Friday Reflections - Classroom Management

Janet showing her students how to walk in the halls
Classroom management is a critical skill, and a skill that was in full display these first few days of school as I moved about Irving.   I am in awe of lines of well behaved students moving through the hallway, students sitting in circles, posters displaying classroom jobs, charts explaining behavioral expectations - the hum of well managed classes. All of us know strong teachers who have classroom management skills in spades. One such teacher in our midst is Janet, our veteran kindergarten teacher.   She is excellent at managing her classroom of five year olds! And, she has stepped out of her comfort zone and teamed up with Kayla this year; Kayla take notes - because Janet is a master at teaching critical procedures that set the stage for the important teaching that will happen for the rest of the year. And, Janet is sharing her expertise on procedures to some of our new teachers in a small group setting.  Thank you, Janet - above and beyond!

Perhaps a “101 Classroom Management” overview might help those among us who aren’t as evolved as Janet (myself included). It’s always helpful when author/s can clearly and directly describe and develop how to manage a classroom.

Harry and Rosemary Wong’s book The First Days of School simply and effectively lays out the case for teaching classroom procedures.  They describes two major problems in a classroom – movement and noise.   Consider movement – entering the classroom, coming in from recess, lining up, getting ready for lunch, walking in the hallway as an entire class, getting ready for dismissal, etc;  these movements are procedures and what Janet turns these procedures into routines by teaching, rehearsing and reinforcing the procedures.  The noise procedures that establish order when students are, for example, moving between centers and small and big group activities or asking for individual help or permission may require both oral and written instruction and cues; noise procedures need to be taught, rehearsed and reinforced with as much follow through as movement procedures.

Janet and Kayla are basically following three specific steps for teaching procedures to their kindergarten students:

Teach
Rehearse   Rehearse Rehearse and Rehearse some more!
Reinforce

I’ll leave you with this thought - whenever one is teaching, procedures are needed - regardless of age and content to be taught.  Sound procedures are the starting point for any significant learning.

Another way of looking at classroom management: 

“You seemingly waste a little time at the beginning to gain time at the end”.   Harry K. Wong (what a name, huh? 🤣)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Slice of life

Good evening  I am curious about your own writing.  Do any of you have a writing practice, such as, journaling?  Just wondering.  If I were a betting man, I’d put money on it that many of you do have a writing habit of sorts – if not now, perhaps earlier in life.  Please consider sharing a posting with us – or even on the bigger stage of Two Writing Teachers Blog. Last week I talked about the blog – Two Writing Teachers. This blog offers us the opportunity to share a piece of our own writing on pretty much any subject. You will find the means to do that under “Slice of Life” .  Just wanted to throw this out to anyone so inclined.  I’m going to push myself to post something.  Courage, right?    At any rate, my thoughts on writing focused on Heart Maps or Close to the Bone maps.  It seems to me that such a map would be beneficial for different writing responses, and most especially when we require students to write t...
Read more

Valentines Day

Carpe diem!  Happy Valentine’s Day!   Kids – and boyfriends and girlfriends– and adults who have special relationships with kids - that would be grandparents, for sure, want to show some expression of their love.   We send our cards with hearts and Xs and Os – and many of us spend a few minutes reading the sentiment inside the card – the thought needs to be a good fit.  Why not take the time to compose our own message to our Valentine?   I have been reading a fair amount about using mentor texts to teach the craft of writing.  Lucy Calkins and Katie Woodray (Wondrous Words) continually advise us to really get to know several good books – like inside and out.  What are the “tricks” of their writing?   What are the craft elements the author weaves into the writing? Writing gurus are reminding us to stop when we are reading a well written passage - “Hey look at that.  Look at how she wrote that!”  Try to fig...
Read more

Mother's day

Here’s an idea -  Mother’s Day comes in this final month and all of us can conjure up how our students might write a message to probably the most important audience in their live – their Mom. I think most kids can hang their writing hats on the following idea. The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown could be used as a mentor text to show students how authors like Brown developed a message and to create a written Mother’s Day message for their own mothers.   Brown selects several mundane important things/events and builds the case for why each is important.  She opens giving a strong reason explaining why the thing/event is important. She continues building a case for its importance with several other reasons.  And she ends each description with the same sentence as the first.    Listen to the oral reading , and you will see and hear the effectiveness of the message that is set in a poetic rhythm. I have given you a verse using Margaret Wise Brown...
Read more