What is one high point and one low point so far in your first weeks of teaching?
One high point is definitely the overall great behavior that my students appear to be exhibiting while in class. Having 80 second graders throughout the day, I imagined, would be stressful. However, I feel management has, overall, been rather solid.
I’d say that a low point is trying to tackle the behavioral issues of a handful of students that I encounter throughout the day. I have one student who speaks only Spanish, and the language barrier makes communicating behavioral expectations quite a task.
What are two things going well with classroom management?
I think my students are really starting to buy into the school culture. I hear them using the core values as part of their daily speech. When I forgot to handout a bunch of letters to go home from the school administration to my first class of the day, I had to send another student in a later class with the letters to the class which I forgot to hand them out to. The student I handed them to said, "Mr. F, that wasn’t showing responsibility;" responsibility was a core value we talked about the week before.
It is difficult to pick out another very specific item that is going well. Students are fairly well behaved and show respect during the lesson. Most of them listen attentively and on the whole things are going fairly well.
What is your main challenge/area for growth with classroom management?
One area for growth in terms of classroom management is attempting to get my classroom to "run itself." When students are asked to move their clip down (a form of consequence), they also need to put a symbol in a chart which represents the action they did in order to solicit a consequence. I always have to stop and remind students what symbol to put in the chart for their behavior. It takes a good deal of time away from the lesson. And at four weeks into the school year, this should simply not be occurring.
What questions do you have regarding classroom management?
Besides having a bilingual partner for my Spanish-only student, how else can I clearly communicate behavioral expectations? I find that even my bilingual students do not always know how to translate particular words or phrases.
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2 comments:
Jason, I was eager to read your posts because I had the Bears and Gauchos last year for Math. I am so happy to hear that things are going well for you. When I first interviewed and did a lesson for the Bears last year, I was immediately impressed with their behavior. I know we are all struggling in some way with behavior or management issues, but I was thrilled to see that these students from last year are doing fairly well. THe question you posted last about not being able to communicate certain information across to your SPanish speaker is a tough one. I take for granted that I speak Spanish and am able to communicate ideas or consequences in SPanish. I stopped for a moment after reading your post, and I had to think about what I would do if I did not speak the language. I suppose I would have to do a lot of acting out of the concepts. I am thinking about what we learned in the GLAD training and we were told not to water down the vocabulary. Use the vocabulary but I don't know is there any GLAD strategy that we could use. I go back to the T Graph where you write what it looks like and sounds like. Doing a lot of modeling and acting out. That kind of thing. I don't know if the suggestions I offered are helpful or not. Like I said I speak Spanish and working with this demographic speaking reading and writing the language is invaluable not just with my interactions with the students but with my interactions with the parents. Language is a process by which is takes years to become fluent. Be patient and continue to use the vocabulary and stop and model and maybe you could have a student paraphrase for the ELL student. If you need anything translated or if you need me to make a phone call or anything to communicate with parent or the student let me know. I think they learn what those words mean by examples. So if a student doesn't bring homework use that word responsibility repeatedly, write it on the board point to it... and use that as the example. ?????
Jason, when I first started teaching, I didn't speak Spanish at all (except counting to 10, which I learned from Sesame Street as a kid). To top it off, I taught first grade and my school had just switched from bilingual ed to English only (therefore my students had only received English instruction for about 1/2 of their kinder year). There's no doubt about it...it is TOUGH working with beginning ELLs....but it is absolutely possible! Visuals, motions, and acting things out is essential...throw in lots of gesturing, pointing, and use of voice and body language and you can actually communicate a lot. I know we talked about this in our last 1:1 and it's been a while since you wrote this post...how are you doing with your beginning ELLs now? Have you found other strategies as well?
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