Don't Be an Angry Bird!!

This year at our school we are officially starting PBIS at our school. Tomorrow is our first day of school, and all of our teachers are going to begin the year by teaching their students our school wide expectations. Today I made a bulletin board to highlight those expectations. I got the idea off of someone's board on pinterest.

Don't Be an Angry Bird . . . Be a Cool Cat!!

Just about every kid at our school loves Angry Birds . . . so I am hoping that it will be a hit!! Our school mascot is the Wildcats, so we came up with PBIS school wide expectations that spell out the word CATS. I am not competely done with the bulletin board - I think I am going to add a slingshot for the red bird, and a platform for the pig!

Here is a closer look at our PBIS school wide expectations - Care About Others, Act Responsibly, Try Your Best, Stay Positive. Tomorrow we will have a welcome back assembly and introduce these expectations again! We will also say the Purple Hands Pledge, which is "I will not use my hands or my words for hurting myself or others.

Go Cats!!

Angry Arlene, The Grumpy Red Jellybean

Well now that we have been in school for about a week now, it is time to get some new groups started up! One group that I am starting for some of my Prep and Kindergarten students is an Anger Management group.

We are using this great curriculum that I picked up at the ISCA State Conference this year, it is called Jellybean Jamboree! I knew this curriculum would be fun when I saw that each unit features a different jellybean. The anger management unit jellybean is called Angry Arlene, The Grumpy Red Jellybean! I have made a Angry Arlene puppet out of cone of the puppet templates for the unit. I am thinking about letting the students make Angry Arlene puppets as well to take home.

The first group lesson is about finding a quiet place to calm down. Our Prep teacher has a teepee in her room, so we may even take a "field trip" to her room to practice calming down in the teepee! After practicing going to a quiet place to calm down, we will come back to the guidance to work on the worksheets included in the curriculum. One is a connect-the-dot of Angry Arlene, and in another they will draw a picture of their quiet place. The curriculum is for PreK-2, and it is right on their level. I love how there is an emphasis on colors, letters, and rhyming.

I am keeping this group very small, right now I have three boys in the group but could open it to four. Because of the anger issues and social development of the students I have chosen, I want to keep this group as small as possible. I feel confident thought that I have picked a great group of boys, and I am looking forward to starting our group!