Sunday, March 21, 2010
Reflection for weekend of March 20: Classroom Management
In methods activities and discussion, in Johnson's Every Minute Counts, and in core sessions you were presented information on classroom management. Identify three strategies, concepts, or ideas that you believe would be most helpful and explain why you think this. Please use one paragraph for each and do not worry about a thesis statement or introduction.
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I think that there are many strategies that will be helpful in classsroom management. If I had to focus on three key strategies, I think they would be; engaging the students in the first five minutes, questioning, and positive reinforcement.
ReplyDeleteThe first five minutes sets the tone for learning, and helps in prevention of beahvior issues. Before class even starts, the board should be organized to show class information, objective, agenda, classwork, homework and a calendar of events for the month. I think this will help the students be informed and visually see what this class should entail, what work/assignments they will accountable to produce, and what is coming in the future. As the students come in, I think it is important to greet them at the door and welcome them, and to have them pick up the Do Now and start to work right away. I will try to create a Do Now and Initiation that is engaging, relevant, and activates prior knowledge. This, followed by a strong transition to the new learning, will be very helpful to starting the kids off on a positive note.
As the new lesson takes shape, I think the art of questioning to involve the students in the lesson is the most important step to classroom management. It starts by creating a safe environment for the kids to ask and to answer questions, and answer incorrectly without negative consequences. This will enhance participation by all students. I like the suggestion to use name cards and to toss a soft ball to the students at random to select who will answer questions. These are good steps to keeping everyone ready and encouraging particpation by everyone. Active involvement by all the students in the class, not just a select few, is the goal. There were also several suggestions for good questioning technique, like pausing, and not answering your own question that were very insightful for me.
Lastly, positive reinforcement and properly directed praise toward students in front of their peers in the classroom is essential. We were introduced to several reward strategies as well. I particularly liked the idea of the students earning tickets for good performance and doing a raffle at class end or week end. I think it is important to look for opportunities to deliver positive praise, especially to those students that don't actively participate, even if it is a seemingly small event. I liked the idea of using positive, public praise to model good beahavior as well. These techniques would seem to help get the kids intially engaged, keeping them actively involved during the lesson, and making them feel good about their positive efforts and behaviors.
One of the strategies presented in the classroom management sessions that will help me maintain control in the classroom is to maintain emotional composure and remain calm. During my teaching experiences in the past I've found that my response to too much talking in the room has been to increase the volume of my voice and try to talk over the students. This strategy to keep teaching and maintain your focus I've seen work in the classroom where I tutor. After a short period of time, the students who want to learn end up shh'shing the ones who are talking and peer pressure takes over. This is a strategy that I will definitely implement.
ReplyDeleteAnother concept of classroom management presented during the sessions is to arrange the student's seats in a configuration that reduces the depth of the rows and focuses them toward the main teaching area while allowing the teacher to easily "walk the room" to assess student learning. Interestingly, I remember the configuration of the Methods classroom when we met for the first time. The tables were arranged in a U-shape with everyone facing the center of the room. Although I felt a little exposed, in that everyone could see me all the time, I also felt like an equal member of the group. At the same time, no one could hide in the back out of teacher and student view. In my opinion, that seating configuration although not necessarily practical helped me understand the value of the v-shaped configuration.
Finally, the reward strategies presented stimulated my review of the process I currently implement during individual student tutoring. The concept of rewarding less often and requiring students to accummulate rewards such as tokens to achieve a greater reward will help me deal with the issue of sustaining good behavior over a period of time. I've been in the habit of allowing students to have their "rewards" prior to the completion of an activity to meet their need, without focusing solely on the end objective which is to encourage good behavior and participation. Having students accummulate tokens which can be turned in at some future time will provide motive for positive behavior and sustain it over time which is really the goal.
These are just a few of the strategies for classroom mangement that I will implement during my student teaching and in the future.
The concept of a getting the class working immediately when the bell rings is going to be very helpful to my classroom management. There are several reasons why I believe this. First, by starting the class immediately following the bell, you put students immediately in a learning mindset. If you allow students to socialize at the beginning of class they will. Once they start socializing it will be more difficult to pull them back to a learning mindset. Pulling them back to a learning mindset will require your time and energy. Both of these are precious commodities that you don’t want to expend unnecessarily. Second, a well thought out Do Now can help prepare the student’s minds for the lesson that follows. As a result, students will be more engaged in the lesson and less likely to cause classroom behavior issues. Third, students will appreciate the structure that you provide in the classroom by making this a requirement. They won’t have to worry about what they what to do when they get to class if you’ve established this as a norm. Finally, by having work for them to do to start the class, you model what it’s like to be prepared for your job as a teacher.
ReplyDeleteMaking transitions from one activity to another as smooth as possible is going to be very important to my classroom management. First of all, class time is limited. I suspect that as a new teacher I’m going to be hard pressed to get through the entire curriculum that is required. Any time wasted because a transition didn’t run smoothly is lost. If this causes me to have to rush through material, my students may become frustrated and exhibit undesirable behavior. Second, students will use a poorly run transition as an opportunity to socialize. As I said in the previous paragraph, it’s much better to prevent the socializing from starting, because stopping it after it’s started requires more time and effort. Third, clearly defined transitions are more likely to result in students being able to stay on task. If it’s not clear to the students what they should be doing, they can’t be blamed for being off task. They may resent the confusion and behave accordingly.
In his 3/19/09 Core session on Classroom Management, Dr. Perras made the statement that 70% of communication with students is non-verbal. Being aware of this is going to help my classroom management. When I’ve been exasperated getting Harry, my 7 year old, to go to bed some nights, he’s commented to me “Dad, you look like you have an angry face.” I didn’t even need to say anything for him to understand how I felt about the additional efforts required to get him to go to bed. Sometimes communication through body language is going to be helpful. Harry, generally doesn’t like to make me angry (I think), so, knowing that he was making me angry probably helped get him do what I wanted, i.e. go to bed. There are surely some students who are going to enjoy making me angry, so I’ll need to make sure that my body language doesn’t convey anger when I don’t want it to. This is not going to be easy, especially if I really am angry. I think again it comes down to not taking things personally (which also is not going to be easy to do) in order to not get angry in the first place. If a student misbehaves, I can’t view it as an affront to me. I need to view it as a behavior that that needs to be corrected, and that it’s my job to help correct the behavior. Taking this one step further, the more I do on the prevention side of behavior management, the less I’ll have to deal with being careful of my body language with students
The first concept of classroom management that would be most helpful for me will be
ReplyDeletemaintaining calm composure in the classroom.As an adult and a responsible teacher, I need to model being stable, controlled and reflect the same on students. Currently , I think I need to work on that, as I have not only heard from core and methods but also observed classes with teachers, who handle student’s behavior with calming attitude, resolving things step by step using lower but firm voices .I also had an opportunity to observe teachers who raised their voices, reacted to student’s behavior rapidly, trying be all around , handling multiple things at a time and lose control over classroom behavior.I believe when teachers become more active, they tend to lose control over their voice, response style, multitasking , body language etc ..But the skill of being active at the same time trying to maintain their calm will, not only model the whole class ,but also help teacher slowly kill the stress out of the work.
Second one will be avoiding giving timeouts. I know it is nearly impossible, to get out by teaching a lesson, without a behavior issue. When I first started substitute teaching, I had no clue how teachers handle behavior here in US.I only knew I should not punish students as how we do it in my country.One day went very peacefully and the other day I was trying to invent new ways to get the students engaged.I had quite a few headaches but then I thought its part of my job, and I will have no help .Finally, one day one of the neighboring teachers met me in the cafeteria and asked ,” How are you managing with those tough class.I always see they are quite, and engaged .If anyone is still troublesome send them out in the corridor or send them to office.” Though by hearing that I was relieved that I have a backup plan, but I never felt like sending students out, moreover I thought time outs are sign of “disengagement”, which is against a teacher’s motto. Now I feel, if every teacher thinks that “Time Out” doesn’t prevail, I guess we will figure out new strategies as to how to deal with students with challenging behavior.
Last one which I liked a soon as I heard is KISS- keep it simple stupid. It actually relieved me from the stress, that incurred by trying to complicate my work. We know the actual point of teaching, is teaching the right thing in a right way but usually as teachers, especially those coming from a different background tend to explore too much and try to present a lot, more than required for a student’s grade level or capacity. Since planning lessons have been the major assignments we did during ARC, we paid too much thought and time to them but in real time teaching, though extensive lesson planning is needed but we need to always think is it relevant? Is it easier to deliver? Is it easier to assess? Is it practical? Do kids enjoy the lesson or its only the teacher? Do we have enough time to prepare for next day ? Do we have enough time to present in the class? Not only lesson plans, classroom management etc but anything in teaching ,I should try my best not to over complicate and end up missing the purpose.
