I Can Make Good Choices

Nicole, kindergarten teacher and creator of Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten, came up with this cute first week of school lesson to go along with David Shannon's David Goes To School that will help you address the issue of classroom behavior with your new kinders. The best part is, she provides free printables to go along with it!

Using her printables, we revised the lesson a bit to suit our needs. While the original lesson shows the use of a pocket chart, we didn't have one handy so we simply pieced together pieces of scrapbook paper to act as a 'frame' for the lesson. Additionally, we created our own headings, mostly because we wanted to incorporate our own clip art to mimic our voting paddles {see photo below}.

We wanted to create an interactive lesson, so the goal is to present the kiddos with each behavior option and have them hold up a "thumbs up" sign if they think it's a good choice or a "thumbs down" sign if they think it's a poor choice. The change in clip art meant we had to revise the cut and paste activity as well. We created our own activity sheet and used the original behavior cards to create new squares for students to cut apart and paste to the worksheet. [NOTE: We liked the continuity of using the same behavior cards in the review activity as were used in the original class discussion/anchor chart. We printed the cards in black and white and figured kiddos could use the completed discussion chart for help if they were unsure in which column the item should be glued.  However, Nicole does provide a set of separate cards to use so you don't have to create your own!]

Overall, we think this is a great way to discuss what positive classroom behavior looks like!