Haley
Hines
Professor
Heck
EDUC-P
475
13
November 2014
Classroom Management Plan
1.
PLACE:
My future classroom will be
designed so that students can work individually and in groups or pairs. When I
instruct to the class and need their full attention, I plan on having them sit
in their desks so that there are fewer distractions and they can focus better.
I would like to leave sufficient space between the aisles of the desks so that
I can walk around and monitor my students during independent work time. From my
experience and observation as a student, it is likely that students will stay
on task if they know the teacher is monitoring the classroom regularly. It is
also more engaging when a teacher moves around the room and utilizes the entire
space instead of being stuck in one place.
As much as I would like to have
my students be able to pick where their desks are, the purpose of being in
individual desks is to be able to work independently, so it should not matter
where they sit, because while I am speaking or while another student has the
floor, my students should be listening and focusing on the speaker. Once I get
to know my students, I will make sure students who have difficulty hearing or
seeing sit near the front. Students who have a tendency to act out will also
sit near the front so that I can control and monitor their behavior closely.
For the rest of the students, I will place them anywhere as long as they aren’t
distracted. Plan B to this strategy would be to allow students to sit wherever
they would like from the beginning. If students abuse the privilege to choose
their seats by acting out or distracting others, they will be rearranged and
will only be able to choose their seats again if they earn the privilege back
by demonstrating positive behavior.
In terms of group work, I believe
that it is important to provide students some options of grouping arrangements.
I would like to give my students the option to choose whether they want to move
their desks around to form a group, sit at a square or circle table, or even
sit on the floor. I will sometimes give them the option to choose their group
members, but I also think it is necessary to encourage the students to form new
relationships with classmates whom they don’t interact often. Depending on the
activity and other factors, I may give them the choice or I may strategically
group my students with others I think they would work well with. For example,
from my experience studying Spanish, whenever my teachers or professors grouped
me with a native speaker, it was very helpful for me to practice my auditory
and oral skills. My personal strengths are reading and writing in Spanish, so I
was able to help the native speakers in that aspect of the language.
I also believe that it is important
to acknowledge when students need a break. Some students become easily
frustrated and some just did not get enough rest the night before. That’s why I
included a couple beanbag chairs in the corners of the classroom away from
everyone else. I think that it is appropriate to allow students who are not
feeling well, or whatever the case may be, to rest and take some time for
themselves. I would obviously not allow this to be an everyday thing for the
entire class period, but maybe every once in awhile for 15 minutes or so.
As far as the organizational
structure of my materials, I plan on keeping them in two places. The first
place is two bookshelves that have materials students can access such as
supplies, paper, pencils, absent work, books, and homework. The second place is
my personal desk with the items I don’t want students to access such as graded
work, lesson plans, etc. This strategy will help manage behavior because on the
first day of class I will make it clear they can have access to the materials
on the shelves, but my desk is my own space.
2. PEOPLE:
There are several aspects to
building a classroom community. The two most important in my opinion are the
students’ social skills and parental involvement. I believe being a teacher
goes far beyond how much of the content students learn. As a future educator, I
want to teach compassion, caring, tolerance, and cooperation to my students as
a whole class and as individuals to create a positive learning community and to
teach my students social skills that will help them in their futures.
One of the best ways to teach
compassion, caring, tolerance, and cooperation to students is to make a
conscious effort to demonstrate these skills on a daily basis. Acting as a role
model with all of these characteristics will be enough for some students to
want to possess these characteristics. The next step to take is to discuss with
the class what you expect out of them in terms of how they treat others and how
they behave in the classroom. It is also important to teach students what each
of these terms mean. It is a good idea to encourage positive behavior and
acknowledge students when they are demonstrating the characteristics. I believe
it is important to make it clear to students right away that bad attitude and negative
actions will not be tolerated.
For social skill development for
the whole class, it is important to explain to students how to work effectively
in a group. The group work should be divided equally between everyone; not one
student should be in charge of more or less work. When somebody is talking,
they should have everyone’s undivided attention and there should be no
interruptions until their thought is finished. Every group member should
receive the opportunity to contribute to conversation. Whether everyone agrees
or disagrees with that someone says, they should never be rude to another
student about their own thoughts and opinions. To enforce these rules, I will
include a grade for each student as part of the assignment grade for how well
they work in groups. If I notice any behavior that is unacceptable, then their
grade will be impacted, and we will come up with a plan one on one to fix the
behavior and make goals.
