Friday, June 28, 2013

June Blog: The Struggle


Classroom Management – Prevent and Praise – The iron fist needs to be modified

One of the things that shows up consistently on my evals is classroom management. More specifically, I have to work on preventing more serious disruptions by giving out consequences for simple things like posture and body position while students are in their seat. Another aspect to classroom management that I have to work on is letting down the iron fist to understand what the student needs in order to remain engaged during class so that we do not run into behavioral issues during direct instruction, guided practice or independent practice. I need to work on this because none of my students are actually bad kids, they just speak out of turn from time to time and they either get hostile when they are given a consequence, or they mentally checkout for the rest of the lesson after they have been issued a consequence. Another thing I can do to reduce general rowdiness is to shutdown overexcitement before students enter the classroom. This will help set the tone for the start of class and for the rest of the lesson. In terms of praise, I generally take issue with praising students for things that they are supposed to do anyways. For example, I am not a fan of giving students tickets for reading when I call on them or for doing their work during independent practice. At the very least, I need to consistently give verbal praise and mention how hard a particular student is working to get the slackers motivated to catch-up. 

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