I thought I would take a moment to share with you about my teachers classroom management strategies. My teacher firmly believes in "purposeful" seating. She does new seating charts every six weeks. It is nice because the students expect this when the walk in the door. Every day my teacher takes the first 5 minutes to do attendance. As a result, the class is not using the full 45 minutes. The students know they can be tardy because the material does not start until the middle part of class. I feel if my teacher would make an adjustment here she could get through more of the "material" that she is stressing about. In addition, she does not use the last five minutes of class. She allows students to talk quietly at their desks during this time. Again 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there really add up to a lot of time.
My teacher does have a good homework system. The homework is due at the beginning of the period, no exceptions. Students know this and follow this rule to the best of their capabilities.
Something I might want to adjust from my teacher is her free range of the hall pass. Anyone during the class period can leave to use the restroom, go to their locker, see the nurse, etc. This can become very distracting for other learners and the teacher. At my school a hall pass must be signed my the teacher. Therefore the teachers stops what she or he is doing to sign the pass. I believe implementing a "not during instruction" disclaimer would be good. Many of the students show up 2 minutes before the tardy bell and ask to use the hall pass. This does not make sense to me, but maybe it is because I am a newbie.
My teacher has the students siting in a single file rows. This does help with classroom management. However, the number of students sleeping during class is quite high.
Overall, I am looking forward to implementing these strategies in my own classroom next year. I am sure I will gain a lot of experience from this semester to help me in my next endeavor.
having that structure is so important. That is definitely one of my goals as a teacher: to make sure that students have a routine set and they know exactly what is expected of them.
ReplyDeleteMy class as tables where two students can sit so sleeping doesn't really occur in the class. But talking, on the other hand, is a whole different story.
For the hall pass situation, I remember in high school, my teacher would give us the opportunity to save our passes, and if we didn't use any of them at the end, we would get extra credit or something. Of course, this would mean that you need to take the time and keep track of how many times which students go out of the class.
good luck!
My school has a really interesting hall pass system in place. Each student is given an agenda at the begining of the year with a "Hall Pass" page at the begining. This pages has slots on it that students must fill out and have signed by their teacher each time they wish to leave the classroom (for the bathroom, nurse, guidence, etc.). When they run out of slots (there are only about 30 total), they cannot leave the classroom anymore and must plan to use the bathroom/see guidence at times when they are not in a class.
ReplyDeleteThis is a pretty creative technique, but it seems to work pretty well. The only thing that I didn't expect to see is that students will sometimes use another person's agenda when theirs is full.
Although leaving class excessively can be distracting, I find it better if the kids can leave quietly rather with a pass themselves rather than interupt instruction to ask permisison each time. The kids in my class must ask permission before leaving and my teacher spends at least 2 min explaining why it is not a good time or making sure it is not an emergency. I think if certain kids are taking advantage of the "free" system, than they can be dealt with on an individual basis. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteI really like that homework policy and actually included that in my own classroom management policies that we turned in for class. This elimates students trying to quickly fill in assignments during class if you accept it at the end. It should be due when they walk in. I plan on having a bin for students to place their hw in so I don't waste time collecting it.
ReplyDeleteAs for the hall pass issue, I agree with you. There should be time alloted in class that the pass can not be used. I have heard of the 20-20 policy in schools with 90 min blocks that students can not leave for the first or last 20 min of the block. I mean they are in high school, I think they can hold it. For 45 min blocks this is a little more difficult but the same type of policy could be put in place.
Hang in there!