To teach social skills to
individual students, it is important to be social with each student. I will try
my best to have small talk conversations with each one of my students daily. I
will try to relate the conversation to their interests so that they know I care
not only about how well they are doing in my class, but about their personal
interests and lives as well. I will demonstrate active listening and make sure
they know I am interested and engaged in what they have to say. This will also
benefit the relationships I have with my students because they will feel more
comfortable to approach me and participate in the classroom.
3. PURPOSE:
Although there are aspects of
several theories that I personally like, one of my favorite theories is the
“Working on the Same Side with Students” approach by Spencer Kagan. The overall
purpose of his theory is to “establish harmonious classrooms, promote
responsible behavior, and improve students’ social skills, character qualities,
and academic achievement” (205). Kagan’s
theory aligns the best with my purpose of becoming a teacher and how I want to
approach managing my classroom.
Each time a student misbehaves,
it is due to a physical or emotional state that he or she is experiencing. The
student could be wanting attention, avoiding failure, angry, seeking control,
energetic, bored, or uninformed. Using Kagan’s theory, after the teacher
identifies the misbehavior and the purpose behind the misbehavior, the next
step is to apply an appropriate procedure to help the student return to
responsible behavior. Using a “we” approach, Kagan’s classroom management
theory helps to create a responsible learning community.
4. PRACTICE:
The goal of my practice using
Kagan’s approach to behavior management is to intervene and end the disruption
quickly and then refocus attention to the original task. I want to establish a
challenging and interesting curriculum, provide cooperative activities that
allow students to work together, and be a stimulating teacher to keep students
motivated and interested. For example, if the several students in the classroom
are off task or disruptive I could say, “If we were at our very best right now, how would we look?”, “Let’s try
to think of a better choice to make right now”, or “To you, this lesson may be
boring; to me, it’s important because…”
5. PUNT:
Provided multiple alternative
examples throughout behavior management plan in the different sections.
6. PACE:
The pace I imagine in my future
Spanish classroom is definitely varied. I will have students who are native
heritage speakers to learning disabled students and every level in between. For
the most part, the heritage language learners will need the most help with
reading and writing in Spanish, and the other students will need help in all
areas, but especially in speaking and listening. It will be especially
important to incorporate sponges and reteach activities in my classroom to
accommodate for all students’ needs.
There are few sponge activities I
would like to incorporate in my classroom. The first one is charades. This is
an activity that works great in a foreign language classroom because it can be
used to review vocabulary, conversation, and spelling. The second sponge
activity is a description exercise where the teacher (or even a student)
chooses an object in the classroom and the class creates a list on the board to
describe the object in Spanish. Lastly, I want to have novels and short stories
for students to read in Spanish when they are done with work. The beginning
level learners can start with children’s books and heritage language learners
can read more challenging texts.
There are many
strategies that appeal to multiple intelligences such as pictures, graphs,
videos, models, guided notes, etc. that I will use to reteach concepts to
students who need more instruction. In particular, there is a strategy I want
to try in the future: Jigsaw Groups. In this activity, each student in the
group is responsible for being the “peer-teacher” for the rest of the group.
The groups are provided with a graphic. Each part of the graphic is assigned to
one student in the group and that student is responsible for re-teaching it to
the rest of the group.
7. PRIORITIES:
There are many ways to
intrinsically and extrinsically motivate students. Some students, especially at
the secondary level, need to have a sense of control and choice over what
occurs in the classroom. Giving students these opportunities is a great way to
keep them motivated. For many assignments in my classroom, I plan on giving
each student an option of what they want to do. For example, they could write a
paper, create a PowerPoint, make an iMovie, or give a speech. This way,
students could choose whichever option they are most comfortable and interested
in.
Another way to keep students
engaged in the classroom is to assign them classroom jobs such as writing the
daily agenda, taking attendance, passing out papers, being in charge of
technology we use in the classroom, etc. These jobs help kids to feel like they
are part of the classroom and are more likely to participate in class. This
also helps with students with special needs like ADHD students. These students
usually have a difficult time sitting still all class period. Giving these
students jobs and opportunities to move about the room and release some energy
will help them focus better when it is time to work independently.
A third motivational strategy
that I would like to implement in my future classroom is “Open Format Fridays.”
Although I will probably never have a free day in my classroom to have my
students watch a movie that isn’t content related or have a day to just
socialize, I would like to do Open Format Fridays so they have a choice and
motivation to earn it. For example, I would offer to have class outdoors if
weather permits, watch a fun, content related film, listen to Spanish music
while making Spanish recipes, etc. There are fun ways to give students a break
from the regular class day without completely omitting content.
