I have had this post drafted for several months in my head, but am just getting around to posting it and I am so excited to do so! I really wanted to make sure it worked throughout the course of a school year and, now that the year is done, I am happy share what worked well and what I tweaked throughout the year.
As you know, I love and adore the
Clip Chart- I first posted about it
HERE and I highly recommend checking out the eBook that goes along with this program, as it's full of helpful hints and tips.
I was also highly intrigued by the idea of the
Super Improver Wall that was mentioned last summer at the Whole Brain Teaching Conference that I blogged about
HERE.
I thought about ditching the Clip Chart, but I reallyreallyreally liked it too much.... I thought about forgetting about the Super Improver Wall, but I reallyreallyreally liked the idea of it too much.... I thought about doing
both, but I reallyreallyreally value my sanity and free time ;)
So, here's what I came up with:
It's a combo Clip Chart + Super Improver Wall= Super Clip Chart Wall, I guess :) I still call it the Clip Chart, but thought Clip Chart 2.0 made it sound snazzy for this post ;)
Notice what's different? Mostly, it's the colored clothespins. Remember this craft from a
Monday Made-It last summer?
Dying clothespins was a little crazy, but I am so glad I did it and I am planning on reusing the clothespins next year, so I won't have to redo this project for a while :) More on these below....
Ok, here's a gist of the whole system:
- Kids clip up throughout the day when I see them doing something special. Sometime a clip up is guaranteed, sometimes it is random, and sometimes it will be on an individual or whole-group scale.
- All kids start out with a plain clothespin that has their name on the long end and their class number on the inside end (see picture for this to make sense). On my chart, I have boys on the left and girls on the right- this is just a visual reminder to me to make sure to address boys and girls equally during the day. (Do you ever find yourself choosing more of one over the other? Love this little reminder to myself!)
- At the end of the day, I check to see who has clipped up to Star Student (I switched this to Star Leader about halfway through the year to correspond to our 7 Habits work)- that's a HUGE deal and if kids reach this, they get a star sticker on their clothespin.
After 5 star stickers, their clothespin is full and they get to choose from the Treasure Box. I am *really* trying to get away from the useless trinkets, so I stopped this about half way through the year and it was a-okay. Now, the "prize" is with the next achievement....- If they get to Star Student/Star Leader again, instead of a 6th star, they get a.... drumroll..... new color clip!! Woo hoo! I simply have them remove the 5 stickers from their current clip and turn in their old one for a new one. To be able to reuse them year after year, I simply add their class number only to the new clips.
- The clip color levels go in order from the bottom to the top, so kids start with a purple clip (rookie), then go to a blue clip (phenom), and so on. (You may also notice that I switched the order of my colors on the clip chart from the original to match- I wanted red to equal good on all accounts, so I had to do some tweaking.)
- The top three colors are bronze, silver and gold- I am using black clothespins and drawing on them with Metallic Sharpies- they look awesome.
And that's it! It's basically the Clip Chart with a year-long record-keeping system. I hang the Super Improver Levels nearby so kids can see what the next level is that they are working toward and I used a sports theme to keep it engaging throughout the year.
I also become more sneaky for what I have kids clip up for throughout the year- sometimes I will just say, "Thank you!" and sometimes I will say, "Thank you! Clip up!". I want to start reminding kids that they are doing things because it's the right thing to do, not just to clip up :) It's now super-easy for me to see who clips up a lot versus who doesn't- sometimes this is their doing, but most of the time it's a great reminder for me to look for those kids doing the right thing and having them clip up for it :)
This also allows me to play with the stars a bit more. For example, for a particularly challenging student, I may strike a bargain that landing on "Role Model" would get a star and "Star Leader" would equal two stars. I could also celebrate big accomplishments or achievements for a student with a star.
Teacher Tip: There's a lot of flexibility and to have the colors displayed helped me get creative with how I could reward certain kiddos who had been on the same level for a while. I used this for my guidance because (confession!) I have the tendency to reward the same kiddos over and over (yikes!), so while some kids can obviously clip up a lot, I found this system challenged me to ensure that **all** kids were moving up the Super Improver Levels-- yay!
I am so excited to share this with you guys since it's really helped elevate our Clip Chart to a more effective and continually motivating classroom management tool. What do you think? If you'd like to pick up these downloads, I have uploaded them to Google Docs for FREE- just click on the link(s) below to head to your chart of choice:
Enjoy!!
I know I am probably missing some details- do you have any questions? Let me know in the comments and I am happy to help :)
