Homework Craziness {End the Madness with Choice Boards!}

Y'all, I really don't like homework. Parents stress about it, kids refuse to do it, teachers dread checking it - it's just a fight. 

Two years ago, I decided I wasn't going to participate in that cycle anymore. I sat down and decided to pare away some of the "fluff" from my homework - I needed to focus on the purpose of homework, not my ideals about what "should" happen at home.  I decided I wanted homework to achieve three goals: 

At the same time, I thought it was equally important to decide what homework was NOT about: 

With that being said, I asked myself what homework would look like if it achieved all my goals, while being simpler for me, for my kids, and for parents. With input from my team and our curriculum coach - I settled on a choice board ---- and I. LOVE. IT. {And so do parents and kids!} 

Every three weeks I send home a choice board. Here's what weekly homework looks like -- each week, students must complete three tasks: 

• Reading {for 20 minutes each day} --- The research says that reading MORE is the best way to become a better reader. This is simple and EASY. Just read! 
• Math {five boxes from the choice board} --- The choice board I give my students includes math work from all strands of the Common Core, and it's set up to run from simple to complex. Student have to complete five problems a week. They choose the problems. They write the answers. 
• Other {one choice of "reading response," "writing," "research and current events" or "other fun stuff"} ---- These are fun, real-life activities that help kids explore the topics we're learning about in class, in ways that make it seem less like work. Setting up a lemonade stand. Reading about current events. Writing a diary entry. Bringing in a book they love from home. FUN STUFF! 

Here's a close-up of the choice boards that I use: 

That's it! Read, do a math problem, and do something fun. Students bring in their work on Fridays and share the work from their "other" section with each other. I look through it and give feedback immediately. All in all the process takes around thirty minutes, and the benefits are SOOOOOO great: 

For Students: 

•  LOVE the choice! They love to pick. They LOVE that their homework is "fun." 
• They learn valuable lessons about how to manage their time. We always start the year with a conversation about how they get the work three weeks in advance, so they can decide when the best time is to do their homework. Maybe they have swimming on Tuesday! They'll need to do more work on Monday so they have time for swimming. Or maybe they know that one week is going to be super busy, so they plan to do homework on the weekends so they have no work. 
• They get to share their work with others! Kids LOVE this - it's immediate feedback, and they want to impress their friends. There's no better investment tool. Seriously. 

For teachers and parents: 

• Parents LOVE that they get the work in advance. 
• There are always conversations about how much parental involvement is best, but the vast majority of parents let their kids do the work. 
• The amount of choice for kids means that there are MANY fewer disagreements at home. 
• I love that I print out homework once every three weeks, and that I can give feedback immediately. Other than that, I spend very little time on homework. 
• I LOVE Fridays, when the kids share their work. It's such a great community-building time, and it's SO interesting to see the different ways that kids approach their assignments. I went from dreading homework turn-in day to waiting for it with bated breath! 
• I love seeing how my kids independence grows. It's magical. 

If you want to use the {EDITABLE!!} files I use {for the whole year -- 33 weeks!}, as well as information about how I set up homework folders AND my feedback forms, check out my product listing at TpT here.

The preview for that product includes the first three weeks of homework free {!!!!}. If you have questions, leave them in the comments! 

Teacher Pay Teachers Appreciation SALE!

Teachers Pay Teachers is hosting a HUGE sale this Tuesday! If your favorite sellers are hosting sales (I am!), you can get up to 28% off your purchase with the code TAD13. WOO HOO! 

Thanks Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Designs for the graphic! 

I LOVE the idea of seeing what's on everyone's "wish list," so ... here's what I'll be stocking up on this Tuesday!  ... {And if you need more ideas, you could browse the fabulous sellers over at my giveaway!} 

First, these assessments from Alyssha are going in my cart, and I'm trying soooo hard to convince the other teachers at my school that we need to use them in other grades too. 

I  also think the idea of wristbands to show answers is SUCH a cute one, and punctuation is something we NEVER stop practicing. It's been on my wishlist for a while, so I'll be purchasing Leah's "Show Me the Answer" wristbands.  