The three strategies that will be most helpful to me pertain to the first five minutes of class, questioning techniques and working together.
ReplyDeleteIf there’s one important point that has been emphasized and re-emphasized over my several months in ARC, it’s been the importance of those first five minutes. It’s a concept that wasn’t necessarily obvious to me when I first thought about becoming a teacher. I have completely bought in to the importance of getting the students on task in a meaningful way as soon as they walk into the classroom. It’s interesting though – of the small sample of teachers I’ve observed or questioned, it seems very few teachers use the “Do Now” concept. Many teachers seem to start class with homework review. I plan not to fall into the “this is how we do it” trap.
One of the main things I’ve learned about myself during the micro-teaches is how easy it is to fall into the trap of as asking too many closed-ended or, even worse, “throw-away” questions. Even before ARC, I always recognized the importance of asking open-ended questions or questions that provoke critical thinking. It’s how I teach my kids and I use the strategy when I coach. But for some reason, when I get up in front of the classroom, I seem to fall into a trap. I’m confident I will overcome this with time and experience as long as I continue to be reflective.
The third strategy I found most helpful is the “working together” strategy. Through my experience with coaching and teaching religious education and just being around kids in general, I’ve learned that kids like to help other kids learn. The complement to this is that kids are likely more apt to learn from their peers. So I want to foster a “learn from one another” environment in my classroom. I don’t foresee this as being an easy task and I realize I may have to give up some control in order to facilitate this properly.
There are so many good ideas that it is hard to choose three. One of the strategies that has stuck in my mind from the Johnson book is the idea of homework quizzes. I think using these is a great way to make students more accountable for completing their homework and doing a good job on it. If they know that these homework quizzes are going to occur at random from time to time, hopefully this will motivate the students to make a very good effor on their homework. And it is a nice way to give a quiz, since it may be less anxiety-provoking; the students are simply copying the answer (and the work/steps of course) from their homework.
ReplyDeleteThe second idea I really like, which I think was presented by Perras (he showed a video where the teacher did something like this) is to end the class with a round of quick questions, like a game (and sometimes including the ball to be tossed from person to person). The questions need to be carefully crafted, or course, but it is a fun way for the students to answer questions and recall information or concepts. If I did this, I think I would pick fairly easy questions at the beginning of the school year so that the students would be confident, and then build to more difficult or tricky questions as the year went on (but I would still have the simpler questions.)
The last thing is my tone of voice. Perras says almost to use an almost clipped tone (of course you might mix it up once in a while, but this would be the norm). There are ways that you do need to separate yourself as an adult, I think the tone of your voice and your manner of speaking is a good way to do it. You do not want to be mean, or unpleasant, but I believe Perras' point about not saying please or okay? when you ask a student to do something. These add-ons subtly imply to the student that you are asking him for a favor. Simply saying "it is time to stop talking" rather than "please stop talking", or "stop talking, okay" is a better way to go, in my opinion.
Firstly I believe that the idea of arranging the seats in a different way than the traditional method will be helpful. It will allow me to check everyone’s homework, along with having the ability of making sure the students are working diligently. It also allows me to be able to guide them when they are working in groups. I prefer the David Johnson's arrangement of seats.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I like the idea of rewarding the students. Children love being rewarded, especialy after they work hard. I recall an experience as a substitute teacher, that applies this technique. The teacher told the students that if they completed their work, there a will what she coined a "surprise" at the end. After a brief pause and some whispers among the children (oohhs and ahhs), the teacher left me to supervise them. Throughout the remainder of the period the children sat silently and worked without a peep. I was amazed at how this technique, which I once thought so simple and overrated, worked so well with these group of children. After they finished their work, the teacher returned with a whole watermelon which she partitioned and distributed to everyone. The children looked at the teacher with jubilation. I believe we are all goal-oreinted beings, and setting a reward, in essence is like setting a short term goal that no one can deny; who does not like watermelon?
