Reflect on your current classroom management and identify two strategies you do well:
1) Give Hints and Clues to Help Students Answer Questions – I am usually very good at this technique. I know my students well and I know those students who need a clue or hint or even leading few words in order to answer the question correctly. My questions are varied depending on the pupil that I ask, leaving the more open-ended questions to those pupils who can expand their answers more. If a child is struggling to answer a question, I will often give them a prompt to help them.
2) Tell Students They Have the Ability to Do Well – If you can love a technique, then I absolutely love this one! I have extremely high expectations of ALL my pupils and I let them know that they are extremely capable of so much! I am currently reading ‘Kenzuke’s Kingdom’ with a grade 3 class. The amount of rich vocabulary in this book is extremely high….. but they are so capable of listening to this story and understanding these new words. We discuss, we go over, we get excited about and we are capable of doing well! I use this technique in 3 different ways: as a whole class (like in reading Kenzuke’s Kingdom), as a small group (for example in a guided reading group) or individually (in order to achieve personal goals). Children thrive on being able to be successful, especially when they view the task initially as a challenge. It is so nice to see their faces and hear their pride in their work and what they have accomplished.
1) Increase Latency Periods When Questioning Students – This is a strategy that I am definitely guilty of not doing. For the past few years, I have been responsible for the Year 6 (Grade 6) pupils at my school and without wanting this to sound like an excuse (although it is), I was under enormous pressure to ensure the children made excellent results in their end-of-year government tests. I found that as each year went on, as we got closer and closer to that week of exams, there always seemed an enormous amount of curriculum still left to cover and never enough time. With this notion, the pace of my lessons was extremely quick. I know this was far from ideal, especially for the exceptional learners who would struggle academically. Therefore, this is definitely the strategy that I would like to be consciously aware of in the future.
2) Demonstrating Caring – I absolutely care and show my students I care, however the one part of this strategy which I need to work on is the morning routine. I have seen so many great teachers who greet their students at the door of the classroom and ask them how they are engage in conversation straight away. I know this one time of the day is the time when I need to focus better. At the start of a busy day, I am often preparing or getting ready for the day ahead (this isn’t because I’m not prepared) but I always find ‘one more thing’ that needs doing. I often find myself just finishing off that ‘last’ (yeah right) job whilst the students arrive for the day. My classroom set-up is that they usually go into an ‘Early Morning Task’ but I still know that I need to be better in this year and show care at this particular time of day. This is a crucial time whereby I may find out someone important has happened to a pupil the previous day or on their way to school. This could have an impact on their learning. If there is no such incident, I know how incredibly important it is to simply show a child that you do care. This morning when I dropped my daughter off at school, the teacher who greeted her at the school gate asked about what she was carrying (a homework project: a homemade musical instrument). I could see how positively it set my daughter up for the school day by having one of her teachers show how much they care!
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