I will never get rid of my clip chart. Ever.
I’ve read so many thought-out, well-meaning posts on clip charts — on both sides of the spectrum. I don’t know what’s right for you or your classroom… no one knows that but you. This post isn’t about what YOU should do. It’s about what I’ve done and will continue to do until I pack-up my classroom for the final time. Should you get inspired, invigorated, and motivated to do the same? Well, that’s just a bonus.
My clip chart helps to shape my classroom — and my beautiful students — into a caring community of productive citizens. Without it, I have no doubt that counselor and office referrals would rise, I’d spend a greater portion of my time on the phone telling parents negative things about their children, and the teacher-student relationship would suffer miserably.
I teach in a school of children in transition. Children that come from low socio-economic status households, many with both limited English language skills and limited educational attainment. Children that may change phone numbers, homes, and/or caregivers multiple times during the school year. We are a PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports) school, which means we spend a lot of time front-loading expectations and use a tiered system of interventions. For many of my students, the only constant is me and my classroom.
I’m sure many of you reading this can relate.
It can be hard. Emotionally draining. Mentally exhausting.
It has been for me. It was almost too much.
Until my clip chart saved me.
Saved my classroom. Saved my kids.
Last year I spent the first month of school tying my clip chart into each and every language arts lesson. Every read aloud. Every writing assignment. We spent hours discussing our clip chart.
Caring, Fairness, Respect, Responsibility, Trustworthiness, and Citizenship are big words for children. For any children, but especially children whose primary concern is where their next meal is coming from, whom they are going home to, and where they’ll sleep that night.
They’re big, important, tough words.
But my kids? My kids lived them.
I have to tell you that as a teacher, no moment will ever be as important to me as the moment last Fall when one of my kiddos was having a hard time. He felt inadequate. Nervous. He felt stupid because he wasn’t sure he could finish an assignment.
One of my sweet little girls leaned over to him and said, “Remember that learning is a great responsibility, like Mrs. Plum says. Part of being responsible is trying. Just try. Put your heart into it and try. You’re going to do it — just believe in yourself. I believe in you and so does Mrs. Plum.“
Cue. the. tears.
As I (tried to) cry quietly in the darkness of the back of the room, I watched my sweet little boy try his hardest. And though he didn’t get it all right, he did his best. He was proud of himself. And I was too.
He came up to me later and said, “She really made me feel good about myself. She made me feel cared about. Can I put her clip on the chart and give her a tag for her necklace?“
Yes. Of course you can.
That was just one of dozens upon dozens of moments last year when my kids recognized each other’s character on our clip chart. There were many more moments when I did too. Small moments — helping someone up when they fell, sharing a piece of technology when their friend missed out the day before, turning their full attention to the speaker — and bigger moments, too.
Moments like the one when we had a few rough days. When we just weren’t in sync. When we sat down on the carpet, talked about what we wanted to do with our lives and then figured out a plan to get there. A plan that involved six little traits hanging on our wall, put into action.
Moments like that, that seemed almost too big for an eight year old to grasp… and yet, they did.
This isn’t your average clip chart, by any means. Students don’t start on the chart each day — they earn their way on. Each day is a new day, and not every day will end with a student’s clip on the chart. There were, of course, moments where we used our clip chart as a reference to talk about something they did that didn’t meet their expectations, their classmate’s expectations, or mine.
But it wasn’t about clipping up or down — there wasn’t any of that.
In particular, there was a time last year when one of my girls lied to me — as kids are sometimes prone to do. Instead of clipping down, or calling home, or sending her to talk to the counselor, we talked privately during recess.
She and I had a conversation — not a lecture — about why we value trustworthiness. She understood what it meant and we it’s so important to our classroom family. She was sorry. She apologized to me. She apologized to herself. We hugged. She ran off to play with her friends who gave her hugs too.
And that was that.
She didn’t take her clip off the chart (she had earned her way on earlier that day for demonstrating caring with our part-time inclusion students).
Taking her clip off the chart would send a message to her I didn’t want to send: you’re only as good as your last mistake.
Her breach of trust in lying to me did not erase her actions earlier in the day. It just showed us both that it’s an area we need to work on… together.
The culture that our clip chart developed in our classroom is one that I will always look back to for the rest of my teaching career. We are a family because we have a core set of values that we think about as we interact with each other day after day. I can hold myself to those same values and reflect on whether or not I’ve met my obligation too.
I am immeasurably blessed to get to spend another year with my kids, this time in third grade. I’d spend the rest of their days in school with them if I could — we’re that bonded.
I know I owe so much of it to our clip chart.
I’ll never get rid of it.
{You can read more about the components of my clip chart alternative here and purchase it here. If you have any questions about it, please leave a comment and I will answer it.}
I can't even begin to tell you how much I LOVE this. I'm ordering it now and printing it off to use with my preschoolers. What a beautiful, perfect idea!!
Jamie
Play to Learn Preschool
Sarah I both teach and am a parent of a child who was chipped away at all year by clipping down so often. Your chart is fabulous I 100% agree with Jaime's above comment "What a beautiful, perfect idea!!" Your students are blessed to have you! I LOVE how positive it is!
This is a wonderful post. I've been considering using a clip chart this year, and I love how you used yours to build the students up rather than as a discipline & punishment tool. I teach a population much like you do, and I looped from 2nd to 3rd with them last year. It was really great because I was able to develop relationships with not just children, but with families. That was really powerful! Keep up the awesome work. You are obviously a fantastic teacher and role model for your kiddos!
