Classroom Management

Classroom management is something that I have been considering more and more through the year. I am generally quiet yet love to lead, which raises many questions in my mind as to how I would manage a classroom. I've decided to try to be specific in a few areas instead of general and talk about all areas.

One example would be that I wouldn't give my students any idle time. As a future elementary teacher I know that any time that the students are given to just sit or do nothing is not beneficial. I can say this keeping the behaviorist learning theory in mind. I know that the input of free time gets the output of distracted students and that leads to more behavior problems. If I can plan my time wisely than I will not only waste less of my student's time to learn but I will also spend less time dealing with behavioral issues.

Another example of how I would manage my classroom would be not using homework as a teaching tool or as something to do in my student's spare time. Homework will be something that students find useful in order to practice key things that have already been taught in the classroom. I will also not use worksheets to teach students. Things such as word searches don't teach students beyond a list of vocabulary words and do not keep them active mentally engaged. It also is text and not the most concrete to give a student. Though hopefully by the time students are doing a worksheet they have already had concrete representations of the material. This would be informed by the constructivist learning theory, social learning theory, developmental learning theory, and behaviorist learning theory. It connects to the constructivist learning theory because I would be doing my best to keep my students actively engaged and finding ways to connect new ideas to old ideas within their schemas. It also connects to social learning theory because I would keep in my the language that I am using to teach new information and review old information. Keeping the language familiar and not focusing on text alone can greatly aid students. For this to be informed by the developmental learning theory I would realize that worksheets are not a concrete representation and that text should (if possible) be the last thing that I use on a scale of representing any material. Finally, this would be informed by the behaviorist learning theory because giving students time to sit and do a worksheet that is not engaging for a certain amount of time can clearly lead to behavior issues.

A final example of how I would manage a classroom would be through establishing a sense of routine. Students need consistency and need to understand what is expected of them. In this routine the rules will be clearly laid out. This is connected to the the constructivist learning theory because I have to keep in mind that students use two different schemas for home and school. I would need to build positively on the school schema and learn to connect that to the home schema when possible.

Teaching Reflections

As I try to reflect upon the lesson that my group used I can see both the good and bad of the way we chose to teach. For example I can see that keeping the students active by making it a race is helpful but I am questioning the social interaction. I can see that it would be a good opportunity to teach about teams and sportsmanship but allows for little one-on-one interaction. Also, with the booklet of words that start with each letter of the alphabet we were able to connect things that are familiar to the students and use the appropriate language. For younger students we could connect the letter M to the word mom. I'm not sure how concrete our lesson was or how we could have made it more concrete. I suppose if the students had to draw the letter that might have been more beneficial. Trying to teach and be informed by the learning theories leaves endless possibilities for how to teach the needed material. I feel as though my group did a good job of keeping what a kindergartner's ZPD could be in mind and tried to make connections to what would be familiar to the student's schema. Of course, based on the learning theories there is always much to improve on.

Lessons

Group 1: Something that I thought group one did well was starting with words that are familiar to the students. Though I felt that the words that were given were so often misspelled that the students knew how to spell them correctly from previous repetition. Two things that I felt this group could work on was classroom management and time management.

Group 2: I noticed that group two started with a video to be more concrete and then followed that with group work. This was helpful to keep the students actively mentally engaged but later on we went quickly from videos to text which was a jump from concrete to more abstract ideas.

Group 3: This group was good as using concrete examples and keeping students actively mentally engaged by using something that could be applicable in their own lives. Something that this group could work on would be to remember to start with the concrete examples and the students zone of proximal development.

Group 4: Group four started with things that are familiar to the students and used pictures for concrete representation. They allowed for the use of a more knowledgeable peer by letting the students work together. This group could work on keeping students actively mentally engaged and finding a way to help the students truly learn the information instead of restating the facts.

Group 5: It was evident that this group tried to start concretely by starting with what is familiar to the students, english. They also used a diagram to make it more concrete and let the students try to conjugate for themselves. One thing that group five could work on would be making the "clothing" less abstract. Once it was explained that the stem was "naked" without a conjugation than it became more clear and understandable but was a pretty abstract idea to start with. Maybe draw the stem on the board and "add clothes" to it while explaining how to "put clothes" on the stem.