesday!  I have staff development today.  I hope to be sharing some great activities we'll be doing very soon!

PS- Don't forget about the Back to School sale on TpT!!

Back to School Teacher Sale and Giveaway- Make sure to Enter!

Happy Friday, y'all!

Wow! This has been a busy week! We started preplanning on Tuesday, and today we meet our students for registration day. Yay!  :)

Amanda and I are getting super pumped for the upcoming Teachers Pay Teachers Back to School Sale! I know lots of you guys are too! Our Wishlist keeps growing...and growing...and...growing! There are so many awesome products that we want to buy and use with our kiddos this year.

We are sharing 2 of our Most-Wishlisted products with you, and sharing 1 product we have on OUR wishlist that we will be buying on Monday.

Also, we have an AWESOME giveaway for you! We teamed up with some of our BBB's to offer 3 TPT gift certificates! Woohoo!!! So make sure to enter at the bottom of this post!  :)

So, the 1st product that we want to share is our Causes of the American Revolution Informational Articles and Activities.  This pack contains 11 articles each with interactive notebook activities and comprehension questions! I love this product because it seamlessly integrates reading and writing into social studies.

These articles can be used to teach social studies content, but they are also perfect for close reading and discussion. Even if you do not teach the American Revolution, you might still be interested in incorporating this resource into your Language Arts lessons.

In my classroom, my students pasted these articles into their interactive social studies notebooks, and then we read them together. We did close readings on them, highlighting, underlining, and making notes about our thinking and learning. Then, we used the interactive flip books to review what we learned. Finally, I used the comprehension questions as an easy assessment grade.  The students practiced finding text evidence as they dug deeper into the articles to answer the comprehension questions.

My students really enjoyed reading the articles, and they used them (and the flip books) as a reference as we moved through our study of the American Revolution. Because we pasted them in to our notebooks, they were always right there for the kids to refer back to.  :)

The 2nd product that we want to share is our First Day Jitters Unit. This unit is great for the first week of school. If you haven't read this book by Julie Danneberg, you have to check it out! It is so cute, and it captures the emotions that students AND teachers feel at the beginning of a new school year. Even if the kids have already heard the story before, they love hearing it read to them again. I promise! Every year, my kids see me carry the book over to our carpet area, and they all start to whisper, "I love this book! It's so good!"

The unit we created to accompany the book contains activities to do with your students before, during, and after reading, as well as games and a jellybean and jitters jar activity. :) Lots of fun!

So what's one product we are buying for sure on Monday?  It's Close Reading Nonfiction Texts for Upper Elementary- August. I can't wait because I know this is going to be so valuable for me to use in my guided reading groups. I can also use it to assess my kids. It includes differentiated articles for all levels of learners AND close reading activities. Perfect! 

And now for the GIVEAWAY!!!

Please enter our giveaway so you can earn some TPT cash! :)  Have fun shopping!

 a Rafflecopter giveaway

Have a great weekend!  And don't forget to check out what my friends have wishlisted!

An InLinkz Link-up