We are always looking for ways to motivate our students, keep things interesting and fun, but also manage the craziness. The holidays can get crazy. It’s so fun and I always look forward to it, but let’s face it, the kids can get a little too excited sometimes. 🙂 Here’s an idea to reward good classroom behavior:
Have your class work together to retell a story by having good behavior. Set out the parts of your favorite story. Here, I used Whimsy Workshop’s adorable clipart, but you could also just have your students draw these cards. (That way you could do for any story.) When you want to reward the class for great (or “sweet”) behavior, add a story card to the story board. Call on a student to choose which card goes next. This way, you are reinforcing sequencing. When you fill up the chart, you could give the class some sort of reward. Now, mind you a reward can be as simple as an extra recess. It could be a small gingerbread cookie. You could even be a youtube Gingerbread “movie”. If you search “Gingerbread” on youtube, a bunch comes up. Mostly there are people reading the book but for some reason this feels more special, right? Sort of a movie? The reward can be as big or tiny as you want. The point is to get them working together to build the story.
I also studied Jan Brett every winter. You could do this with that story too.
Download this idea with the template here.
Note: The clip art does not come with this. You can buy the gingerbread clip art here. Like I said earlier, you could also draw it though. 🙂
I also though I’d share something from my Gingerbread Literacy Pack. This thing is loaded with deliciously-engaging activities. I’m telling ya, the gingerbread theme catches everyone’s attention. Kids love these! They are not any different or more special than the next thing, but the cute little gingerbread people just make learning more fun. Ha! To see more of this unit, click here.
If you are looking for more products to fill you up for the next few months, check out these winter related products:
