The Ones Who Got Away

This week was pretty normal. It was my first full week back in the classroom since before spring break (I was absent for Education Interview Day and Honors Day last week), so I definitely was exhausted by the time Friday was over.

For some reason, I have gotten out of the habit of holding my students accountable for their behaviors. That, combined with some of their natural adolescent sassiness and our trip to the book fair, caused me to lose control of them on Thursday. Friday, I tried to make some adjustments and introduced their new set of lit centers. We established their volume level for lit centers, discussed expectations, and I gave them the option of doing exercises out of their grammar book if they could not follow instructions.

However, I did not have alternative activities prepared for students, so that became an empty threat. I ended up assigning six or seven different students silent lunch, but some of the kids were acting so defiant that silent lunch alone seems to no longer be doing the trick.

When discussing this with my placement teacher, she suggested that I investigate some of Harry Wong’s techniques he teaches in The First Days of School and begin practicing these techniques in class. Wong, long considered to be one of the foremost authorities on classroom management, says that establishing procedures is vital for a well-managed classroom.

As I was speaking to Mrs. Ramsay, she suggested that I need to change the way I get students’ attention. I have been using “Look at me if you hear my voice,” but students are now continuing to talk over me when I do that. From now on, I plan to use Wong’s “Give Me Five” approach. Whenever I say “Give me five,” my students are supposed to count to five out loud with me. This is a way of taking their talking and redirecting it. Each number in “Give Me Five” represents a direction: eyes on the speaker, be quiet, be still, hands free, and listen.

I forgot to ask Mrs. Ramsay if the students in the period are already familiar with “Give Me Five”. Many of those students tend to forget what they are told, so I will introduce “Give Me Five” including the five directions when we go over the behavior contract on Monday.

Also, because they are no longer responding to silent lunch as a consequence, I am planning on assigning work during their silent lunch if they earned it. If it continues past that, they will have to create a written response addressing their behaviors in class in addition to the silent lunch assignment.

Although I put one person in charge of getting supplies at each table, there were a few (who I purposefully did not allow to be that person in charge) who were out of their seats for no reason. I think what I will do starting Monday is return to direct instruction. When I have my own classroom from day one, I will hopefully be able to train them to work efficiently. However, since I only have two weeks left in this classroom, I will not be there long enough to truly train them for that level of independence. 

Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven...

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but it's easy to get caught up in all that is going on as my final semester of college winds down. However, I believe that this post is important because it is a reflection on my ten consecutive days of teaching for the entire day.

For the past couple of years that I have been in the College of Education, I have been saying that I believe project-based grading is the best way to assess the knowledge of students. Countless units that feature projects as a summative assessment were created by yours truly, but until this semester, I had not gotten a chance to try my plans out on a set of "guinea pigs".

My professors have done a great job of introducing me to differing pedagogies while drilling concepts such as backwards mapping and the Madeline Hunter model of instruction into my head. While the Madeline Hunter model was originally intended to be used for direct instruction, as a constructivist, I am able to take the components of her planning and incorporate them into student-directed instructional environment (also known as the lit centers we use in our classroom).

The summative assessment for my unit was a project we worked on in class. Although the prompt was the same, I had to differentiate the requirements of the assessment based on the skill level and time constraints of each class. For my general ELA/Reading, students were required to write a two-paragraph description, create a technical drawing, and write a ballad or ode about their inventions. For my honors ELA/Reading class, students were required to do the same things, but instead of two paragraphs, they were required to write a five-paragraph essay. My honors reading class was required to write three paragraphs about their invention (why they invented it, what the invention is, and how they plan to sell it) and present the invention.
On the due date for the summative assessment, students presented their projects to each other, and those learning about the projects practiced reading skills such as determining author's purpose and making generalizations/predictions about each invention.

The entire first week of my ten consecutive days was spent assessing students' writing and editing abilities. Additionally, they explored the steps of the patenting process, learned about inventions that were created by accident, investigated the Nikola Tesla vs. Thomas Edison debate, and wrote their invention proposals. During all of this, students were also preparing to take their nine week's exam, so I was also conducting small group instruction to address those needs.

The second week was completely dedicated to the pre-writing and editing processes of the various components of the projects. While it might seem like the students could have completed these components in a day, I had them pre-write, write, and rewrite about these inventions until they could have told me about the inventions in their sleep.

As I expected, I did not have much push back from my honors ELA/Reading class, but I definitely did from the other two.

If you've read my other posts, you know that my general class has been a challenge all semester when it comes to classroom management. What I have talked about a little less is that they are also a challenge when it comes to getting them to do...well, anything. I started them off in lit centers, but after demonstrating that they could not handle that independence, I had to take lit centers away and go back to a more direct instructional style. While I don't normally like to do this, I felt that it was necessary in order for students to be prepared for the summative assessment. Ultimately, I believe that this was a good decision because it resulted in a more engaged classroom.

During the planning of my ten days, I was not sure exactly how to approach this project with my honors reading class. As opposed to the two hours of class I have to teach the others, I only have fifty minutes with them. Instead of stressing myself out by trying to think of a solution alone, I took a cue from my placement teacher and asked the students for their input as to how I should conduct their assessments. With a few reservations, the class decided that they would prefer to do the project as a group, and they would like to present in front of the whole class (the other two classes were doing a version of a gallery walk). After further discussion, we decided that students would choose their own groups, there should be no more than four to a group, and they were allowed to work individually if desired. I informed the one student who wanted to work individually that he would have to complete all of the components of the project, and he agreed that he would do it. Because I only have the students for reading, I could only assess them on their reading skills. What this means is that I was evaluating students' abilities to sequence, generalize, and determine author's purpose.

As for my honors ELA/reading class, it pretty much went exactly as I had planned with the exception of writing the five paragraph essay. I reserved the laptop cart for one class period on our final drafting day (the day before the project was due). However, what everyone involved in the reservation process failed to realize was that the cart was being used for intervention at the same time. Fortunately, our librarian at this school is amazing and worked it out for me to bring the students to use the computers in the library for the second half of our class time. This ended up not being enough time for the students to complete their essays. It took some finagling, but I worked things out where this class could present their inventions during the first half and finish their papers during the second half of class the next day (the paper was not a required component of the presentation).

In retrospect, I would make some small adjustments to my unit. If I was in my own classroom, I would've extended this project to last over three weeks minimum. Although I have every confidence that my placement teacher has taught the students specific skills and techniques to use when writing, because I have not been with these students since the beginning of the year, it was pretty hard to jump in during the middle of the second semester and plan a writing-based assessment for them. With the additional time I would include in my unit plan, I would incorporate more writing practice.

In addition to the extra writing practice, I would allow students to utilize this extra time to post their entire project on Tackk or Blendspace. This would cut down on the amount of papers I have to keep up with, and it's a good way for the students to have access to each others' entire projects for evaluative purposes. Ideally, I would like to still have a more tactile presentation component, but instead of the poem and sketches, I would perhaps have students present their sketches from rough draft to final draft with the added component of a scaled model.

In my opinion, this unit would function well as a nine weeks assessment. This type of in-depth researching, writing, and creation has the potential to encompass multitudes of ELA standards. Based on the way many of the students appreciated the freedom of exploration that came with Innovation Day, I think that this would be a great way to adapt it to an ELA setting.

Tabula Rasa

This past Thursday and Friday were rough.

So rough that at the end of the day, long after most of the other teachers had gone home, I had a bit of a breakdown. I always thought that the interns who told me that they went home and cried every night were being hyperbolic. Not that I do that now by any means, but I can completely understand why they would feel the need to cry so much. 

I also now understand why they tell us that we should try to avoid having a job during the internship. It's hard. 

Working until ten every night and getting up between 4 and 6, depending on the day has left me extremely sleep-deprived on some days. Those days are the hardest because my emotional stamina is not as high.

Not that this gives me an excuse to strive for any less than a well-managed and productive class time every day. 

But I digress...

Thursday was the first day of regular class since two-thirds of the sixth grade were gone to space camp. It was also the day I was supposed to begin regaining control over my first period class. 

We did a warm up where they had to answer why they think we have rules and laws. They could tell me EXACTLY why we have them (safety, responsibility, no laws create chaos). Then we went over their behavior contract. They were able to analyze each rule, reward, and consequence. I also created a noise level chart to help hold them accountable for talking out of turn or above an appropriate volume. 

So you can probably imagine my surprise when I had to assign seven or eight students silent lunch. 

When reflecting on my lesson with Mrs. Ramsay, she told me not to get discouraged. I have to be a wall of consistency when it comes to enforcing rules. Students will have to constantly hit against my wall before they ever learn the appropriate behaviors. 

Instead, I feel like I'm the one ramming my head into a wall. 

Friday, I ended up giving almost the whole class silent lunch during first period. However, after stopping class to do some major redirecting, all but two earned it off. At the beginning of lunch on Friday, I sat down and talked to them about their behaviors. They knew exactly why they had silent lunch. They told me it was their decisions that led to silent lunch, not mine. 

I leveled with them and asked what would help them to achieve appropriate behaviors in my class, offering the school incentive of orange tickets. In so many words, they basically told me that orange tickets would not work as an incentive, so I asked what would. One of them said "cheeseburgers".

