My Three Wishes for My Top Dog Students

This year, I am really going to town with the top dog theme.  My school mascot is a husky, but I love ALL dogs.  I found these cute painted portraits in mats at Michael's, along with some simple black frames.  I used stickers from the Dollar Tree to write my three wishes for my students :  Work Hard, Be Nice, Learn Lots.

Every day this past year, I would drive down the little main street in our town.  I would (of course) get the red light at the main intersection.  One day I looked over into a little shop as I waited for the light to turn.  There was a big wooden sign with painted lettering saying:  WORK HARD, BE NICE.  I thought, that would pretty much sum up what I'd like my students to do.  Well, the sign would have looked silly in my classroom, being wooden and HUGE, so I took some butcher paper and made two long strips.  I penciled on bubble letters of the exact saying.  Kids painted them in one day, and I hung them from the ceiling in front of my windows.  I didn't take them down at the end of the year, and they're still up!  I will probably take them down when I get ready for the new school year.  I want to start fresh, and now I have these three great signs to hang up.  

I plan to introduce them to my class and talk about what each one looks like, feels like, and sounds like.  Each student will make a Top Dog Promise to do his/her best on these three big ideas.  Last year my students each colored and signed a paw print, which hung by our class rules.  I can't exactly call these my rules, as our school is involved in PBIS, and so we have a set of school rules.  But I'm going to tell my class that these are the things I expect from them.  Then I'm going to have the class help me decide where to hang them with command strips.  They don't have a stand in the back, but I could put each one on a book stand, if we decide not to put them on the walls.  I'll have to wait and see how the room turns out.  I have a new arrangement this year, and it's hard to picture everything in its place right now, when the room is bare.

I did get a fourth matching frame (it was a pk of 4).  I'd like to get a matching mat for it and put a picture of the student of the week in it.  Perhaps it could say, "Top Dog."  I also thought of hanging them up in this order with pluses and an equal sign between them:  WORK HARD + BE NICE + LEARN LOTS = TOP DOG.  The TOP DOG pic would be of the student of the week.  What do you think?

Catherine

P.S.  Take a look at Trixie Woo in this photo bomb!  Yes, Trix, you ARE a top dog too!