Welcome to Teachers At Risk
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Nov
7
It’s All In The Timing
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, Goals, Special Education
In class today, I was watching him as he sat there staring off into space instead of working on his assignment. How can he just sit there staring off into space for all this time? Where has he “gone”? What is he thinking about? Now, I don’t know the answer to these questions because whenever I ask, my students won’t tell me. I do know, however, that it’s my job to get them back on track, and over the years I have found a couple of really useful strategies.
One of the strategies I use to keep kids on task is to use a simple timer. Using a timer eliminates the problem of kids asking is the activity over yet. For example, my students usually hate to read and try to avoid reading and before I used the timer they took forever to start to read and were always asking if they could stop reading. For some reason that I’m not sure of, when I use the timer the kids start to read right away because I make a big deal of saying with much enthusiasm ” get set, ready, go”. They also don’t ask me if the time is up. I guess I’ve “trained” them to not to ask but wait for the ring of the timer. Sometimes students want to set the timer and they get to keep it on their desk. Usually it’s a kid who really hates reading. I guess he likes to have a sense of control. I don’t really know, and frankly I don’t care. It works and that’s all I care about. I use the timer for writing activities, for little breaks during our 75 minute class. I use it all the time( sorry about that) The kids love the timer. If I happen to forget to set the timer, someone will remind me to set it. Go figure.
The other strategy I use is to walk around and write the time at the bottom of the student’s work. Let’s say it’s 10:15. I’ll walk around and check their progress and discuss their work and write 10:15 at the bottom of their work. At 10:25 I might come by again and write that time at the bottom of the student’s work and we might discuss better time management. Some kids honestly don’t have a good sense of time. I tell them the time helps them develop a better sense of time. It does. It really does. I don’t get too many complaints about this, for some reason. I guess because I tell them it helps them pace themselves so that they don’t work too fast or too slow. They like not working too fast. Really, some days I feel like I’m still in sales and selling whatever I want them to do so that it seems to be to their advantage- like the times I tell them I’m looking to give them marks so could they please hand in their work because if they don’t I can’t give them marks. I don’t tell them they will fail if they don’t hand the work in. What’s the point of that? They’re used to failing-no big deal. But, getting marks. That’s a whole new thing. Some days I almost feel guilty! Almost.
Related Posts
Related posts:
- Use a Timer to Increase Productivity
- Helping students find their way to success
- Three… Two… One…Start Writing !
- Hand Your Work In So I Can Give You Some Marks
- The Music in the Classroom Debate Continues
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