I have Meg's conceptual fraction unit, and it's WONDERFUL. It's so hard to find good conceptual units. This will be a stretch activity for several of my kiddos - 

Can you tell I'm super math-focused right now? It's because after moving to my new school, math was the most difficult thing to coordinate between NWEA's MAP test and Common Core standards. We used Scott Foresman Investigations at my old school ... which is a littttlllleee different than traditional mathematics and highly Common Core aligned. The MAP test kind of flipped my math long-term plan on its head, but I have my game plan for next year and I'm ready to make it happen. I can't WAIT for summer planning. :) 

Since we're "window shopping," I asked Mr. BBZ to browse around a little and see what he would be interested in buying (he's a middle school special educator). Can you believe he hasn't ever bought a single thing on TpT?!!  After looking around he said, "It's going to be really hard not to spend a lot of money." Um, ya think?! ;) Here are his picks: 

The interactive reading and math notebooks from Jen Runde are top on his list (I know why; they're awesome!): 

  

He also does a lot of small groups with his kids, so he liked these reading resources from Jen Bengal (she has them for all F+P levels!!). 

And was intrigued by this middle-school  literacy reading resource from Kasey Kiehl. 

His kids are struggling with equivalent fractions, so he's definitely going to be purchasing from (the wonderful!) Dennis McDonald: 

Okay, our pockets are going to be empty, so we should stop. :) I hope you find something at TpT that makes your life easier this Tuesday! 

Ms. BBZ's MEGA Giveaway!

Editing to add: THANK YOU everyone for your entries. Three winners have been selected:

• Dina
• Linda
• Bethany

They have been e-mailed and sellers will be contacting them to deliver their prizes. If you're stopping by, check out my store or any of the wonderful sellers below! 

- Ms. BBZ

I am SO SO excited to share this giveaway with y'all.  There are more than 70+ Teachers Pay Teachers sellers signed up to offer you all - my store and blog followers - THREE different prize packs. There is a K-1 pack, a 2-3 pack AND a 4-6 pack (don't stop scrolling ... it's there!!). In addition to each grade level pack, you'll  be entered to win anyproduct from my TpT store ... WOO HOO! 

All you have to do to enter is sign in with the Punchtab gadget, and click "actions" to gain entries!  Happy entering  --- let's get started!

The Teaching Treehouse

Lucy S.

Evil Math Wizard

Angie Olson

Sparkle and Smiles and Successful Students 

Heart2Teach

Fun With Language

2nd Grade Snickerdoodles

What I Have Learned

Learning in Wonderland

Alyssha at Teaching and Tapas

Miss Martin

Second Grade Stories

Teri Keeton

Janet Rainey

Jennifer Dowell

Yearn to Learn

Lynda Smith

Teresa

Ann Fausnight

Mary Ann Reeve

Adventures of Ms. Smith

Susan Bell

Primary Essentials

Gabrielle Dixon

Amy Cahill 

Jill Bell 

Anne Gardner 

Diving Into Learning 

KTPonTPT 

Renee Dooly 

Fab 4 Teachers 

Amy Carver 

Melissa Englert 

K Almaraz 

Trillium Montessori 

Crystal White 

QR Queens 

Kady Did Doodles 

All Things Elementary 

The Traveling Classroom 

Susanna Westby {Whimsy Workshop}

Kenzie 

Tara {The Math Maniac}

Mrs. Payton 

My Kinder Garden 

Kelly Caldwell 

Mizell Multiage 

Amy Swan 

Katie Lang 

Aspire to Inspire

Lisa Lilienthal

Mark Aaron

Eclectic Educating 

Art Lesson Launchpad

Samantha Brigotti

Presto Plans

Robin's Resources

Fun in the Fours

Dennis McDonald

Blair Turner

Erin Cobb

AlwaysLearning

Marchena35

Jigtate

Book Buddies

Mrs. Nutter

It's coming - May 1 - 8 ... MEGA Giveaway!

Shoo! My little fingers are tingling because I've been working all night on setting up this MEGA giveaway ... more than 70+ wonderful, darling, fabulous TpT sellers have donated to the giveaway. I cannot WAIT to have it go live THIS Wednesday. Come back soon! 

Hello TpT Friends!

Hello TpT friends! If you're stopping by to learn more about my peace window, welcome!

The peace window post is located here.

Also, feel free to check out my posts on several other character education and problem solving techniques I use, here with my Motivation Madness blog post and TpT item, and my "Choose Your 'Tude" post and Maya Was Grumpy Read-Aloud craftivity. There's also a fun little activity I spotlighted that uses "The Crayon Box That Talked."