For individuals that are
distracted easily and that tend to get work done when they are reinforced
positively, I could offer things do to for these students when they complete a
sufficient amount of work. Many students like to play games on the computers or
tablets. I could offer incentives like these to students to encourage them to
finish their work. For the entire class, I could do something similar, but a
reward for the whole class. If the entire class is well behaved for the week,
we could have class outdoors or watch a movie on Fridays.
I also like the idea of a token
economy. I could reward students for positive behavior, class participation,
kindness, helpfulness, etc., and take away tokens for negative behavior,
disruptions, etc. The class could either earn points independently and be
rewarded by dropping the lowest assignment, receiving an extra restroom pass,
candy, etc., or they could earn tokens as a class to receive enough points for
a class prize like outdoor class, movie, snacks, etc. There are pros and cons
to each system. Many students might find it unfair to be penalized for another
student’s actions.
A final strategy I could see
myself implementing is a self-management for students to monitor and “grade”
their own behavior and explain why providing examples. Self-management systems
work well with students with learning disabilities. I could provide them a
sheet of paper that has a picture of a stop light on it with a red, yellow, and
green light. Red would represent negative behavior, yellow would be OK
behavior, and green would be good behavior. The student would circle whichever
light they felt they earned that day and explain in a few sentences why and
give examples. Then we could discuss whether I agree with them or not, how well
they did that day, what they could work on to improve, etc. We could set goals
and work to achieve them, and I could reward them in some way.
8.
POLICIES:
Since part of Kagan’s classroom
management theory is working on the same side with students, I want to spend
some time on the first day of class establishing class rules with the class.
This way, students are more likely to feel a sense of community and belonging
in the classroom. If students help to create rules and policies, they are more
likely to abide by them because they do not feel like the rules are being
imposed on them. In Building Classroom
Discipline, Kagan gives examples of classroom rules: 1) Ready Rule: Come to
class ready to learn 2) Respect Rule: Respect the rights and property of others
3) Request Rule: Ask for help when needed 4) Responsibility Rules: Strive to
act responsibly at all times. Even though these rules are all very vague, I
think it would be great to start with these rules, and then as a class come up
with several specific examples of each rule. It is important to have these
agreements worked out cooperatively between the teacher and students because it
builds student involvement.
9.
PERSONAL DIFFERENCES:
The most important practice a
teacher can implement in the classroom to accommodate for cultural differences
is to build relationships with the students as a class and as individuals. When
teachers create a trusting relationship, a sense
of community is established and students become motivated to
succeed. One way to do this is to
positively and appropriately greet students every day. I want to strive to
always greet students with a smile on my face, ask how they are doing, and
demonstrate my interest in their personal lives. I want to show students that
even if we have a bad day the day before, each day is a new day we can start
off positively. I want all students in my classroom to feel welcome and
comfortable regardless of their cultural backgrounds.
One group of students in
particular that I will most likely be working with often will be Hispanic and
Spanish speaking students. It is common that sometimes these students feel
embarrassed to speak Spanish in front of others. They sometimes feel very
different from other students, and there are even some students who barely know
English. Beyond establishing a relationship with these students, I want to make
these students feel comfortable embracing their backgrounds and cultures. I
plan on having show and tell days for these students to share interesting cultural
aspects of their lives such as popular recipes they make at home or
celebrations. This would be beneficial not only for these students to feel
welcome and comfortable but also for the rest of the students to learn about
Spanish-speaking cultures.
10.
PLANNING AND PARTICIPATION POINT
OF INTERSECTION:
Content management and behavioral
management overlap and directly affect one another. In order for content
management to be successful, the behavior of students needs to be managed as
well in order to prevent disruptions and distractions. For example, teachers
need to be aware of which students work well together and which students interrupt
other students’ learning. Teachers need to strategically decide whether or not
to have students work independently or in pairs or in groups so that they
perform to their maximum potential. In order to do this, teachers need to build
relationships to get to know the students and also build a community in the
classroom so that students feel comfortable to participate. If a teacher’s
behavior management plan is effective, then the content management will more
than likely also be very effective. It is nearly impossible for content to be
learned by the students when a teacher’s behavior management plan is not
effective.
Resources
“21 Simple Ideas to Improve
Student Motivation.” Teach Thought. 11
Dec. 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
Charles,
C.M. (2014) Building Classroom Discipline, 11/E. Boston: Pearson
Condron,
Annie. “Top 12 Ways to Motivate Students.” Teach
Hub. n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
“Ethical Advocate for Accurate
Application and Dissemination of Behavior Analysis.” Welcome to Behaviorbabe. 1 Apr. 2014. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
