New Semester, New Goals

My goals this semester is to learn tighter classroom management and collect/learn to teach with a wide range of assessment tools (more than just worksheets or written tests, more hands-on group activities (perhaps dealing with the arts? Such as the visual and preforming arts).

I am really impressed with the behavior management system used at the school I am interning at. They use a reward system called "Blue Eagles". Every time a student does well during a lesson or class, they are rewarded with a "Blue Eagle", which is a blue ticket that the student writes their name on and places it in a raffle box with other students from their grade. Every Friday the principal of the school will pull 5 names out of the raffle box for each grade, and those students may go and receive prizes from the principal's office. This system not only encourages student's good behavior with an instant gratification (the "Blue Eagle" ticket), but it also teaches the students deferred gratification (rewards that require patience) and how good behavior may not be rewarded instantly (as with bad behavior is taken care of swiftly in the classroom) but over time one will be able to reap the benefits of their exemplary classroom conduct.

This is a system I would like to adopt/adapt to my own classroom management plan. I think it is an excellent and valuable system in teaching the rewards of model behavior. The classroom is not only a place for learning reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also good social, emotional, and community skills.

PS - here is a good way to get a classroom to quickly order itself if things begin to get a bit out of control: find a student who is following the rules correctly and precisely (standing in like quietly and still, in their seat focused on their work, reading silently) and announce to the classroom that how well that student is doing ("I like how [student's name] is reading/standing/working") as a means of showing the rest of the class model behavior, and young students love the attention of being recognized and will be quick to model this behavior themselves, and be sure compliment them when they do, so that the other students will "catch on" and within a matter of moments your entire class will be well in order.

Introductions: Field II

...and I'm back from a fun and exciting winter break and ready to start my Field II blog! For those just joining this blog, I'm Ken, and just for a brief background (you can find my full background in this post) I have been surrounded by teaching my entire life. Both of my parents are teachers and before I ever attended public school I was, literally, raised in a classroom. I've always enjoyed school and education and I simply want to share the excitement of teaching with others.

My experience in Intro to Teaching simply got me more excited and pumped for teaching. There wasn't a moment that I didn't enjoy, although I was, and still kinda am, nervous about teaching lessons, and how successful it will be, but I'm slowly getting my feet wet in the field, and getting more comfortable in the classroom (but you still gotta keep on your toes around those students or course, they do outnumber you 20 to 1)!! So I'm ready to get back out there to gain more experience (and confidence) and learn as much as I can!

Also, I recently attended a teacher's development session where they mentioned these interactive learning blocks called "siftables". I thought they could work as an interesting learning too: