My summer classroom management plan included 4 rules:
1. Be prepared.
2. Raise your hand and wait to be recognized before you speak.
3. Stay in your seat.
4. Respect your teacher, your classmates, and yourself.
I really like these rules and I think I'll stick with them. I questioned the hand-raising for a while, but I think I'll keep it.
My consequences are:
1. Warning
2. Copying from glossary
3. Copying and call home
4. Detention and call home
5. Office Referral
I think I'll stick with my consequences too. I need to make my sign in my room a little clearer and I need to make sure kids understand that if they don't turn in the copying when they walk in my room, they're already on #3 and will keep moving down from there. I've quit assigning other letters from the glossary. I used to assign S (the longest) and P (the second longest) and occassionally others, but that just led to confusion and kids felt it wasn't fair, so now everyone copies "S". I hear my kids in the hall say, "I got letter 's' today"...everyone knows what that means and they'll say something like, "That sucks." Letter S has 32 words and definitions.
I think I'll change a couple of my rewards. Over the summer they were:
1. Verbal Praise
2. Positive Call home
3. Positive letter home
4. Student of the week
5. Student of the nine-weeks
Group Reward: Marble Jar
The rewards are wearing me out. I started giving $5 McDonalds gift certificates to my student of the week which is EXTREMELY effective because they all want them and EXTREMELY expensive, since I give 3 a week. Same problem with student of the 9 weeks. I gave them all a book about a girl in Peace Corps that I found on clearance for like $5 each last nine weeks. I'd like to give them something christmas related, but I have 6 classes and a tight budget. I like the idea of books if I can find The Best Christmas Pagent Ever or something for cheap. I'm still trying to figure out how to do this better for next year.
The Marble jar is annoying. If I'm not up at my overhead, I have to get up to put marbles in or take them out. It's a good motivator for the kids though. Also losing an entire day for rewards is bad. Maybe if I keep it, the reward will only be 30min-1 hr.
I think I'll do a ticket system next year. I'm missing small rewards and incentives and I think tickets would serve that purpose.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Classroom Management
I chose my A-4 class to be my class where I would stick to the consequences every time. (Of course, I try to do this all day long, but in A-4 I never let up) Has it made the class any better behaved? No. Has it prevented the class from getting worse? Possibly. I screamed at them Tuesday. I had just finished giving out about 5 copying assignments in a row and people were still talking. I slammed my hand down on the desk and screamed. They laughed, but I think it was nervous giggling. I am AMAZED at how it is almost the end of the second nine weeks and the rules still seem foriegn to them. EVERY DAY they test me. And I think I've been as close to perfectly consistent as is humanly possible. And EVERY DAY it is the same thing. I've resigned myself to the fact that I just have to suffer through it. A lot of circumstances are out of my control. I got the class the fourth week of school. There are 3 new kids in the class (out of 17). The kids are constantly in and out of ISS/Suspension (although 3 of them got permanently expelled--maybe there is a God)...The one time I let them out of their desks we went to the library and I was HUMILIATED by their behavior in there in front of other teachers. Blatant disrespect, ignoring my rules, consequences, comments. I should have packed them up and gone back to the room, but I didn't have a plan B and I didn't want to have to move them through the halls again. After school on the way to my car one of the teachers that had seen me in the library called me over to her car. I was almost too embarrassed to even go over there. She made my day, though, when she told me that I should NEVER have been stuck with all those children in one class, even more so as a first year teacher. She teaches a lot of them throughout the day and has the same problems, just not all in one class. It made me feel better. But I still dread A-4.
My major classroom management problem in A-4 has been this: The only way I can control them is if they are in their desks working and I am standing over them, ready to hand out warnings and consequences. If I even get up and begin to lecture or instruct I will be interrupted repeatedly and I will miss certain minor things that will eventually lead to chaos. The Mississippi Studies textbook has no teacher manual, no worksheets, no supplemental materials of any kind....so I constantly make up worksheets. The problem is, any one worksheet will take them 5-15 minutes to complete, depending on complexity and I teach 100 minute blocks. 100 minutes divided by 15 is about 7...in one day... If I give them anything that might take longer than 5 minutes (yesterday's essay assignment for example), they simply will not do it, regardless of how many points it's worth. We spend 3:10-3:30 staring at each other every other day while we wait for the bell. At least after Christmas it will be geography which has resources.
