Principal Free Space: Monitoring implementation

The Wall Chart is invaluable for monitoring an implementation

Principals and coaches:  Please read below, if you don’t already know that it is a great motivation for the students to be able to walk up and put their star on the Wall Chart and help towards meeting that class goal.


How can you easily monitor to know if classes are doing Rocket Math consistently? It can be hard to monitor, especially if you (wisely) scheduled a time each day for Rocket Math.  You can’t be everywhere at once!   

 
The Wall Chart is to be filled with the stickers from the bottom up and left to right.  You can walk through and quickly see what’s happening. The more stars on the chart, the more students are learning and achieving.  If more stickers are on the chart than the last walk-through, then you know Rocket Math is being done.

How the Principal Free Space works

 
How can you tell, when looking at a Wall Chart, whether this class has more stars than the last time?  When you walk through, praise the class and add a principal free space –a red dot or star to the next empty spot on their Wall Chart.  It would be a gift to the kids–one more spot towards their goal.  More importantly, it would show you what they have achieved up to today. 

When you come back a week or two later and there aren’t very many more star stickers after your principal free space, you can tell Rocket Math isn’t being done!   On the other hand, if they have filled in a bunch of star stickers you can really praise them again, congratulate the teacher and class on how hard they are working (and add another principal free space)!

How does the Wall Chart work?


The Rocket Math Wall Chart is designed to produce high levels of positive motivation in your students! Each time a student passes a level in Rocket Math they earn a star sticker and the right to parade up and put it on the Rocket Math Wall Chart.

As the star stickers begin to fill the 24 x 36-inch chart, the success of the whole class is demonstrated graphically, building excitement and pride. The goal arrows help the teacher graphically set intermediate goals and rewards, such as filling four rows in a month, and then celebrate success with a popcorn party or some other group reward! The chart has room for the over 700 star-stickers (that come with the poster), a year’s worth of Rocket Math success.  Includes directions and four (4) Goal Arrows.

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