Finally, The idea of posting the answers in transparencies, along with discussing as a class the questions that most of the students get wrong will be useful. It will be a great way of letting students become motivated about their work and double checking their understanding. It will also enable me to have more active interaction with my students.
(in two parts, as it exceeded the 4000-character limit)
ReplyDeleteFirst, Dr. Perras's strategy to use peer pressure to help us achieve our goal seems to be the single most powerful strategy. I've combined a few ideas that came from Dr. Perras and from Randy to come up with the following scheme that I plan to use during student teaching: I will seat the students in groups of four. I will have expectations and points, very much like what Randy showed in class. I will create a rubric so they understand how they will accumulate points. If a group meets expectations, they get full credit. However, if someone in the groups fails to meet expectations, then one of two things could happen... if I have to remind that student of the rules/expectations, then the group will lose points, however if the other members of the group correct that student and I don't have to, then the group can still earn points, just not as much as if they had been acting appropriately the entire time. The idea is, first, to get the students to police themselves, and second to have the offending parties experience some socially unpleasant consequences of misbehaving, thus encouraging them to act differently. The reward.... from Dr. Perras's video, music! All kids like music, and if it is playing in the room while they are working, that is definitely something they will like. I agree with what some others have said, that it is hard to envision coupons, tickets, etc, being so highly valued by students. In fact, I would guess that the kids your really trying to target, the "chronic" misbehavers, are often going to see such schemes as "corny." Music, in my opinion, has the best potential for reward because the students themselves bring it in, so you know they value it.
Second, this has been stressed by Randy throughout, and that is to keep the students busy. If you don't give them something to do, they will find something to do themselves, and often it won't be what you want. So I will keep them busy. And while they are busy working, their music will be playing. This overlaps significantly with the music/reward idea, but the two go hand-in-hand. The music will be on ONLY if ALL groups maintain a certain point level. If a groups points drop below a certain level, the music goes off, immediately. I think that having the rewards off in the future has some benefit, but having an immediate consequence that the WHOLE GROUP feels, that will make it really hard for most of even the chronic offenders to misbehave. And again, the only way a group will lose points is if I have to intervene... as long as they monitor themselves and keep each other acting according to expectations, points will be awarded. For a long term reward, I might have a pinata for each class and the group with the most points at the end of the month gets to smash it apart. This will cost some money, so I have to weigh it's expected effectiveness... if it is something that might be seen by students as a valuable long-term reward, then it would be effective at keeping them on task, and my sanity is well worth the cost of a few pinatas! (Randy and anyone else working in schools, please offer your thoughts on how much you think students would like to smash apart a pinata filled with surprises!)
(continued.)
ReplyDeleteThird, I don't know if this has been mentioned anywhere, or if it has, it hasn't been stressed, but I think that showing the students that you genuinely want them to succeed is what will keep the classroom well-managed in the long-run. The rest of the strategies are really adult strategies of manipulation. We future teachers are locked away in our basement every Friday night while our students ransack local malls, and we strategize how we are going to get inside the heads of these teens on Monday morning and essentially manipulate them. I don't say this in a bad way! :) We're not doing anything unethical, however we are being manipulative with some these strategies. To clarify, any actions that we take solely because it will produce a desired outcome, that is what I am referring to as manipulative. For example, if we say "hey, good job Jake, you're on doing your do-now, way to go!" simply because we know he'll like it and others will want to hear it, and so we expect it to get them on-task, that is manipulative. However, if we say the exact same thing, but our main point is to genuinely acknowledge that Jake is doing a good job, and oh yeah, by the way, the rest of the class now copies him, that is not manipulative. The goal was not to manipulate in the latter, but it was in the former. I think we need to be careful not to strategize ALL the time. We need to take the time to give some genuine praise and acknowledgment to students. We need to show them that we genuinely care. Genuinely. ("genuinely" seems to be my version of "get it? seriously?"). The dog and pony show will work and it might work for a long period of time, but in my opinion, the manipulative strategies are simply to get things under control, and THEN you have to do your real work. Once you get them quiet and on task, paying attention, then you have to earn their respect, show them that you believe in them and that you are going to do everything you can to help them. This last part to me is essential for long-term success in the classroom, behavior or otherwise.
