Archive for the ‘Behavior Management’ Category

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Classroom Management: The Hunt for a Toolbox

Monday, September 10th, 2012

When I first started teaching, how each day went depended a lot on how benevolent my students were feeling. It is embarrassing to admit that. It’s not as though I didn’t know a lot about classroom management; I just didn’t know how to make it work yet. The weeks went on and I learned every day, but I still had a few students who just had a lot of energy. You know, the ones who hate sitting down at all, who you check in with before class starts so when they need them, they will have that pencil and paper ready, rather than lurking at the bottom of their backpacks under missed assignments that are slowly being turned into pulp with the help of an old banana.

Often these kids had really great attitudes, and most days I was able to keep everyone on task using my limited mental toolbox of classroom management strategies. But there were days, usually days when something different was happening, like rain or a modified bell schedule, when my class was straining at the seams, led by these special, energetic students. I could feel the moment when things started to go downhill, when productive energy got that wild note and I knew it was going to be a long day.

Then one day, a student came into my classroom asking if I had the red toolbox.

“What?” I asked in utter confusion.

“The red toolbox. Mr. V said you might have it,” the kid answered helpfully.

I knew I didn’t have any red toolbox, but since the kid was already there, I looked through any closet or drawer where a toolbox could be hiding. Had there been after-hours repairs on my classroom? Finally, I had to turn him away.

“That’s okay, he said it might be Mrs. L who has it. He couldn’t remember.”

Hmmm.

At lunch, I got the scoop. The red toolbox is the trick that drains that little bit of extra energy while you get the rest of your class back on track. You simply write a hall pass for a student, before anything negative happens but after you see what direction things are heading, and your very energetic student rushes off to do you an important favor. Teachers in the know will look for the box, then suddenly remember that a certain teacher on the other side of the school might have borrowed it. This has to be done carefully, or students can spend forty-five minutes wandering around looking for the red toolbox. It is important to find out where students have already looked, and if you think they’ve been out of class for more than a few minutes, it might be time to say, “Sorry. I just can’t remember who has it. You’d better get back to class.”

In this age of bell-to-bell teaching, I imagine this isn’t a popular strategy for everyone. The idea is that you keep the students exposed to content whether they’re able to participate meaningfully right then or not, right? I say, let them stretch their legs for five minutes and come back feeling good about themselves for helping and ready to learn.

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Reading Aloud in Middle Grade Classrooms

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

After lunch my kids used to come barreling into the classroom.  They had wolfed down lunches and then run off to play basketball or gossip among themselves.  They came into class sweaty and chatty.  They would throw their backpacks down, grab their books, pens and papers, and sprawl in their chairs.  How would I ever get them to focus after lunch when they really wanted to continue that basketball game?

So here’s what I did.  You might want to try this, it was easy and it worked.  I read aloud to them.  I picked up a good old-fashioned book, and took the first few precious minutes of the class to read.  Some might question this.  After all it wasn’t getting them right to work, they weren’t being engaged in an assignment.  But to that I say, phooey.  They were getting to hear a story, one that I knew would captivate them.  As 7th graders they wouldn’t pick up books that they thought sounded “babyish.”  But if the teacher was reading a book to them they had to listen didn’t they?

My students hadn’t had lots of exposure to the bigger world so I tried to find things they could enjoy.  One of my favorites was Old Yeller.  Of course it was what Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook, would call a “cry book.”  At the end of the book there was always a few students with their heads down on the desk, tears dripping from their eyes.  I found the best way to handle that was to not.  I just let them cry.  If they wanted to talk about it later we did so privately and individually.

Another kind of story the kids liked were those that were a bit absurd.  I remember reading James and the Giant Peach.  Any time I read a book I planned where I would stop each time.  However, with this book we all got carried away.  I almost finished it the first time I read it aloud to a class.  To be that enthralled by a book sometimes makes it okay to just read aloud for an hour.

For a group of particularly challenged learners I read the first of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  With these I had to spend a lot of time talking about vocabulary before I began reading.  While it might seem simple, most of my students were second language learners, so it took a lot to help them understand.  But they did enjoy the books and often asked me to read the next one in the series, which I happily did.

If you teach young students no doubt you read to your kids, but what about older ones?  I always felt if nothing else the kids could hear a really good book.  And it must have worked, as they always calmed down as they listened and enjoyed the story.  I had finished reading and we could progress through the rest of the class, focused on whatever the task at hand for the rest of the day.

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Move It!

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

I am convinced that the main goal of teacher training each summer is to remind those of us who do not have to sit in a student desk each day just how hard it is to sit in a student desk all day.

One of the things which has always fascinated me about professional development days is where we hold our meetings. Sometimes we sit in classrooms in those small desks that were made for people much smaller than the adults that fill the room. Other times we sit at the cafeteria tables of our school – you remember those tables, don’t you? Those little, round pedestals with the seats that squeak every time you move – the seats that have no backs on them so you can never lean any way except forwards for fear you might slide off. By the end of the six hours I have very little that feels professionally developed, except parts of my body that have been professionally developed into unnatural positions, and honestly, all I want to do at the end of those days is find a place to “unkink” all my kinks. Have I learned anything? Only to remind myself to bring a pillow next time or to call in sick. But, don’t think that I don’t think the developers of these days are clever; they are more than clever. In fact, I believe this is all what I like to think of as their master plan. There is a reason behind the hours of torturous seating…the true genius of the plan is it is now emblazed across our minds just how amazingly hard it is to sit still all day. Thus, through the genius of professional development, our students are saved.

