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Sunday, December 7, 2014

Awesome Olweus Work!

As of Friday, we have finished week 5 of our Olweus program. So far, our school has done a fabulous job with making the most of our weekly classroom meetings! Class meetings are held every Friday, during Explore time in all grade levels. Each week, teachers fill out a Google form to update me with a brief summary of their class meeting. The responses have been so encouraging-developmentally appropriate, meaningful, and most of all, FUN! Take a look at some of the GREAT work that our teachers and students have produced in their Olweus meetings! Did I mention that I am IMPRESSED???

                                                  Third Grade-"Power of One"




                                                                         First Grade

K5










Monday, November 3, 2014
Click the link to watch our Olweus Kick-Off Lip Dub Video! We had so much fun filming the video and we hope you enjoy this special portion of our Olweus Celebration at IES!


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8gVmHOanK-nVUpIbE85VEduRHc/view?usp=sharing

**Make sure you are watching in HD! You can find this setting on the bottom right of the video!**
Friday, October 17, 2014

Long time, no blog!

The month of October has FLOWN by! Since I last blogged, we set up the STEAM studio, had our first Superhero of the Month and Terrific Kids celebrations and our second Supergirls Reading Society Meeting! On the testing front, we are finishing up K4/K5 Circle testing and about to begin second grade testing! Upcoming events include Red Ribbon Week, Career Day, and our Olweus program kick-off! It makes me a little tired just thinking about this month, but it has been well worth it!

In the meantime...have I mentioned how much I love our new Superhero theme? This year, I changed my character education program from "Eagle Excellence" to "Good Character is Our Superpower" and it has taken off! Students can earn superhero tickets for showing good character around the school, which are turned into me in exchange for a brag tag and prize. The Proud Board is almost completely full and students are so excited to see their superhero tickets displayed! I have morning duty in the main hallway and every morning, students stop to see who is new on the board and what each student has done to earn recognition. I think this visual reminder has promoted student conversation: since the start of the program, I have overheard ideas/suggestion about how to behave at school, positive peer examples to follow, and praise for the students recognized. In addition, I feel it has helped to instill confidence and a sense of pride in students who have received recognition. Win Win! 

Speaking of recognition... at the end of September, each teacher chose one student in their classroom who displayed Friendship, our character word of the month. We had our first lunch celebration last Friday and had a great time! I'm already looking forward to October's celebration, as we will be celebrating the ability to make good choices! :) In addition to expanding character traits and vocabulary through traditional character education teachings, I am a BIG proponent of teaching basic life skills!



We also celebrated our Terrific Kids this past Wednesday. Teachers selected two students from their classrooms who exemplify the Kiwanis Terrific Kid qualities: "Terrific" is an acronym for Thoughtful, Enthusiastic, Respectful, Responsible, Inclusive, Friendly, Inquisitive, and Capable.  
Sponsored by the Spartanburg Kiwanis Club, each student was awarded with a certificate, pencil, bumper sticker, and coupon for a free kid's meal at Zaxbys as part of our program. We celebrated with parents in our school cafeteria, where each child was recognized was recognized on the stage while our assistant principal read aloud the child's nomination, written by classroom teachers. We are very proud of all our students whom we have had the privilege to recognize this month!

Next up: STEAM, Olweus, Red Ribbon, and Career Day! 
Friday, September 19, 2014

It's a bird...it's a plane...it's the SuperGirls Reading Society!

For the past few years, our school has had a special mentoring partnership for third grade boys with our neighboring high school. The football players come and visit with our students, work on literacy, writing, and leadership skills. It has been an amazing program for these students and one day at a leadership team meeting, I decided our third grade girls needed something to call their own. Enter the Supergirls Reading Society! (That name took MUCH longer to come up with than I'd like to admit!) One of my fellow counselors and I collaborated to come up with a plan for 7th grade girls to come to our school and mentor our third grade girls, while working on literacy, writing, and self- confidence skills. I have been toying with the idea of starting a book club for awhile and with the help of my assistant principal and media specialist, we found Sophie the Awesome by Lara Bergen! This is a GREAT book for 3rd and 4th grade girls and our group absolutely loved it this afternoon! I had to convince several of my students not to buy/rent the book this weekend, as we will be using it at each of our meetings this year! Luckily, there is an entire Sophie series, so we will be able to keep the girls updated with Sophie's antics even after we finish with our reading society. The girls had so much fun with their new book buddies today-they attempted to convince me to meet daily, so I'll consider the first meeting a success! Below are some photos of the afternoon and some of our work samples. Happy Friday!



















Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Ol-we- WHAT? Information about our new Olweus Bullying Prevention Program!

This fall, we are joining the rest of the District One and becoming an official Olweus school! 

So...what exactly IS Olweus? So glad you asked!

Olweus is a school wide program that has been proven to prevent or reduce bullying throughout a school setting. 

