Teams and Themes Bundle

Classroom Teams will revolutionize the way you teach!

Teams and Themes are two programs I use to create classes I love teaching by creative power incentives to work as teams and develop positive leadership and community character traits. Both are inspired and adapted from systems I experienced and taught while serving with the United States Marine Corps. There, they help forge Marines who win missions in challenging, complex, and dynamic environments. While we as teachers don’t send our kids into combat, too often, when we can’t control our class and create environments that ordered, engaging, fun, and where positive outcomes are part of the daily routine,  it can feel that way. Equipped with systems I’ve been able to push students further and develop leaders not just ready for class, but equipped to conquer life!  

After I shared these methods with partner teachers, and then a community of fellow teachers, I was encouraged myself to make them into products so that everyone can benefit from the program. 

Classroom Teams: Teams are powerful incentive tools for classroom management, discipline, and creating classroom cultures built around leadership, teamwork, and empathy. Teams help teachers struggling to manage large or disruptive classes by empowering the best attitudes with authority, while discouraging those bad behaviors through positive peer pressure to do better. 

I created the concept of teams after landing in the middle of a class already halfway through the year and with high stakes state testing in three months. I knew I needed help, so I created a system that made the kids my helpers. Designed around my experiences with the United States Marine Corps, my team model creates incentives for students to take part in leading and cooperating in shared success in the classroom. The system encourages through the use of points and rewards to tutor one another, complete their work early and to the best of their ability, and have fun while learning and growing as a team. 

Themes: The "Themes" - Character Building Traits Corrective Writing Assignment is for teachers seeking to gain better control of their classrooms, while also improving class culture, and improving writing skills. 

Themes are short essays over leadership traits students will need to develop to be effective members of healthy and productive communities. They encourage community norms by asking kids to acknowledge shared community values you can implement into your classes, reflect on their own behaviors, and create a plan for how to do better in the future. It follows both state and national standards for writing, and principles of restorative justice reflection.

Inspired by traits taught by the United States Marines Corps, the themes mirror the Marines' unique Marine Corps leadership traits. The system teaches traits such as Judgement, Justice, Dependability, Loyalty, Tact, and many others. The Marines organized this values system to instill in their troops the ability to act and think both individually and as a team in complex and dynamic, high stress situations.

The program has worked wonders for my classrooms both in correcting behavior and increasing writing ability. 

Included in this bundle:

-- Teachers Guide for Creating and Implementing Classroom Teams. The guide is a 66 page document that includes all the steps necessary to create, implement, oversee, and reward teams in your own classrooms the way that I do mine. It offers a complete step by step on the hows and whys of many aspects of teaching through teams you would only otherwise learn from experience. Here, I share that experience so that you can implement my team model, or easily adapt the tools to your own.

-- The Team Point Tracker google spreadsheet template. This template comes ready made for you to start implementing teams tomorrow. It features areas where you can communicate team standings, and includes special tools for automatically adding points. It also includes other quality of life features to reduce the amount of maintenance required and a special tab with additional guides for teachers who want extra assistance.

-- Team Building Forms: GEM AWARDS and BUS Forms. The GEM and BUS forms are google form templates that allow team members to communicate team health by telling the teacher anonymously if someone on their team is doing an awesome job, or if someone is not pulling their weight. Here, effort gets rewarded and there are no free rides.

-- GEM Award Certificate. If you use the GEM Award system, this resource allows you to give a special recognition to students to proved invaluable to their team.

-- Classroom Team Coupons. This set of coupons is specially made to work with the classroom teams. The coupons both offer incentives in the way of free homework passes and get out of jail free for classroom disciplines, but also special cards that affect the team games. They add fun and excitement to an otherwise mundane and boring class.

-- The "Using Themes" teacher's guide. It is a 59 page guide on how I use themes in my classroom. It will provide you with all the information to design your own themes to emphasize the types of character traits you want to develop in your classroom. Also include is a FAQ section with answers to questions like how to get students writing their themes, how to explain themes to parents and admin, and other tips on how best to use the program.

-- The "Using Themes" student guide. This is the editable packet you will print and give to students. This packet includes a guide that explains to students what themes are and how to write them, an example of a well written theme, definitions of the words and suggestions for improvement, and a bonus guide for kids who pay attention that tells them (and you) the best ways to write a theme and get it write on the first try.

-- Two sets of printable and editable slides that you can use to demonstrate and model the themes in your classrooms. The first set contains the chief themes I use along with definitions and guidance for how to improve. The second set contains the same with simplified definitions.