1. The number one best idea that I will use is a timer. I have a digital kitchen timer that is easy to set. I think students today have no real sense of time. Today on my second day, I used the timer twice during the day. Once to see how fast I could do an actual roll call. We will play beat the clock for a few days until I think of something else that’s entertaining for the roll that allow me to get to know the kids. We also used it very effectively to have students use an answer key to self-correct the previous nite’s homework. We gave them 3 minutes. I worked wonderfully.
ReplyDelete2. Divide and conquer. I tried this today already, the offender moved to the vacant seat the first time I asked her too. Stayed there the whole class and did every bit of classwork. She’ll thank me tomorrow when she most likely will get an A on the quiz. I thanked her today as she left class.
3. Stay calm, keep the class moving and handle non-compliant behavior and kids on behavior plans discretely. I think to do this you need to have a Plan A and Plan B ready for class instruction and seatwork in case issues come up and things need to be adjusted.
Three strategies that I definitely will employ as a teacher are the name cards, student reward through tickets or stamps, and the use of a ball during student questioning.
ReplyDeleteThe name cards will give the appearance of randomness to student selection so that they may be expected to be called on at any time. It will be important to not make it random and be selective as to the students that are called on. The tendency of most teaches is to call on the students that are best at answering the questions, when in fact you should probably do the opposite and call more often on students that struggle or do not pay attention. To try and boost the confidence of the struggling students, I will call on them when the answer is easier so that they have a greater opportunity to be correct. The more difficult questions, I will call on the better students. If the students do independent work, before they present answers to the class you can circulate and identify which students have the correct answer and then knowing this call on them for the answer. Another benefit of the name cards is that for persons like myself that have a terrible memory for names, it will make it easier to remember student names.
For my student teaching, I plan on obtaining stamps, hopefully smiley face and frown face, and having the students make name cards for their desks that I will stamp the back of. The stamp they will get will depend on whether they put effort forth on being to class on time, the do now, class activities, answering questions, etc. It will be very easy to get a smiley face from me and it will not affect my reward cost because all it gets is an entry into the raffle. Whether there are one hundred or three tickets in the raffle, the prize cost will be the same. There will be a minimum number of smiley stamps required (frown is two negative smiley), say ten, to get in the biweekly raffle with each multiple of five after ten getting an extra ticket. Everybody loves rewards and encouragement, no matter how small, and this will create more positive energy in the classroom.
I love the use of the ball during a questioning round because it gets the students actively involved. The students look more alert waiting for their chance to catch the ball and answer. One of the key points from a previous core lecture was that students need to physically move during class and this is a good way to incorporate physical involvement. I think it is important the answers be relatively easy so that the ball moves back and forth quickly. This can not be a session with explanations from student or teacher or the use of the ball will not be effective. I remember being instructed to have the ball move back and forth between student and teacher and not directly between students to reduce issues with the ball throwing. Making it competitive against other classes can bring another dimension that will engage the students.
Three Strategies or concepts or ideas that I believe would be helpful with classroom management.
ReplyDeleteThe first one that comes to mind is the Do Now Exercise. By now it should be the first thing that comes to all of our minds. As we have seen both in Core and Methods, this is simple yet effective tool can be used as a review of prior knowledge and can act as a lead in to the current topic. This also gets the kids on task and engaged in thinking right from the start. As we have discussed, this gives the teacher a chance to take attendance and walk around and review homework. Kids will love the routine of this and expect it each day and look forward to it in a way. And of course I am happy and excited by Randy’s comments on my Do Now from the Chapter Plan. He has also modeled this by praising me, which makes me want to work harder at making Do Now Exercises that can be exciting and engaging to the students and are more than simple busy time worksheets. I hope all the rest of you are working hard as well. The students will get on task right away and we won’t have to worry about how to get their attention and start the lesson.
I met with my cooperating teacher earlier this week and spent he entire day with her today. She said she has used Do Now Exercises to review prior knowledge, but has not used them on a consistent basis. She is open to me using them every day. One question I am not sure about, is do we still use them on the day of a test or quiz? Today the teacher gave a quiz and an exam in different classes. She spent a few minutes reviewing homework at the beginning of class. This in a way was a review for the quiz or exam, so I guess a Do Now Exercise could function on those days as well.
