O.M.G! Don't get me wrong, I adore my 4th grade kiddos...but this week - YIKES! Our spring break begins one week from today. If the last four days are any sign of what the next 5 days are going to bring, I think I might be taking an early vacation ;o)
Our grade level, as a whole, has been struggling with their behavior. We having been using our dear friend ClassDoJo all year, but this week I have had to dig deep into my bag of tricks to fix this silliness.
ROUND 1:
I introduced the bucket filling concept (actually, that was a little over a week ago, so the silliness has been brewing; it has just come to a full boil this week). We read the following books:
If you haven't read these books before, you can click on each one to visit the Amazon link.
Have You Filled a Bucket Today? details the concept of everyone having an invisible that is filled up when people (including themselves) say and do nice things. Their buckets drip when someone dips from them by saying or doing mean things.
How Full is Your Bucket? For Kids follows the story a little boy and his sister being cared for by their grandfather. The grandfather explains the bucket filling concept to his grandson, who begins to take notice of others buckets and behaviors and actions fill and dip these buckets.
Even as fourth graders, my kiddos enjoyed these books and had great conversations about them. We made an anchor chart to detail bucket filling and bucket dipping behaviors and the kiddos were challenged to complete a bucket filling ticket daily to fill someone's bucket in the classroom. Many of the kids are pointing out bucket dipping behavior at this point, but there is a small handful of kiddos that are still having a hard time demonstrating bucket filling behaviors.
Of course, I never expected this be the magical behavior tool, but I was hoping for a somewhat better outcome at this point.
ROUND 2:
Yesterday, I had to try something else, because this "spring fever" is just getting the best of these kiddos. So I used my fabulous new mint green chevron bucket to hold all of their numbers (each kiddo is assigned a number for mailboxes, etc.). Each day, starting yesterday, I am choosing a number in the morning and if that "Mystery Student" has a stellar day, they are able to choose ANY incentive coupon that they would like. The kiddos typically have to redeem their DoJo points for these coupons. It has only been 2 days, we'll see how long this lasts.
Potential ROUND 3:
Coincidentally, our school adjustment counselor provided us with some information at a staff meeting this morning on Social Thinking. She shared some information with us that she uses such as Whole Body Listening. There were some great charts and great language to use with the kiddos. We would definitely like to implement this as a whole school plan in the future, but considering that we are in school until June 26th [insert huge sigh here], we might try some of these things as a team after spring break.
This picture will link you to the Social Thinking website, if you are as interested as we are!
Now that I haven vented...it is almost Friday...and there are ONLY 5 more days until our 10 day spring break!
Thanks for reading!
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