Teacher Joy's steps to ruling the classroom:
- Take away everything that is in front of them. If this means walking up to them and physically asking for their books or pencils, do so. Now their hands are empty.
- If one child constantly fights with another, separate the two. However, be careful who you put the child next to because he may as well just fight with that kid.
- Threats. I put their names up on the board and mark a star next to their name. Good kid = more stars, bad kid = erase star. This works! Because the good ones get stickers in the end. Also they can count who is ahead and be competitive.
- Keep a pace. Try not to have too many moments when you are dealing with certain kids. If so quickly deal with it and continue the lesson.
- Remember you are the boss! Fear is something that can be grappling, so just look it in the eye and focus on what you are fearful of.
Ta-da!
One modification I made to the star system is this:
ReplyDeleteinstead of giving individual stars, I give class stars -- I had a few classes where seven students were good, but one was a hellion, and ruined the class for everybody. . . he didn't care about stickers, so I could give him as many "X"'s as I wanted, and he'd go on making it impossible for the others to learn.
Then I gave three stars to the entire class, added for good, subtracted for bad, and rewarded all the students, good AND bad, the same: this improved the group feeling of the class, and it meant that the OTHER STUDENTS told Peter to sit down and be quiet, instead of ME being the only one trying to keep him in line, because THEIR incentives were on the line too, when Peter stepped out of line. I always rewarded the class together and punished them together, so that they policed themselves.
It works.
(now I teach adults)
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI think I have done something similar to this but not to the same degree. I know a class I have that I would like to experiment this with, so thanks for the tip!