Professional Development

Yesterday we had some pretty great professional development focused on student engagement.  Our essential question for the day was How can student engagement impact my evaluation? but I was more focused on how engagement can effect student behavior.  I am fully aware that my students need more challenging and open-ended work.  They need authentic/real-life projects to understand why our standards and skills are important, and they need more choice as far as how they show me what they know.

Some of the things we learned about were Schlecty's design qualities for plans and the classroom itself, ways to measure student engagement, and ways to add some of the design qualities to our lessons.
Here's a list of the design qualities:

• Content and Substance
• Product Focus
• Organization of Knowledge
• Clear and Compelling Product Standards
• Protection from Adverse Consequences for Initial Failures
• Affiliation
• Affirmation
• Choice
• Novelty and Variety
• Authenticity

I think my students need me to focus most on Product Focus, Choice, and Authenticity.  My plan is to include more real-life activities relating our standards and skills to how they will use this stuff as an adult.  I'll also be including more real choice.  Allowing them to choose the type of product they present will lead to a more memorable learning experience.  Focusing on creating a product instead of work just to do work will be better for my students because they are compliant.  They'll do what I ask because they've been raised to do so but they won't enjoy it or glean anything from it.  This is not what I want.  I want my students to have the same passion for learning that I do, and the only way I can think to do this is by working hard to make school better for them.

Behavior Management

Over the years, I've tried lots of different behavior management systems.  My first couple of years teaching, I tried the basic stoplight system where students start on green but move their clothes-pin/clip up as a negative consequence.  My third year, I changed to a card-moving system where students were given more chances before getting to red.  I also added a positive behavior management system where I added ping-pong balls to a large jar every time my students got a compliment from another teacher/faculty member or did a good job in the hallway, lunchroom, library, etc.
When I moved across the state and down to kindergarten, I planned a beach-themed classroom with a behavior management board surrounded by clown-fish.  The sign read "No Clowning Around!"  Cute, right? Students moved their laminated clown-fish from purple (no warnings, awesome day), to blue (first warning, good day), to green (second warning, okay day), to yellow (last chance, made some bad choices), to red (calling parent or meeting with principal).  That worked well for kindergarten and first but when I recently moved to a new school and to third grade, I knew that was too cutesy and too "young" for them.
Luckily, my school has a great school-wide discipline plan so I've only added a couple of things.  School-wide, our students earn tickets for good behavior.  On Fridays, these can be spent at the pencil/paper store (items run for between 1-5 tickets), 2 tickets can be spent for popcorn in the gym at recess time, or 10 tickets can be spent for "Fun Friday".  At this time, my students who have decided to spend their 10 go out side for extra recess with another class, and I keep the students who have not earned "Fun Friday" or have decided not to spend their tickets.  A lot of classes in grades three through five use the Class Dojo (mentioned in yesterday's post).  I tried it for the first time today and it worked out well.  I'm also still using the seven step plan from my grade level.
So far so good.  Today's behavior and noise level was much better.  Now the focus is on improving instructional strategies.  I had gotten used to teaching lower grades and lower students.  Now I'm with older kids and students who need more of a challenge.  Time to get it together and give these babies what they need!
Yes, I'm stressed and overwhelmed but in a motivating way.

My story... the short version

This is the beginning of my fifth year teaching.  I taught second grade for three years, kindergarten for one, and began this year completely prepared to teach first grade.  Having experienced both kinder and second I felt ready and excited about first.  But about a month or so into the school year, I was transferred to another school due to population changes.  While I definitely miss my friends and my principal at the old school, the opportunities and support I'm getting at my new school make the move worth it.  I can tell I'm really going to grow as a teacher because the expectations at this school are so high.  But for the second year in a row, I've started with a new class at the end of September.  Setting up the classroom community and expectations for behavior, procedures, and routines has not been going as planned.

My students all came from other existing classrooms.  They already new school procedures and routines so I was learning from them.  Now, I'm ready to implement some of my own rituals and routines in the classroom.  I have got to get talking and behavior under control because their is way to much to learn!  We can't waste time worrying about behavior.  After my observation today, my mentor suggested a great site.

dojo  It's called the Class Dojo.  Students each have an avatar which represents their score for behavior.  They can earn points for positive reinforcement but also lose points for negative reinforcement.  

I'll post again later to describe how it's working in my room and how I like it.  On top of that, I'm also using our grade-wide discipline plan which includes seven steps of consequences before getting written up and/or sent to the office.  The steps are:

• Walking 5 minutes of recess
• Silent Lunch
• Walking ALL of recess
• Calling Parents
• Time Out
• Parent Conference
• Discipline Referral (sent to office)

They're really good kids... they just need me to be more consistent with management of the classroom.  While this stresses me out, I know what needs to be done to change it.