Saturday, August 16, 2014

Bright Ideas Blog Hop - Behavior Management 101: Tic-Tac-Treat



It's been awhile...I decided to come back to the blogging world by joining some fabulous bloggy friends in the Bright Ideas Blog Hop!  I LOVE this hop because you can always find some cheap awesome ideas that truly are helpful in the classroom!  It's a great time of the year to find some helpful tips too!    

I would like to share a classroom management tip that is a lifesaver when I do stations in my classroom.  Behavior is always a concern when you are running groups.  I use stickers to keep everyone focused during station or center time.  I have THOUSANDS of stickers (a lot of them are very old) that I need to get rid of.  I've collected so many old stickers from people who have retired or left my school.  


Surprisingly, this strategy even works for 5th grade students.  Every student has a classroom work folder which travels to each station with them.  Inside the folder I place their Tic-Tac-Treat sheet.  If I do not have to call on them or correct their behavior, they earned a sticker for station time that day.   Students can place the sticker anywhere on the sheet that they wish.  They quickly learn how to "strategize"!  Lol!  

When they received 3 in a row or Tic-Tac-Treat, I mark through the stickers with a Sharpie and initialed it.  The student then received a treat!  I keep a list of students on the board or on my clipboard next to me who lost their stickers during station time. 




I made a Tic-Tac-Treat template, but you can easily have the students create their own on notebook or copy paper.  




Having the students create their own saves paper.   They can draw 4 Tic-Tac-Toe templates onto one sheet of paper.

You would be surprised at how smoothly stations ran once I implemented this strategy!  5th graders will work for stickers too!  Here's the kicker!  The students never knew what day I would collect the Tic-Tac-Treat sheets to send home to their parents.  Each day they would run to their folders to see if it was in there.  The students did not like starting over on another sheet.  They love the "game"; I love how it helps me manage the behavior in stations (and get rid of LOTS and LOTS of old stickers).  

If you enjoyed this Bright Idea, please consider joining me on Teachers Pay Teachers, FaceBook, or Pinterest for more great ideas!

For more Bright Ideas from more than 100 different bloggers, please browse through the link up below and choose a topic/grade level that interests up!  Thank you for visiting!