How’s that, you ask? Well, research has shown over and over that the attention span you have with your students is about (give or take) one minute for the children’s age. So, as a typical middle school teacher, I have about 12 to 13 minutes of my students’ undivided attention before I start losing them. That, compiled with the already uncomfortable seats they are forced to endure all day, makes any master teacher know that after a certain point in the lesson, a good teacher will let the students do one important thing: move. And, once I move them, I once again gain 12 to 13 more minutes of their undivided attention. It’s an amazing cycle, really.

Now, I realize all transition in learning do not have to involve moving. A teacher can simply create a transition of activities and still maintain the children’s attention, but I maintain that for the health and well-being of those students who are trapped in those torture chambers of flawed ergonomic design…we teachers, as caring individuals, must let the masses move.

Need some ideas for allowing movement in any lesson? Try some of these ideas:
• Take an exercise break. Give your students a minute to stand up and stretch or do jumping jacks. The one minute of movement will be a definite payback in the time you’ll gain on their attention spans.
• Divide the students into small groups to continue the learning standard.
• Allow students to take a clipboard and work sitting somewhere else in the room instead of at a student desk.
• Take an in-house field trip. (We once quietly walked the school looking for and writing down all the nouns we could see. I know a math teacher who placed math problems up and down the halls for her students to find and solve.)
• Have your students answer using motions. For example, stand up if the answer to a question is false.
• Allow individual students to stand up when called upon to read.

The goal of each class is to learn. Great teachers do whatever it takes to see that learning takes place. If you are hesitant to make transitions of movement in the classroom, don’t be. You just might find that by allowing your children the freedom to move, you will have something else exciting happening in your classroom: you will open your students’ minds to the joy of learning instead of the pain of “deseat.”

Susan Mackey Collins is a veteran teacher who has taught at both the elementary and middle school level. She currently teaches 6, 7, and 8th grade Advanced Language Arts at Sycamore Middle School outside of Nashville, Tennessee.
She has authored many books for Teacher Created Resources including Cursive Writing Activities, the Discovering Genres Series, and many of the titles from our popular Mastering Skills Series.

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Think Time for Planning Lessons and Life

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

What exactly is think time? For me it’s a block of time that I actually set aside to just sit and think. What, you ask in shock? Who has time to just sit and think? Isn’t that just a waste of time, sitting and thinking? The short answer is no. Think time makes me more efficient so my job is easier. Therefore my life is more enjoyable.

But why do you have to just sit and think? Can’t you think while out walking or doing something else? Of course you can, but real think time for me can’t come with any distractions. It really requires all of my concentration. It’s meant to let me focus on one major problem. It makes all the gray matter work very hard. I sometimes visualize it as a fusion of all my brain cells coming together to problem solve.

I have been using think time for years. When I was in the classroom think time was a tremendous asset. Sometimes I would have a student who was having problems. I would allow myself a 15-minute block of time to just ponder about a particular child. I always started with questions, What was the problem? How did it manifest itself? Was there a trigger? Was I the trigger? Could something be re-taught to make it easier for the student? Was a behavior problem part of the frustration of not learning something? Or was there a problem at home I wasn’t aware of?

I’ve actually created a model for myself for think time. I start with a question and then think through the answer. This of course creates more questions and that creates an interior dialogue. I don’t allow myself to refer to experts or read about the problem, although that might eventually be part of the solution. I just let my mind move, although not aimlessly wander. It’s extremely important to stay focused on the problem I have posed to myself. Often times I recall some small detail that I had not remembered and it was all I needed to realize how to solve the problem.

One of these think time problems was a 7th grade student named Gilbert. Gilbert was really one of the worst behavior problems I’d ever encountered. He didn’t finish anything, took no responsibility for bringing any supplies to class, and thought nothing about talking back. You know it was good day when Gilbert was called out of class which was quite often. Since we were both going to be together in class for a whole year it behooved me to think about Gilbert and what I might do to help him.

I remember staying in my classroom one day during my lunch period just to think about Gilbert. I realized I had never met his parents. They never came to school functions. It took a lot of work, but finally one day I got Gilbert’s mother to school. There was no dad. I invited Gilbert to join us. To say it was an eye-opening experience is an understatement. Gilbert’s mom was just like her son. She had trouble sitting. What came out of her mouth was astonishingly rude. But at least I understood where he learned his behavior. Talk about modeling.

Did I solve Gilbert’s problems with my think time. I’m afraid I didn’t. But did I understand this boy better? Absolutely. I understood what some of his limitations were and why. We both got along much better after this, making my class a much happier place to learn. My think time had a positive outcome.

I still use think time. At TCR I often use it to concentrate on books and other editorial projects that just might need a bit of help when they are stalled. In my personal life it helps me to make decisions about all types of problems including some as simple as why the laundry isn’t getting done to whether we really need a new internet service.

Do you have your own version of think time? How does it work and how do you use it to help solve classroom problems?

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