My CT has awesome classroom management! She has told me that this year’s class is a “particularly good one”, but that does not diminish her ability to create an environment in which behavioral issues are not problems.
The first day of school, students were placed on the carpet and asked to list behaviors that they know fits with the school’s montra of “showing respect, responsibility, and relationships”. This activity allowed students to create their own rules, giving them ownership of their behaviors. My CT did not have to take the time to lecture the class and give orders for what she expected of them. By the end of the activity, students had clear expectations that they created, making it rather difficult for them to dodge responsibility for their actions.
One of the things that my CT implemented that truly makes life in the classroom a lot easier is having job assignments for the students. These jobs include line leaders, lunch-count takers, substitutes (take over the job of an absent student), star counter, etc. These jobs certainly lessen the chances of student behaviors being an issue because of the lack of student responsibility expectations. This is such a GREAT way to ensure that students have clear ideas of how the classroom is managed.
My CT is very explicit with her expectations for the students. Every student is encouraged to take personal responsibility for any of their actions, and they are recognized for doing so. My placement implements the PBS model, and it maintains that students are acknowledged more for desired behaviors, curbing the frequent occurrences of undesirable ones.
There are no students with challenging behaviors in my placement. With that said, my CT is superb at being proactive to prevent incidents. She responds very quickly to possibly undesirable behaviors. Taking the time to “nip them in the bud” truly speaks volumes to her attentiveness to the students.
Staple rules for the class include students not talking in line and walking with their hands by their sides, using the 4-point voice level scale for various activities, responding to the teacher as she blows in the microphone to get their attention (this works VERY well), and showing respect when others are talking.
There are plenty of expectations for the class that would be time-consuming to list as rules, but the point is that students have rather broad expectations of showing “respect, responsibility, and relationships”, and they are able to easily recognize when they are not doing so.
February 14, 2010 at 1:52 pm |
Reading about what your teacher did at the beginning of school and what she does now has helped me understand a good way to set up positive behavior, thanks for posting this! In what ways does she prevent incidents? Does she just say the child’s name to get them to stop or something else? How does she reinforce the expectations? Like how does she get the children to not talk in line? Is there a negative consequence for those who DO talk in line? With my class, the teacher is very lax with the children…she lets them talk and run around and whatnot until they get out of control and she has to say something. Her thing is that she wants them to be able to socialize and express themselves. This can cause problems when you DO want the children to be quiet though. Also the children in my class seem to not listen AT ALL. you call their name to stop doing something or to ask them to do something and they ignore you. They literally just keep doing whatever it is they want to do with no acknoledgement to the teacher. SERIOUSLY. The CT and I have to say things over and over to get them to do anything. When they are doing something they are not supposed to do like creating a valentines card instead of doing their center work, they will not do their center work until they have finished doing what THEY want to do…it’s like pulling teeth to get them to stop and do what they should be doing. Some children don’t do their work because they are not focusing and they are playing star wars in their mind (seriously, this kid moves his hands around like spaceships and does this instead of writing). WHAT TO DO????!!!! I call their name to focus them, but they don’t listen and they just go back to doing the negative behavior. so frustrating.