Winter Break BINGO!

    This time of year can be so exciting, but also HARD. Students (and teachers!) are excited for the holidays, break coming up, and all the fun things the end of school has. It's exciting, but also exhausting. We all need a little extra motivation (or coffee, in my case) to keep us going and finishing strong for the end of the year. Every year to keep this motivation up, I add something special into our daily routine to keep students following expectations leading up to break. 

    Winter Break Bingo! When we returned from Thanksgiving break, I introduced our Bingo board to the class. On the board there are 25 class and school expectations. The goal is simple: when our whole class accomplishes one of the expectations, a box gets colored in. When we get 5 in a row, we've received our first Bingo! Students voted on a movie as the reward for getting Bingo. The other prize is if we get Blackout (meaning that all 25 boxes are colored in) we get a surprise! This surprise will take place on the last day of school before break. In the past, I've done holiday crafts, games, and given a holiday gift to the class when they've achieved this. Some examples on the board are Clean Room, 0 voices in the hallway, and Quiet Signal. These are all school expectations. Some specific ones to my class are iReady lessons passed, completing our reading/DEB block choice boards, and class compliment (meaning another teacher notices us doing some great!)

    The point of the Bingo board is to keep us learning and working hard all the way up to break. It is easy to start slacking off, both on the teacher and student side. However, the pay off is so much stronger when we keep our expectations high!