Olweus definition of bullying: "A person is bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons, and he or she has difficulty defending himself or herself."


This definition includes three important components:
 1. Bullying is aggressive behavior that involves unwanted, negative actions.
 2. Bullying involves a pattern of behavior repeated over time.
 3. Bullying involves an imbalance of power or strength.

Students at IES are only K-3...why do we need this?
By the time bullying escalates to a harmful level, student attitudes and behaviors are already defined in many cases. A lot of times, students can't properly differentiate on what actually constitutes as bullying and that's when things can get really out of control. So, why K-3? So that we can handle bullying from the ground up: teach students what bullying is, what it's not, and teach them essential life skills to provide them with the skills to be better students, people, and later, adults!

P.S. Bullying is Not Teasing
It might be hard to tell the difference between playful teasing and bullying. Teasing usually involves two or more friends who act together in a way that seems fun to all the people involved. Often they tease each other equally, but it never involves physical or emotional abuse.

Why Students Bully
Information about bullying suggests that there are three interrelated reasons why students bully.
1. Students who bully have strong needs for power and (negative) dominance.
2. Students who bully find satisfaction in causing injury and suffering to other students.
3. Students who bully are often rewarded in some way for their behavior with material or psychological rewards. 

So, what does the program accomplish school wide?
  • Reduces existing bullying problems among students
  • Prevents the development of new bullying problems
  • Achieves better peer relations at school
Great! So what will actually happen when our school implements the program?
We will be having our school wide kick off the morning of Thursday, October 30th. That same day, all classes will hold their first class meetings during explore time. We will have Olweus Notebooks  with lesson ideas, as well as places for us to document our efforts in changing our school climate. Meetings will take place weekly.


As our students become well versed in the actual Olweus definition and practices through class meetings, what can we expect to see?
  • 50% or more reductions in student reports of being bullied and bullying others
  • Significant reductions in student reports of general antisocial behavior, such as bullying, vandalism, fighting, theft, and truancy
  • Significant improvements in the classroom social climate, reflected in student reports of improved order and discipline, more positive social relationships and more positive attitudes towards school work and school
  • Greater support for students who are bullied, and stronger, more effective interventions for students who bully

            It's coming! October 30th, 2014 

A peek at my spaces and places!


My office, where individual and small group counseling take place








My Classroom


The "Calm Corner" is equipped with calm down strategies, emotion identification and corresponding ideas to solve problems...not to mention a calm jar, stress ball, and music!








Bulletin board reflecting our school theme (and a little bit of my personal theme, the Clemson Tigers!)

My best attempt at a tiger superhero!

Check out the QR codes! We have an amazing media specialist who helped me out with these!



iHelp display

Our School Expectations, Anti-Bullying Behaviors, and & 7 Habits of Happy Kids display!

                                                    7 Habits and Superhero Behavior!

Our new proud board showcasing students caught doing good!


A closer look at our Character Superpower tickets!


Our Kiwanis Terrific Kids Board! 

Our Terrific Kid acronym (and promotion! )

Our "BE" bulletin board


How do you use your spaces and places to foster student learning and create a positive classroom environment? 


Happy 2014-15 School Year!

Welcome to a new school year at Inman Elementary School! Since school has begun, we have been showcasing our super powers all around the school! Our character focus for the month of August is Friendship! Here are the lesson standards and essential questions we are working towards!

Standards:

A:A3.2 – Demonstrate the ability to work independently, as well as the ability to work cooperatively with other students.

C:C2.3 – Learn to work cooperatively with others as a team member.

PS:A2.8 Learn how to make and keep friends.

Essential Questions:

  • What is friendship? What does it mean to be a friend?
  • What are the traits of a friend?  
  • How can we work together to get along?


We have been using technology in the guidance classroom through the use of iPads and Apple TV to show a video clips of positive friendship behavior and how friends treat each other! We are discussing what types of friends we would like to have, what traits we would not like in a friend, and how we should treat others. We are learning friendship vocabulary words through our friendship recipe game and hitting home the fundamental idea that if we want to have friends, we have to BE a friend first!


In the meantime, teachers are on the look out for students who exhibit positive friendship behaviors to receive the Super Friend award at the end of the month. We will be celebrating our Good Character Superheroes of at a lunch celebration VERY soon! In the meantime, here are some examples of how we are practicing Friendship around our school!



Our "Giving Tree"-Student decorated apples and wrote words and sentences about what friendship means to them.




A closer look!



Here's a glimpse of our new "Proud" Board in the main hallway! Students have opportunities to earn superhero tickets from teachers and staff when they are caught showing SUPER character traits! It is our hope that by displaying student behavior accomplishments, it will serve as a strong visual reinforcer and reminder to engage in positive behavior. Plus, if a student earns a ticket, they redeem it for a brag tag and prize! As an extra incentive, tickets will be drawn on Eagle News for a special prize from the school store!