This week has been an eventful one! My CT had her peer observation, I was with a substitute for three hours running a lesson, and we had to have a class split up between 3 other classes because their teacher wasn’t able to come in and there was no substitute available on such short notice. And my main takeaway from this week, yet again, is classroom management is everything!
In my Teaching Children’s literature class, we have been practicing read-alouds, and this week I got to practice with my class. I read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves” by Lucille Colando. I am learning to have more fun while reading, changing my voice as I read, and letting the students get involved! They love that! They like to infer and make predictions about what will happen next, because they have done this in the past. My classroom management skills for reading have really improved since the first time I read-aloud. I’m learning to set the expectations for the class before I read, telling them to sit in L.L.P (listen and learn position), and to enjoy the book. Although I still have to correct some behavior while reading, it’s not as bad as the first time I read.
Another way my CT got the students involved with reading was to have them act out the book. She read Yo! Yes? By Chris Raschka to teach the students about using correct punctuation. She told them that meaning of words can be changed just by the use of punctuation. When she read the book, she made sure to emphasize the punctuation and how you would read it. To make them truly understand the concept of correct punctuation, she had the students read the book out loud in pairs, reading it with emphasis on the punctuation. By doing this, my CT was able to explain the concepts better and they got to see a real example. They students really enjoyed doing this, and they wanted to do more read-alouds like this. I think this is a really good way to start off a lesson, like Sara told us to do. After the reading, my CT had them write a story trying to use correct punctuation. I would really like to do lessons and activities like this in my classroom. I think the students get a lot out of the lesson this way.
On Thursday, my CT went to data chats, which required her to have a substitute while she was gone. I was allowed to make up a lesson on my own and implement it. I chose to read a fall/Halloween themed book, the one previously mentioned, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves. I talked to the students about what fall meant and what they think of when they hear the word “fall”. I then read the book, and as I get more experience with reading, I am beginning to discover the norms I like for reading aloud. As long as the students are introduced to my read-aloud norms and they understand what I expect, I don’t mind slight talking about the book when I read. They like to talk about what is happening in the book, make predictions and tell about what part they like. They understand that when I start reading again, they are to sit quietly and listen to the story. I am learning that classroom management is a part of everything I do in the classroom and that the students need to know what is expected of them.
I also had another experience using what I learned in Classroom Management. When I was done with the read-aloud, I let the students choose whether they wanted to retell the story or draw a picture of their favorite character and write why it was their favorite. They picked drawing a picture and seemed to enjoy that. My classroom management went quite well for this activity. The students stayed in their seats and worked diligently. And when they were finished, they knew to do independent reading. The trouble with management came when I transitioned to their next activity. I called them over to the carpet and I had planned for them to do a word scramble activity and word search independently. However, I realized I didn’t have enough papers, so I had them work in pairs. I let them pick their own “buddies” and quickly realized that some pairs shouldn’t have been together. This is when knowing your students is crucial because you know how they act and which ones like to goof off. This happened with one pair of students, so I learned for next time not to pair those students together. However, some students worked quite well together, so in the future, I may only have to pair up a few students myself, while letting others choose their own “buddies”.
Another flaw with this activity was how it was implemented. I had originally planned on doing this activity together at their seats, however since I couldn’t have them do it at their seats, I decided to have them do it together on the carpet, that way I could supervise them and still help them if they needed it. This didn’t work as planned either. I had not informed them of the norms for group work on the carpet beforehand, so they were kind of rambunctious; they all were talking out and being loud. I saw that some of them were having trouble unscrambling the words, so I tried to help them by unscrambling the words together on the board. I also didn’t inform them of the norms for doing this, and things got a little out of hand. They were standing up, calling out, and not giving each other turns. The whole classroom ended up getting way too loud and I had to have them completely silent and reading to settle down. Here, more than ever, I realized just how important it is to have your students know the rules, otherwise, they will be too rowdy and it will be hard to gain control again. I need more practice with this in the future, to get better at what I learned on Thursday.
On Friday, one of the second grade teachers called in sick and didn’t have enough notice to get a substitute, so we had to split her class among the three other second grade teachers. They came into our classroom in the morning and my teacher was sure to make the students understand her rules and that they are in school to learn. She assigned seats around our classroom for the students, giving a speech to each student, saying that our students don’t like to mess around, and that they like to learn. My CT said that our students are real “monsters” when they are messed with and disturbed, letting the new students know not to mess around. Now of course, our students called her bluff about the monsters because they gave my CT a look, saying “what’s I’m not a monster!” and my CT told them just to go along with it. I think this is a good strategy to set the rules for new students because they behaved quite well the rest of the day.
Overall, my main lessons were that classroom management is so important to have and establish in the classroom. If you don’t have and enforce norms, the students won’t know how to act and may be rowdy. Second, I learned that being a teacher is all about flexibility and learning from previous mistakes. Since the lessons didn’t go as planned, I had to improvise and make new ways to do the lesson. And when the new plan didn’t work out, I had to reflect and figure out how it will work better next time. One thing that did work better since I have been reflecting was my read-alouds. I’ve learned how to implement them effectively, and I’m excited to keep practicing.
As a classroom management person, I really appreciated and enjoyed reading your post. Especially this part:
"I let them pick their own “buddies” and quickly realized that some pairs shouldn’t have been together. This is when knowing your students is crucial because you know how they act and which ones like to goof off. This happened with one pair of students, so I learned for next time not to pair those students together. However, some students worked quite well together, so in the future, I may only have to pair up a few students myself, while letting others choose their own “buddies”."
Here you really reflected on what you learn and what it means for your future practice. To me, that says that you have learned something and that you are going to apply what you have learned in the future. :) I look forward to reading more!
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