Search results matching tags 'teaching' and 'classroom management'

Reflective Teaching - Free Journal!

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:08:00 GMT

Click on reflection page to download.

I think if there is one thing that has made the most impact on my teaching - it would be my reflective practice. At the end of the day I always take a moment to look at how the day went. I do not linger on my answers. Rather, I write down what immediately comes to mind. It does not take long to quickly review your day. Here are some of the benefits of a reflective practice:

your teaching becomes more like research - learning along side the children
attention is given to those areas that might otherwise be overlooked
the social and emotional climate of the classroom is addressed daily
teaching becomes more responsive to the children's current learning needs
you will develop an more observant eye in the classroom
INSTRUCTIONS

To make your own journal - print out how many pages as you will need till the end of the school year.
Hole punch the pages and put them into a notebook.
Use this notebook to keep your thoughts and feelings about how your year is going. I keep mine at home as it can be very personal and I would not want just anyone reading what I write. This way I am free to express feelings of doubt and celebration! I do have a stack at school just in case I am feeling the need to capture my thoughts right after school.

Enjoy!

Whoah! Teaching without an Assistant...

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:40:00 GMT

This term I've been given the privilege of having a class all for myself. We usually have two teachers to a class but one is on maternity leave and my teaching partner has taken her place. I'm enjoying my new class, bonding with my students and their parents. The only catch is that time is really flying!

I've never seen a school term fly by so quickly, it's almost gone. We have only two more weeks of teaching time, then we'll have a revision week, followed by what we call the 'Christmas End of Term Test'. I realize that every teacher really needs an assistant because even though I'm getting things done, there's always more to do. I'm correcting papers, books, and homework in the morning, during break time, lunch time and especially after school. So, I want all of the teacher aids and assistant teachers out there to know that you are so very much needed and appreciated!

Whoah! Teaching without an Assistant...

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:40:00 GMT

Mrs. Mimi has a new blog

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:56:44 GMT

It’s called Mrs. Mimi Teaches, and is going to be full of ideas to help teachers in their classrooms. I say “going to be” because as yet, it’s pretty spare on content. However, as Mrs. Mimi is a fellow lover of books, school supplies, and being organized, I have high hopes.

(By the way, if you haven’t checked out her original blog, or her book – both of them called “It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages”–you should. She is snarky and hilarious.)

Careful, The Stage Is Slippery; However, The Show Must Go On

Anonymous — Fri, 27 May 2011 00:09:32 GMT

I have been providing you with more fun entries lately, but in this one I really want to shed some light on what I feel is important. I hope that you will take away something positive from this entry, but if the following bores you, I am sorry; I feel as though it is important [...]

how much time do teachers actually teach?

Anonymous — Tue, 03 May 2011 01:04:48 GMT

Inefficiency in education drives me nuts. Long pointless meetings, or staff development that is inane and worthless — these things make my blood boil. We have so many more important things to be doing.

Sometimes, however, we waste our students’ time and fritter away precious minutes when they could be learning. When I was a teacher-coach I saw a fair number of teachers who spent a lot of classroom time doing not much of anything. Alas, mention of time, organization, or efficiency meets some deaf ears at my school.

The Sunday New York Times had an excellent article about a smart way to assess teachers: videotape them teaching, and record the actual amount of time they spend teaching the curriculum.

…[S]tudies found that some teachers were able to deliver as much as 14 more weeks a year of relevant instruction than their less efficient peers.

14 weeks more in a year?! That’s powerful stuff.

There was no secret to their success: the efficient teachers hewed closely to the curriculum, maintained strict discipline and minimized non-instructional activities, like conducting unessential classroom business when they should have been focused on the curriculum.

I’m going to share this article with my principal (I suppose I should call her the Princess, since our former principal was the Prince on this blog).

Don’t Let the Pigeon Play

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 21:31:39 GMT

There’s nothing a teacher dreads more than being absent and having to prepare for a substitute. In addition to the preparations you have to make in advance, often while you’re sick, there’s always the fear that your students will go bonkers in your absence. I’m sure this has never happened to you, when you’re absent your little cherubs sit still and blink their wide, innocent eyes at the substitute teacher while patiently awaiting your return. If you are in the minority like me and your students need a little reminder of how to behave in your absence I made a special PowerPoint just for you. I was inspired by my friend Karen of Prekinders; her recently released Pigeon packet hooked me on the popular Mo Willems books.

This is how it works, just click on the picture above to download the PowerPoint and insert your students’ pictures in the empty boxes. Click on the talk bubbles to change the text. I gave you just a few examples to get you started, but having the students actually come up with the ideas for the text will be more meaningful. Insert duplicate slides and change text and pictures to create as many pages of the book as you will need. You can show the PowerPoint to the class or you can print the slides, insert the pages in page protectors, and place them in a binder to create a book that you can include in your classroom library and leave for your substitute.

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Classroom Management

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:46:00 GMT

Classroom Management is such an important topic for teachers, especially new teachers. There are whole semester college courses that deal with only effective classroom management as its topic. As a teacher, you will no doubt have to sit through numerous professional development days and workshops that tell you how to effectively manage a classroom.