My tenth grade classes are MUCH better. A-1 could hold class without me there. Honestly, I'm not as strict in that class and they can handle it. Occassionally K.C. will ask a question without raising his hand and immediately say, "Oh, excuse me Mrs. D." That is the class Reggie Barnes observed. That is the class I had my vice principal observe. B-2 is the most fun class I teach. I did get a little too lax on the rules in there and had to tighten up a bit, but somehow they are more mature. They ask probing, insightful questions and when I ask, "Who can raise their hand and tell me __________" 50% of the hands shoot up in the air. Occassionally I give a writing assignment, but it never goes beyond that.
I've had to really crack down in my other classes. I let up on the hand raising too much. B-1 has 4 new students which is throwing off the dynamics. It's also my largest class. B-4 is fourth block, so they're either asleep or talking or packing up their bags to go home 20 minutes before the bell. A-3 is lunch and they are constantly in trouble for something. There's a lot of attitude and disrespect in that room that I'm still trying to deal with. Almost daily, I give K.M. a warning and she says, "It wasn't me" I let it slide, because I wasn't going to argue with her and after she says it she quiets down, but now a couple of other kids in that class are starting to talk back to me after I give them warnings and that's disrespectful.
Overall, I need to be a little stricter, but it's mostly O.K. A-4 has destroyed my confidence, joy, and excitement though. I'm grumpy in all my classes now because of them.
My major classroom management problem in A-4 has been this: The only way I can control them is if they are in their desks working and I am standing over them, ready to hand out warnings and consequences. If I even get up and begin to lecture or instruct I will be interrupted repeatedly and I will miss certain minor things that will eventually lead to chaos. The Mississippi Studies textbook has no teacher manual, no worksheets, no supplemental materials of any kind....so I constantly make up worksheets. The problem is, any one worksheet will take them 5-15 minutes to complete, depending on complexity and I teach 100 minute blocks. 100 minutes divided by 15 is about 7...in one day... If I give them anything that might take longer than 5 minutes (yesterday's essay assignment for example), they simply will not do it, regardless of how many points it's worth. We spend 3:10-3:30 staring at each other every other day while we wait for the bell. At least after Christmas it will be geography which has resources.
My tenth grade classes are MUCH better. A-1 could hold class without me there. Honestly, I'm not as strict in that class and they can handle it. Occassionally K.C. will ask a question without raising his hand and immediately say, "Oh, excuse me Mrs. D." That is the class Reggie Barnes observed. That is the class I had my vice principal observe. B-2 is the most fun class I teach. I did get a little too lax on the rules in there and had to tighten up a bit, but somehow they are more mature. They ask probing, insightful questions and when I ask, "Who can raise their hand and tell me __________" 50% of the hands shoot up in the air. Occassionally I give a writing assignment, but it never goes beyond that.
I've had to really crack down in my other classes. I let up on the hand raising too much. B-1 has 4 new students which is throwing off the dynamics. It's also my largest class. B-4 is fourth block, so they're either asleep or talking or packing up their bags to go home 20 minutes before the bell. A-3 is lunch and they are constantly in trouble for something. There's a lot of attitude and disrespect in that room that I'm still trying to deal with. Almost daily, I give K.M. a warning and she says, "It wasn't me" I let it slide, because I wasn't going to argue with her and after she says it she quiets down, but now a couple of other kids in that class are starting to talk back to me after I give them warnings and that's disrespectful.
Overall, I need to be a little stricter, but it's mostly O.K. A-4 has destroyed my confidence, joy, and excitement though. I'm grumpy in all my classes now because of them.
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