Poke around, leave a comment and "follow" me here (using the Google Friend Connect widget in the sidebar) or on TpT (by clicking the red star) if you'd like - I'm glad to have you!

Ms. BBZ

Adding a Watermark or "Brand" to Your Pictures and Thumbnails

You've probably seen the blog where most (or all) of the pictures have a little symbol in the picture that aligns with the blog. This is done to protect the blog/picture and to direct people back to the blog and/or business.

I've seen lots of tutorials on how to do it in Photoshop (I use GIMP ... it's free, holler!), but there is also a quick and easy way to do it in PowerPoint (it's a lot like the way you'd make a blog button - the tutorial I used for mine is here at the amazing Teacher Wife's blog!). PowerPoint isn't as powerful as Photoshop or GIMP, but for people who are used to working with it, using PP can be faster and easier to use.

First, make sure your PowerPoint slide is blank (no text boxes). {P.S. ... I'm working on a Mac with PowerPoint 2008 ... could definitely use an upgrade, but it still works, holler!} 

 Insert your picture {I'm working on a blog post about my energy projects}.

Then insert the picture file you want - I use the same image that I use as my blog button. 

Put the button where you want it and re-size to your liking. You can make it more or less transparent (to make it more or less obvious) by selecting the image and adjusting the transparency from the toolbar like this: 

Or by selecting the image, right-clicking and choosing "format picture" ... 

... then adjusting the transparency from that menu. 

Make the whole thing an image file by clicking FIRST on the picture, hitting SHIFT (to select more than one item), and then clicking the watermark image. If you don't click the picture first THEN the watermark, you'll have the picture on top of the watermark. {Weird, but true.}

 While still holding down SHIFT, right click and choose "Save as Picture."

You can choose many different file type - PNG formats still hold any transparency you might have added to the background. JPEGs work too though.

Now, if you want to add the watermark to your TpT preview thumbnails, follow the same steps, but choose images of your products. To do this, take a screen cap of your file's cover and/or any other pages you want to go in the thumbnails. On a Mac, to take a screengrab you just click SHIFT + COMMAND+4 and drag the image you want grabbed. {The product I chose was my "new math" tutorial.}

 Then, open your blank PP (or simply a new page on the existing presentation) -

 ... and follow the steps above to add a watermark, saving your file with a name you'll know is a thumbnail ... {perhaps TitleofProduct_Thumbnail}.

Once you've saved it, the best thing to do is lower the quality so the file size is small enough for a thumbnail. I do this in Preview. I open the file in Preview, then go to "save as." There, I'm given a choice of the file type -

I choose "JPEG," so I can change the quality.

Then I slide the bar until it's around 50 - 100 KB.

From the upload a new product screen, choose "Upload My Own Images."

Choose the files you created with your watermark, and BOOM! Images you can "pin" from TpT with your watermark on them. They'll not only lead back to your store, but also carry your "brand" across the Inter-webs. :)

Hope this helps!

Peace Window

How do you help your kids learn to manage their own conflict? I've heard of several options - the tattle jar, comment bucket, read-alouds, etc. I like those, but I've found that they sometimes enhance the problem, if that makes sense - they allow the child to "tattle" and expect that the adult will handle it without having to think through the situation on their own.

We use something called a peace window - based on the Montessori idea of a peace table.  Ours has a different name because I ran out of room to put an actual peace table ... so I grabbed some window markers and off we went!

The concept is simple; there are only a few rules:

• You have to go to the peace window if you're invited, but you can't invite someone in the middle of a lesson - only during group or individual work time (or play time). 
• The person who did the inviting starts, and you can't interrupt. 
• You  start by saying, "When you ______, I felt _______." 
• The other person can explain their side.
• Then you have to use the sentence started, "I'd like ______," and tell the other person what will resolve the situation from your perspective. The other person is free to accept or try to compromise. 

It has made a HUGE difference in my kids. It took a lot of modeling and practicing our conversations, but now they leave me out of most situations, and I only get called in if a compromise isn't able to be reached, or if things are getting heated. I'd say 90% of the class uses it judiciously and 10% still needs me there for most conversations. That's a big improvement over the beginning of the year when I heard, "Ms. BBZ, he/she _____" ... all. day. long!