Let me simplify things for you. I feel that there are two main types of classroom management in high schools. Whenever someone walks into a high school classroom, they will almost always see one of the two methods being implemented. The two types are:

The Prison: This style of classroom management implements total silence. As a matter of fact, the silence is so deafening, the sound of the teacher’s voice for a couple of minutes is enough to make one go crazy.
Bedlam: This is complete and utter chaos. When I say complete and utter chaos, I mean uncontrollable, anarchy type chaos that is being seen in Libya right now. This is Extreme Crazy stuff! You fear for your life while in this type of classroom.

Obviously, these are the two extremes and most classrooms fall somewhere in the middle. As for me, I have no problem getting students to be quiet. I usually keep a fairly quiet classroom while I am lecturing or there are videos, etc. being presented. I’ve got a system that works pretty well and keeps them on-task and quiet. Sure, there is the occasional student who wants attention or tries to be funny, but there are minimal disruptions in my class.

The problem with this is that when it’s completely silent and they’re working…everything in the classroom that I do is amplified. If my shoe squeaks while I walk, everyone hears it. My stomach growls (believe me, this happens more often than I like) - the whole class knows I am hungry. I am typing up a test on the computer- Each and every keystroke sounds like a hammer being driven into a nail. If this is driving me crazy, I am sure it is driving my students crazy as well.

Don’t get me wrong – There are times that we have fun and joke around. It is easy to do when teaching a foreign language. I also can “captivate” many of them by telling of my many humorous and strange travel stories. They love those and it usually is followed by many questions. So my classroom is not totally silent all of the time. Actually, I think you have to have some fun in the classroom or the students tune out and end up not enjoying the class. Therefore, I try and keep it light when I can and then we get down to business when it is time. Fortunately, I have little problem with students switching from one mode to the other.

So you want to know my secret to discipline? It really is simple. I am sure that many teachers do this, so it isn’t an earth-breaking new system or anything. I will say that it is simple and effective. I use a 3-tier system:
1. Individual Warning
2. Fill out Discipline Slip
3. Detention

I like to have fun in the classroom and I joke around as well. The key is that the students need to learn when it is time to get serious and when it is time to have fun. The first three weeks or so of a semester is usually enough time to get the students to realize when it is time for each. I rarely have to go to step #2 after the first few weeks of classes. They get the point.

In conclusion, I guess I am trying to say that it is important to incorporate some sort of fun in the classroom. This will keep the students interested and probably keep you, the teacher, from going insane. I think the key is that whatever you do to make the class fun, it needs to be something relevant and interesting to the students. Videos, games, interaction, quotes, anything. If we can make education a little more fun and entertaining, maybe more students will want to be in school and look forward to classes.

5 Killer Classroom Management Tips

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 11:00:31 GMT

Inspiring students to be motivated and engaged in the learning process is an essential part of managing a classroom. Teaching students while calmly and effectively managing disruptive behavior is a vital skill for every educator.

Experimenting with new behavior management methods can help determine what works best for you and your students. Their unique personalities and challenges make every class different; a technique that proves effective for one student may not work well for her classmates.

Here are five tips you can try in your classroom. The more tools you have in your toolbox, the more effective you’ll be at managing a variety of classroom behaviors.

1. Post the Classroom Rules

Students don’t always know what behavior is

...

First Days

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 01:07:02 GMT

When I was in high school I was an actor for Looking In, performing scenes about social issues throughout Connecticut. Part of the training process involved listening to a range of speakers discuss the various issues we were creating scenes about. One of the speakers I remember most vividly was a therapist who talked about alcohol abuse in adolescents and mental health issues. He told a story of a professor he had in graduate school, who asked the classroom of psychiatrists-to-be what they thought the goals of a first therapy appointment ought to be. The students discussed a range of agendas a mental health professional might have as they began work with a new client and there was a heavy debate about which priorities were most important. After the class discussion the professor offered this insight: The goal of the first appointment is to get a second one. Period.

That statement has stuck with me for a long time and I’ve applied the notion of getting a second meeting in a lot of the work I do. When I direct a play, I want to get the actors clear on what the schedule is, get a taste of the culture of this process we are embarking on, and get the juices of ensemble flowing. Ultimately all the planning I do for the first rehearsal revolves around the question of how to get these actors ready for the second rehearsal. I don’t really have a set icebreaker I always use or an immovable rule that every rehearsal requires that staging begin or even a read-through necessarily. Each production is different and this makes each first day different– but the plan always revolves around the question of what are my performers and production team going to need immediately next. Does everyone know where the bathrooms are? Is there an activity that will most develop a collegiality among (often) relative strangers who’ve come together for this particular production? Is there an image or idea I can share that will help those in the room see what most touches me about this particular piece, and can I present that in a way that will plant a seed of deepening interest in the project?

I have a similar approach in teaching. With my college students I spend a huge portion of time going over the syllabus on the first day, and in the past I found myself frustrated that that would take away time from activities I had in mind to “get started.” But just as elementary school teachers know that investing extra time on establishing rules and classroom management that first month of school makes all the difference in the students’ behavior the rest of the year, adult students, too, need their hands held a bit before getting their feet wet in a new course. Its an investment in the rest of the course, but particularly for the tone that second class will have.

Question for the World: What do you like to do on “first days” or rehearsal, school, or work? What approaches to the getting-ready-to-go phase of collaborative activity have you found effective, and what approaches did not?