What a precious way to incorporate character traits!!!! Beautiful post that will stay with me for a long time. Thank you!
I like this so much– in fact I purchased it this morning. I am having trouble with the logistics though. I can see that this program is quite flexible but would like to hear how you do some of the management, if you don't mind. 🙂 Where do you keep the clips when not in use? Is there just one per child? Can they move their clip to a second character word during the day and if so how would you record or recognize that? Do the kids record their own behavior on the calendar pages? What do you send home to parents and how often? How do you do the swag tags? Do they keep them or return them to you after a set time, do you use them all year, etc. Sorry, I know that's a ton of questions! 😛 I want to make sure I can implement this effectively. Thank you!
Hi, Liz! First of all, thank you so much for putting your faith in me and this clip chart and making a purchase!
I want to answer ALL of your questions, and promise that I will — I am writing a follow-up post today with FAQ's (and pictures!) to answer the questions I've received since this seemed to spread so quickly. If there's anything I miss, please don't hesitate to reach out again or e-mail me (noplacelikesecond@gmail.com) directly!
Yay, an FAQ! Groovy. I am a routines and organization person (can you tell?) so while I LOVE this I can't 100% commit until I can figure out how I'll make it work on a day to day basis. Many thanks. Also, I have young kids too and know how ridiculously busy life is (and I'm not even back at work yet!) so thanks for taking the time to do this. It is much appreciated.
This is such a timely and poignant post Sarah. So often children {my own included} have felt only as good as their last mistake. I was convicted by this and am determined to change my paradigm on disciplining my kiddies this year. I love how you spend so much time in the beginning building community with the clip chart. And I love how you use it to build character in your kiddos, not to put emphasis on their mistakes. Thanks for your thoughtful reflection.
Our school started PBIS last year, and I really struggled with it for a while. One morning I decided to ask the kids where they would like to be at the end of the day. We had a one minute "thinking time", and we talked about what Purple, Blue, and Green behavior would look like in our class. I then asked each child what color they wanted, and most chose Purple. During the day, if there was an "issue", I would quietly ask the child if they were showing "Purple Behavior". I really worked for us; it allowed kids to have ownership for their behavior, it raised the standard of behavior in the classroom, and they were all very excited to be high on the Color Stick at the end of the day 🙂 (I have to say, too, that I now teach Kindergarten; I need to change the title of my Google account!)
I got rid of my clip chart this year! I got rid of the "normal" clip chart, yours is not a normal clip chart! I teach in an urban environment, and it did not work for us! I am trying to switch to a positive character environment, and am struggling, but I'm not giving up! I may just bring back the chart, a version like yours! I love that it is easy to go back to our monthly "character traits" and show how they exhibit them! Thank you for your inspiration!
I just started a blog and it was my first post, something I am very passionate about! If you care to read why I got rid of mine, here is the post:
http://teachingadventuresinthemitten.blogspot.com/2015/11/i-got-rid-of-my-clip-chart.html
I am making up a chore chart for my children and wanted to do a character chart as well. Queue Pinterest for ideas which lead me to your blog post. I love, love, LOVE this!!! I will be implementing it in our home (we already do to an extent but I want to sit down and have good conversations about all of these things with my kiddos and have the visual for them!). I especially love the idea of showing them that they’re more than just their last mistake.
Katrina, that is amazing that you’re going to implement this at home! Will you check back in with me and let me know how it goes? I’d love to hear all about it!
Hi, I am a teaching student about to finish my degree and doing my final teaching placement in a low socio-economic area. I am starting to think about my own classroom, about things like classroom culture and management etc. I have to say thankyou so much – this post and the one where you explain the clip chart has inspired me a great deal and has given me much to think about – i think your approach of ‘shaping character’ and the way you’ve used the clip chart is one that will stick with me in developing my own classroom culture in the future.
I love the idea of this as I’m leaving my old behavior chart behind. I teach 5th graders so I’m wondering if they’d buy into the whole clip idea. I’m trying to think of other ways to manage this for those older kids. I’ll definitely track it personally, and perhaps provide the certificates. But I’m also thinking about the day to day visual chart. Maybe magnets on a magnetic board or something. Any ideas for using this those “big kids”?
Thanks!!
Your clip chart is very different than the ones in great debate with the red, yellow, green and blue spots. While I am opposed to those because of the public display and negative connotation, YOURS is brilliant! Thank you for sharing!
Someone linked to your post and when I first saw the title, I thought I was about to read something that would make me angry. I LOVE your clip chart though. I love how it is positive. I love how it considers that even great kids can make mistakes. My son was a victim of the “now you’re on red” clip chart in elementary school and it was devastating and made him HATE school. This is a totally different concept that I wish his teachers had used back then.
I so love this and am definately going to try it this year. Last year I had the up/down chart–I thought it was a good idea, my youngest had been so excited w/a teacher that had implemented one for the 1st time. However, I had some that were frustrated like you said by not moving off of green and/or upset by that move downward. This is so much better and encourages them to build each other up–so much better! Thanks so much.
This isn’t the way I have seen 99% of clip charts used. You retaught and discussed about the better choices with your kiddos in a caring and positive manner. That is the opposite of how I have seen clip charts used. Typically, I hear this, “Ok that’s it. Clip down Rodrigo!”