Classroom Management
In my classroom, I strive to create a inclusive, consistent, collaborative, and safe learning environment for all students.
- Rules, expectations, and atmosphere are all created during the first week of classes with both myself and students. By building this type of environment from the beginning, everyone in the classroom feels safe and welcome to contribute to all classroom activities. Students are more likely to uphold expectations when they are involved in creating them. They feel responsible for them
- Building relationships with every single student every day. This includes greeting them when they come into the classroom, incorporating personal interests into classroom content, and allowing them to share their personal lives into the classroom
- When incidences occur, following a very clear and fair discipline plan. I want to make sure that I understand why a student did a certain thing and working as a team with the student to come up with an appropriate next step.
Particularly in my final practicum, I developed several unique classroom management routines that decreased behavior and increased engagement tremendously.
1. "McBucks" reward system - I designed a reward system that gives out points to students who are following classroom expectations. Each student has the opportunity to receive a point everyday that they have a good class. Through this system, I was able to set reasonable expectations for each student based on their needs and circumstances. I had a "bank" that contained various rewards for the students based on how many points that they had. They ranged from a ticket to guess the amount of jelly beans in a jar to a free class period where the students could choose what activity they all wanted to do. This system worked extremely well with most students. They really enjoyed being awarded for good behavior. Many students got excited to check how many points they had.
2. Riddles and Brain Teasers - I tried to start out every class with some Riddles or Brainteasers. This brought all students together as a group working together to solve a puzzle or just share some laughs. As the semester progressed, many students would bring me there own brain teasers and riddles that they wanted to share with the class. These also worked great if we had a couple extra minutes at the end of the class or for a quick brain break during the middle of the class. I ranged these from easy to difficult so that all students in the class could be challenged.
3. Brain Breaks - I tried to set up my classes with atleast one brain break or movement activity a day. This was a very effective classroom management tool as students could mentally focus themselves for the allotted amount of time if they knew they had a movement break to look forward to. These brain breaks ranged from "Just Dance" videos, to quick classroom games such as sneaky statues, to "tricks" or yoga poses. I really tailored these to the mood of the classroom that day. Some days they needed something that would wake them up and other times I used ones that would calm them down.
|
|
|
|