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Oct
31
Pace and variety are important for classroom management
Filed Under Behaviour Management, motivating students | 4 Comments
I’m constantly reminded how important pace and variety is in classroom management. Many of the students in my math class have difficulty retaining focus and get off task easily. I’ve found the best way to help them retain focus is to keep things moving and change things up frequently. Here are some of the things that I do:
- I greet my students at the door with a smile and a warm-up activity of some sort- a puzzle, a maze etc. ( Ed. helper is a really useful site for math or language puzzles.) This settles them down as they trickle into class and set a positive tone right at the beginning of the class. The kids are pretty competitive so they start the activity as soon as they get it.
- I use an overhead projector to teach the lesson. I’ve found that my students pay attention better when I use the overhead to teach the lesson than when I use the blackboard or chart paper. I’m not sure why that is except maybe they’re more accustomed to looking at screens that light up than black boards that don’t.
- I invite students to be “a teacher for a minute” and put their solutions on the board and explain their thinking. This is a great activity for those kids who can’t sit still because it allows them to move about and get rid of some of that excess energy. Some kids love working at the blackboard. Sometimes I’ve have students film each other when they are “teacher for a minute”. Not everyone volunteers to be filmed, but everyone seems to enjoy watching others being filmed. Of course, to respect the privacy of the students the film is only for classroom use and is never made public.
- I photocopy handouts using different coloured paper. I think that the different coloured paper breaks things up for my students so that it doesn’t seem like I’m asking them to do too much. My struggling/reluctant students groan if I hand them an assignment of four white pages but don’t seem to mind if break up the assignment and first give them the 2 blue pages and then the 2 green pages. It’s the same amount of work but they see it differently. Perception is everything.
- Whenever I can, I try to have my students move about and do things when learning. I’m a great fan of hands on learning and moving about. I’m also a fan of using games in the classroom, student created ones or commercially available ones.
I’ve shared some things that I do in the classroom to help my students be more successful learners. What are some things that you do in your classroom? I’d love to know. I’m always looking for strategies to help me be more effective.
Oct
20
“You can motivate by fear. And you can motivate by reward. But both of these methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self-motivation.” Homer Rice
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to think of ways to motivate my more reluctant students. I’ve tried fear ” If you’re late again, I’ll call home”. I’ve tried rewards “If you follow the classroom agreements and procedures , you’ll earn points that you can redeem for x, y or z”. As a motivational tool, fear and rewards do work, for a while at least. But, I don’t want to threaten my students, and I don’t want to bribe them. I want them to want to come to class and learn because they want to. I want their motivation to be intrinsic.
The question then is how do I get my students to become more intrinsically motivated so that the classroom experience is a more positive for everyone- me included. Slowly, much too slowly if you ask me, it dawned on me that I’d had the answer all along. I just hadn’t realized it. The answer was to activate my students’ self motivation by structuring my class and my teaching so that I met their needs- their the need for belonging, their the need for respect, their need for emotional support , their need to move about the classroom etc. When I actually thought about it, I had noticed things like
1. When I develop a positive relationship with my students, most students want to co-operate and do well.
2. When I focus on the positive and catch my students “doing good” and comment about it, then they do more of the same and other students follow suite.
3. When I greet my students at the classroom door with smile and a puzzle of some sort for them to do, they settled down more quickly and are ready for the day’s lesson.
4. When I have those students who can’t sit still for very long and lose focus easily do their math questions on the board, they are more likely to stay focused and learn.
5. When I ask my students to volunteer to be ” teachers for a minute” and explain how they did a particular question, more learning seems to go on than if I do all the talking myself. What a wonderfully positive way to meet a student’s need to be a leader.
6. When my classroom is a safe place to make a mistake, then reluctant students are more willing to take risks.
7. When my students interfere with my teaching or another student’s learning , I say “I don’t understand why you are being disrespectful to me when I’m not being disrespectful to you” . They stop the behaviour without threats or bribes. Honestly, most of the time they don’t realize that their behaviour is disrespectful. They’re just doing whatever. This approach works because they know I respect them, and in turn they want to respect me. Everyone wants respect.