The second idea that I believe would be helpful is the art of questioning. Questioning in itself is something that I as a teacher will need to work on. The questions can keep the students engaged and we can assess their understanding. As listed in “Every Minute Counts” and discussed both in Core and Methods there is an art to questioning. There are good questions and bad questions. We should try to avoid the bad questions. Some of these are: try to avoid questions that require only a yes or no answer, avoid answering our own questions, try to limit questions that rely almost completely on memory, try to avoid asking a student questions for disciplinary reasons, try to avoid questions that contain the answers.
We should ask more open-ended questions. We should pause after asking a question; we should follow up student’s response with the question “why”. We should avoid questions like “Everybody see that?” and “Right?” which were two of the type of questions that Dr. Perras kept asking. But I have already mentioned I didn’t like his modeling. I think his information is great and will be helpful to us, but his presentation actually was modeling what we shouldn’t be doing.
(part 2)
ReplyDeleteThe third thing that I think will be helpful in classroom management is positive reinforcement. Some examples we have seen are praising the student for good work, or asking an insightful question, or modeling for peers. We have to keep the kids wanting to be engaged.
Today as I was observing, there was one boy in a lower level algebra class that I will be teaching. He didn’t have a pencil and they were going to take a quiz. The teacher gave him a pencil and he kept breaking it in the sharpener. He loudly mentioned he was going to just use his pen. The teacher was busy addressing other issues in the front of the class before handing out the quiz and didn’t hear his call for attention. The boy sat down and kept raising his hand and calling out the teacher's name over and over for attention. (kind of like in Welcome Back Kotter) I figured he had changed his mind on wanting a pencil. Without saying anything, I walked over and placed my pencil on his desk. He said thanks and shut up immediately. He was quiet for the rest of the class. He walked over and returned the pencil to me after class and said thanks. I spoke with the teacher afterwards, and she said I might have done the best thing I could have to get his attention during student teaching. Sometimes the small things can lead to bigger rewards.
In the art of questioning, Johnson mentions several “try-to” items. The first is to pause. Wait time is critical and something that I can get better at (most of us can). I hate silence in the room, but with self control, silence is an important part of the learning environment.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the book there are many pointers that indicate we need to teach the students how to be organized, take notes, study for tests, etc. All the things teaching the student to be a student. As a Math teacher we focus so much on the delivery of a curriculum that it is easy to forget to teach the student how to learn. There are times when I feel that high school students need to be grown up and responsible for themselves, but that doesn’t work. First they are still children and they are immature. Second, many have never been shown how to a student and they don’t know. To think that we just need to tell a student to take notes is ridiculous. Many have learned to copy the board, but do so with no sense of meaning to their own minds. Simply telling them to right down ideas from class that have meaning to them doesn’t work. Part of teaching them routine in your class is teaching how to be students.
I like the u-shaped seating arrangement, but due to sharing rooms, I don’t have full control on that. We use a modified v with grouping of 3s in one room and rows in another room. Rooms are changed to suit certain activities for certain classes. Sometimes I change the room for particular reasons for my classes. Someday maybe I’ll have a room that’s just mine. The reasons I like the u shape idea is I like class discourse and I don’t like the back and front of the room syndrome that is typical of more traditional seating. Also I teach from all around the room and I think the U would give me more access to any kid at any time.
I believe that minimizing the value of misbehavior is a very effective technique to facilitate classroom management. Minimizing it does not mean ignoring it. It means that you have to increase the ratio of good over bad behavior. An effective way to accomplish that is to assertively demand from the troublemaker to produce work. Being back in task increases the probability that he will stop misbehaving. It does not mean that this technique will work all the time, but it is worthy to use it before taking more severe steps.
ReplyDeletePosting four five simple rules is another technique to make classroom management easier. Posting sets clearly the teacher’s expectations for his students. Of course, posting the rules does not automatically guarantee compliance. The teacher has not only to reference them incessantly, but also train the students to the rules until they become routines. Students’ behavior will be much better if they know what to do from the first minute they enter the classroom until the last minute they depart.
“Catching the student being good” and praise him for his good behavior is a very good method for classroom management. It plays a double role, since not only good behavior is rewarded but also offers a model for other students to follow. In this case, the teacher uses an indirect method. He tries to stop misbehavior of one student by using the good behavior of a peer. The teacher, by accentuating the positive behavior of few students , puts pressure to other students to behave better.