Our daily classroom procedure is to pick up a Morning Work activity as you come in the door, unpack, make a lunch choice, and get started on the activity.  On most days, my students come in chatty and social.  That's great.  It's normal.  I love to hear them.  However, we eventually need to get started on the Morning Work.  I don't want to keep reminding them to settle down and, the more I do, of course, the less likely they are to do so.
     This week, I suggested to them that I set a timer for about 10 minutes.  That's their time to quietly chat and socialize while they follow the lunch and unpacking procedures.  Once the timer goes off, it's time to get to work - non-negotiable.
     So far, they like it.  As long as they are relatively quiet, they don't hear from me for that 10 minutes.  They seem more amenable to settling down at the beeper.
     We'll see how it works in the coming weeks.   Do you have a routine like this?  Do you have another way of balancing chat time/work time?  Let's hear about it!

     Our team decided to use the great "100 Acts of Kindness" freebie from Jennifer Dougherty.  It was a great success!  We challenged all 52 students to "commit" one or more act of kindness by Valentine's Day.  We had lots of fun sharing what we did - helping at home, listening to a friend, or doing something nice at school.
     I hope you'll try this out next year.  Thanks, Jennifer!

      I hope everyone will have a love-ly Valentine's Day later this week!  If you can get hold of one box of candy hearts per child, try this Valentine Freebie that lets students practice some of their real-life application skills: finding fractions, converting fractions to decimals, and decimals to percents.  I'd love to know how it works for you!