He was being serious.

In a split-second moment to make a decision, I informed the child that I would bring him a cheeseburger the week after next if he could keep his behavior on-target for the next week. I know that there are many teachers our there who would say that this was a major misstep on my part, but I did what I thought would work for him. I made it clear that he had to be on his best behavior. Additionally, I informed him that because I'm a broke college student, I couldn't do this every week.

Now, do I think he can earn that cheeseburger? I hate to say this, but not really. At least, not right now. He is one who has consistently had his name on the board for silent lunch at least once a week.

However, I'm hoping that I can graduate him from this extrinsic motivation to an intrinsic motivation over the next couple of weeks by showing him that things in class go a lot more smoothly when he cooperates with my directions. I'm actually hoping that all of them will begin to see this through my repetition of procedures, rewards, and consequences in addition to me addressing their behaviors when assigning punishments.

So, for Monday, I have written the words tabula rasa at the top of the board. For those of you who don't know, tabula rasa essentially translates to "blank slate" in English. Etymologically speaking, it comes from the time when wax tablets were used instead of paper. The Romans would heat the wax tablet and scrape it until it became smooth again, erasing all marks.

My reasoning for writing this on the board and addressing it on Monday is that I want my students to know that we start off with a tabula rasa every day, unless there is behavior that has gone unaddressed from the previous day.



My third/fifth period class was also an interesting experience on Friday, but I'll save that gem of a story for another blog post. This one is already long enough.

Reflection: Classroom Management

One aspect (out of many) of my teacher’s practice I really appreciate is the value she places on reflection. In my biography for the College of Education, I wrote that reflection is one of the most valuable tools a teacher possesses. This was among one of the first topics she brought up the first time she met me. This is also why I have started this blog (Hi, Mrs. Ramsay!).

A benefit of having my teacher value reflection is the fact that she constantly asks me to reflect upon my instruction with her. If I was in a classroom where I felt insecure or unwelcome, I would not feel the freedom to be quite so frank about my performance.

I am gradually transitioning from being an observer/participant in the classroom to almost (maybe) being a real teacher. This week, I have taught second, third, and fifth periods, and starting tomorrow, I will be teaching the whole day for the remainder of the week.

Over the course of the past few days, something has become very clear to me: I need help developing my classroom management skills.

My first/second period class is a general class, meaning that many of them have abilities below the sixth grade level. This also means that there are several kids in the class who typically have behavioral issues. While I knew this going into the week, Mrs. Ramsay’s classroom management is so awesome that there are few incidents of misbehavior in the classroom.

Thinking more about what type of activity would be best for their learning styles and less about how my students would manage their behaviors, I decided to teach my first/second period class prepositions through a song and dance set to the tune of “Yankee Doodle”.

It has been interesting, to say the least.

The first day was really fun for me, but I was not very effective when it came to getting the entire class to participate. I had students wandering around the room, students refusing to dance and/or sing, and students actively trying to distract their classmates who actually did want to learn the song. Despite these glaring issues, I was completely oblivious to this behavior. It was not until I sat down and reflected with my teacher that I realized why kids had been knocking over desks, chairs, and even the class laptop. I was discouraged, but I knew that I couldn’t just give up.

Tuesday was definitely more exhausting, but I believe it was more successful. If you’ve never taught sixth graders before, the simile “It’s like herding cats,” is pretty accurate. I started to use classroom management techniques, such as saying in a soft voice “Look at me if you can hear me,” and explicitly telling students that they were to perform the song behind their desks. Additionally, I was very aware of the position and participation of each student in the classroom and tried to address issues as they arose.

Today was a little less tiring, but because of the choices I made prior to teaching the students the rest of the song, I never had full control over them. This lack of control lead to me having to constantly correct/redirect behaviors today. Two students in particular were moving all around the classroom. One student refused to participate, insisted on playing with the pencils in his pencil pouch, and was incredibly disrespectful to me when I attempted to correct his behavior (full disclosure: this is a recurring theme with this student). However, the fact that this behavior is frequent for this student does not excuse the fact that I did not impact him in such a way that allowed him to learn the song as well.

In the future, to counteract negative behaviors, I intend to establish a tone from the beginning of the period. The best way that I have seen to do so for this particular class is to play calm music and keep the lights low when they first enter the classroom. Another way that I plan to establish tone is via giving explicit instructions. Mrs. Ramsay has had me work on breaking my instructions down this week, and I have seen that this has made a huge difference in the number of confused looks and disruptions that occur during class. 

If anyone has classroom management techniques that have worked, please feel free to share your knowledge with me in a comment!