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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
How do you plan on using intrinsic motivation for the students to feel good about themselves and their work in the classroom. BM (Reward) plans are great but, what else could you do to motivate positive outcomes? I think if you start with something and it does not work for the classroom you need to switch to something else. What works for one child will not always work for another. I also believe children should have pride in what they do and say and how their behavior. Sometimes just telling the students you are aware of what they are doing, or sending a note, or message might do the trick.
ReplyDeleteI have seen a similar reward systems at other elementary schools and they seem to be successful as well. I like the idea of possibly scaling it down to an individual classroom scale versus the entire school.
ReplyDeleteI am constantly using the "I like" method you spoke about. It works! Keep me posted with other classroom management ideas you stumble upon. I am eager to learn new effective ways of classroom management.