Time flies

Almost midway through Term One already.  Where has the time gone?  Like every year (but more-so this year) I'm reminded of how most of the first term ends up being all about establishing the class culture, work habits, expectations, and routines.

The difficulty this year is trying to set realistic expectations, while at the same time figuring out what the most realistic expectations should be.  This includes my own expectations of learning behaviours.  Am I expecting too much?  At which point do I 'draw the line' on off task behaviours.  Gauging this properly for the young 5 years olds is a bit touch-and-go at the moment.

However, I must admit, if I look back over progress during the first five weeks, we are making steps forward.  Here's to that continuing. :-)

3rd New Beginning

Welcome, 2009. I'm a fully registered teacher with a permanent teaching position and about to start my third year of teaching.

One good thing about this career is that each new year can be seen as a fresh new start; taking all the good things from last year and adapting them, and taking all the bad things from last year and.. well adapting them.

This 'start-of-year' round I will take a mental note of student behaviours on day one, to assess for possible problem areas.  Normally students are a bit reticent on day one, slowly emerging from their shells as they get to know you.  Last year, they we're a bit too 'loose' with their own conversations during class discussions or teacher directions - this led to a whole year of struggling to have an appropriate environment where all students listened to one another and felt confident enough to take the risk of sharing to all students.  I realise now that if I see a similar 1st day lack of concern for listening to others, I will need to set some very firm routines and protocols in that first term to hopefully allow for a positive environment for sharing, learning, and discussing throughout the rest of the year.

A mixture of team-building fun but also strict expectations on behaviours during independent learning, group work, whole class work (particularly appropriate noise levels in those different situations).

Class dynamics and a positive learning environment

It's been a while since my last post.  Not that I haven't been reflecting on my teaching - as most teachers know, reflection is a constant occurrence, documenting it may be less frequent.

Anyway, I was interested to see my last (written) reflection about class dynamics and am happy to say that things have changed quite a bit for the better.  Strangely though, it's hard to pick what exactly has made the difference.  Probably because it's a combination of many things.

A couple of things I have realised since though.

1. Some of my expectations were based on how my class was last year at the end of the year not the beginning.  I need to remember the journey a class takes in establishing its own community of positive learning.

2. Given time, students are generally able to cope with certain amounts of independent choice in their learning but this does take time to help them learn to manage themselves well when given learning choices.

Accountability and Consequences

I continue to have some issues with dynamics at a whole-class level.  That is, when teaching, discussing, sharing with one-another.

Even with regular direction as well as reflection on the physical environment and 'interest' of learning content, and other aspects of my pedegogy, I find some key elements of having a constructive team-learning environment difficult to establish to a level that I am content with.

After considering many possible reasons for this, and discussions with my tutor teacher, I am leaning towards developing the way in which I communicate expectations backed up with a system of accountability and consequences.

A likely scenario will be where I have some system of adding names to a list (on the board) whereby the consequences of making it onto that list mean students will have some form of negative consequence, such as staying in at break time (possibly combined with a 'time added' component based on time wasted).  Although I would like to use positive reinforcement, in this particular case (and for a time) I feel some negative consequences to promote positve behaviour may be necessary.

The most common type of behaviour occurring that impeeds on thinking and learning are... having separate conversations during whole-class discussions, movement around the room, distracting others or self from the learning activity.  General routine things that are needed to ensure a positive and engaging time of learning as a large group.

Watch this space and see how we go.

ps. I think I will also try to increase my use of positive verbal praise to reinforce postive behaviour.

Class culture and behaviour update

Since my last post, I feel I have made some positive progress in establishing more of a co-operative and caring 'team' environment.  I can't say it's top-notch, but definitely improving.

I have had to utilise a few different things.

• Friday afternoon activity time, where time allocated relates directly to amount of marbles left in jar by end of week (1 marble = 1 minute, starting Monday morning with 30 minutes)
• Regular (twice a week) class meeting where we discuss our team goal and open up for students comments on issues as a class and any 'celebrations' or positive comments on specific things that individuals or groups have done to show a supportive and caring team-player.
• Ongoing teacher-sharing of expectations and use of words relating to teamwork, support, co-operation.
• Occasional activities with a purposeful 'team-building' aim.

Of these, the marbles have been useful but diminish quickly over time in their 'power' to influence.  Possibly partly due to my personal preference for intrinsic motivation, but this also matches research on the long-term use of external motivation.

I have been impressed with the development over time of the class meeting.  It is moving away from being mostly filled with 'teacher talk' and has more contributions from the students themselves.  Hopefully empowering them to both share and listen as a supportive team who are beginning to consider more how their class environment can be improved for friendship and learning.

Behaviour Management Strategies

Strange that it's taken me a whole term to fully notice, but my class dynamic seems to have produced a group of individuals who happen to be in the same class - rather than a group of individuals who work together as a team, appreciating one-anothers' strengths, abilities, and personalities.

This seems to have led to difficulties in managing whole-class teaching and discussions, with students regularly talking over, past, through, each other giving not much thought to the importance of a class of 30 individuals needing to work together, show patience, and respect one another.

So this term is a focus on working together as a 'team'. In fact, my purposeful discourse now includes the word 'team' a whole heck of a lot.

One aspect of my own ideology is that of promoting intrinsic motivation, so I have been slow to put in place behaviour management strategies that give external motivation. This is generally based on the overlying assumption that external motivation has a limited period of affect, and dwindles in power over a period of time.

All that being said, this week I started a 'marble jar' which has 30 marbles in it representing 30mins of games time on a Friday afternoon. Marbles come out and go in based on how well students (or how much time saved/wasted in) settling and working in ways that promote good learning habits - especially as a team.

So, from day one I have noticed students very responsive to the sound of me rolling marbles in my hand to signal a possible decrease in the jar, as well as indications of marbles going to be added. My only hope is that the students' work habits will become second-nature before the external motivation wanes in power.