106 Assignment 1

I can't believe the first two weeks of teaching have already gone by. A high point so far was using the GLAD strategy "Farmer in the Dell" to my classes last Friday to teach the parts of speech. My morning class had been rowdy and disrespectful for most of the day, but they were engaged and enjoying themselves as we made up silly sentences. In both classes, I could see that many of my students were correctly identifying the differences between nouns, verbs, and adjectives and that was really exciting. One of my students who forgot his homework and spends most of class chatting with his table group raised his hand and asked me, "what about prepositional phrases?" The fact that he knew this term and was ready to add it to the chart made me so happy.

A low point happened the same day, when I attempted to teach dictionary skills to my students by having the table groups race to look up different words. I did not explain the activity to my morning class very well and I should have more carefully reviewed the procedures for working in groups, because what should have been a productive game was just a mess. The students were fighting, none of them were following the directions, and I generally saw my kids treating each other with extreme disrespect. It was really discouraging to see this situation unfold, but I know now that I have to go over every aspect of group work procedures so that they learn how to solve problems collaboratively.

In terms of classroom management, I think the actual procedures of my students moving their clips and putting behavior cards by their names is going pretty smoothly. I thought it would take a long time for my students to get the hang of the complex system, but most of the time I don't have to worry about them doing the wrong thing with the behavior chart. My biggest challenge with classroom management is getting my students to understand why good behavior is so important. I want them to be motivated to have recess time every day, but they also need to understand the overarching importance of coming to school prepared, treating each other respectfully, and taking responsibility for their actions. I tried to give a motivating college talk to my students on Wednesday but I'm not sure how much of it got through. I really need to make sure my students are invested in the behavior management system, and not just afraid of the consequences (although many of them aren't even worried about them!).

I have so many questions about behavior management I just don't know where to start. I keep moving my students' desks around to try to get them to stop talking during lessons, but at some point this has to stop and I need to get them to pay attention no matter where they are sitting. I know I will probably change my students' seats several times throughout the year, but 4 times in the first 3 weeks is too many. What are other ways to solve this problem? How can I be more fair in administering consequences? Sometimes I feel that I am constantly reminding one student over and over to move their clip to the point where they are crying. I try to give them positive feedback as well, but I need my students to get the message that I am not picking on them individually but just trying to reinforce the rules for everyone. How can I introduce small rewards to motivate my students but keep them simple enough that they don't disrupt class? I gave one of my students a highlighter as a small prize this week, only to take it away days later because she wouldn't put it away. These are just a few questions about the issues I am having.