I guess what I’m saying here is that by meeting the needs of my students whatever they are, I’m nurturing their intrinsic motivation. They really want to do x, y, or z because the consequence of doing x.y or z fulfills a need they have.
In order to meet the needs of my students, I have to be a really keen observer of student behaviour so that I can determine what needs students are trying to meet by behaving in a certain way. Once I determine that, then I can conduct my class so that students can meet their needs in positive ways, one that facilitates learning. I’m still learning how to do this and probably always will be.
Of course, this approach doesn’t work all the time. I’ll be the first to admit that. Although, I’m trying my best, I’m not perfect. I’m not going to get it right for every student even though that’s what I want. Sometimes the school system is at fault because it doesn’t meet the needs of certain students. The school system needs to do more in the way of providing a variety of programs and courses that meet these students’ needs and nurture their intrinsic motivation to come to school instead of dropping out. But, that’s a discussion for another day.
Oct
16
An easy way to help students get and stay organized
Filed Under Graphic Organizers, Learning Strategies, Organization, Special Education, Useful Handouts | 2 Comments
Some students have great difficulty gettng and staying organized while others seem to have no problem at all. I’m always looking for ways to make organizing seem easy so my students will do it , and I think I’ve found a way. I’ve created a chart “I Will Organize One Thing Today Chart” that I adapted from something I saw called “I will do one thing”. I’m going to have my students who need organization coaching to give this a try. Come to think of it, maybe I’ll have all my students in my Advanced Learning Strategies Class do this on a regular basis. I’ll let you know what happens in a couple of weeks. Let me know how it works if you give it a try or if you have something that you else that use that’s quick, easy and effective.
Oct
15
Blog Action Day Poverty: The lack of emotional support is a form of poverty that flies under the radar
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Special Education, The Way I See It | Leave a Comment
This past Monday October 13, 2008 was Thanksgiving here in Canada, a time for reflection and giving thanks. I’ve got lots to be thankful for – a loving, supportive family, good friends, excellent health, a roof over my head, food on the table and a job I love. Yes, I have lots to be thankful for, but not everyone can say that.
Many people for any number of reasons find it difficult to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. The homeless shelters and food banks attest to that. But, there’s more than one kind of poverty. I’m thinking about all those kids I see whose parents work long hours, shift work or even two jobs to provide the necessities of life. These kids may have the material support they need in the form of food, clothing, shelter, and even ipods, cell phones and other digital toys. But, what some of these kids lack is emotional support from their parents. They hardly see their parents at all to talk to them about things that parents and kids need to talk about because their parents are at work or have problems themselves like alcoholism or mental health issues that make them emotionally unavailable to their kids-a sad state of affairs to say the least. I’m not blaming parents. I’m just saying the way it is.
I see kids who lack emotional support from their parents in my classroom all the time. These kids are from all socio-economical levels-rich, middle class and poor. Some of these kids act out in class, skip school, fail, or get into trouble in the community, turn to gangs or even worse.
Schools are expected to pick up the pieces because kid’s won’t succeed in school if they don’t get the emotional support they need. So there we are trying to give the kids the emotional support they need and trying to teach the curriculum at the same time. Both take time. Time which we really don’t have.
Every week the Student Success Committee at our school meets, and we as a group put our heads together to try to find ways to provide the emotional support these “at-risk” kids need. We look for ways teachers can support these kids. We look for ways the community can support kids. We look for ways we can support parents. Sometimes kids are really lucky, and we find mentors in the community that can spend time with the them and influence them positively like the boxing coach that not only spent time with the student but also checked his homework.
Yes, poverty comes in many forms. The lack of emotional support is a form of poverty that flies under the radar but has serious negative consequences. I see these consequences everyday,
and it makes me sad. What am I going to do about it? Well aside from participating in The Blog Action Day on poverty and make people aware of the problem , I am going to continue to find ways to give kids and their parents the support they need. Being a teacher is a tough job, but being a parent is an even tougher job, and we need to support one another.-
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