Part 1:
Depending on how conducive your classroom is, depends on how well your teaching is. If you don't have a conducive classroom, it may be hard to actually get through to the teaching and learning aspects of school. There are a slew of things that go into making a classroom conducive. The textbook goes into depth on many topics that are detrimental to making a conducive classroom. These topics include:
arranging the classroom
establishing and maintaing productive teacher-student relationships
creating an effective psychological climate
setting limits
creating activities that keep students on task
monitoring what students are doing
modifying instructional strategies
taking developmental differences into account
taking individual and group differences into account
The things that are most important to me, that work together to make up a conducive classroom are
1. Arranging the classroom: This specific topic stands out to me for the obvious reasons listed in the book (arranging furniture in a way that allows for social interaction but also discourages it when need be, minimize possible distractions, identifies locations that allow easy monitoring of students' behavior) But this is also important to me because I feel like children need to be seen. What I mean by this is that students need to know you care.
"They need the safety that comes from the belief that their teacher sees them, knows them.
Mutual trust grows from this security.When children feel seen, they are released to work. "I
see you" is not a threat, but rather a message of caring and regard."
The quote above comes from a book Teaching Children to Care by Ruth Charney. The chapter that the quote comes from starts out by describing her first year as a teacher and how she thought she had her room arranged just perfectly. Only to find out that it was a mess. She had furniture in all the wrong places, she couldn't see students and was always running around like a chicken with its head cut off. This incident led her to the belief that children need to be seen and why. It really stuck with me, and I can completely see how it relates to having a conducive classroom.
2. The next topic I think is so important to conducive learning is setting limits. I believe that if you establish rules and limits from the beginning of the school year, the school year will run much more smoothly. A technique that I learned about in one of my other classes is interactive modeling. I think this will be helpful and something I will defiantly use in my future classroom. For those of you who do not know what interactive modeling is- it is a 7 step process to teach children how to do simple tasks such as cutting with scissors, lining up, cleaning up, etc. These seem like simple things but some children don't know how to do it in a orderly manner. So spending the extra 5-10 minutes to intentionally teach children how to do- it will take care of some, hopefully most, discipline problems in the future.
3. The last thing is taking into account the developmental differences in the classroom. The book does not talk much about this one. But from personal experience in a first grade classroom, different developmental differences between children account for a lot of classroom disruptiveness. Children who are higher developmentally finish before others and can be disruptive. Having something else/ harder for them or even letting them help their classmates can help. On the other spectrum, lower developing students may get over looked and not be able to keep up. They then may be disruptive. Making sure you see and are aware of these differences can help keep the disruptiveness to a minimal.
There are so many other things we as teachers can do to keep a conducive classroom- the above are just a few that I think are most important.
Part 2:
Some of the misbehaviors in my case study are
- consistant asking "when are we going outside?"
-not staying where they are suppose to be
-getting into others personal things
-walking out of the classroom without permission
-children becoming less engaged in their work
Not all of these are misbehaviors, just things that are not ideal for the classroom environment.
I think one way to deal with Willard constantly asking "when are we going outside?" would be to display a schedule in the classroom and teach him how to read it. I would start by pointing it out to him and asking him "Have we done math today?" "Have we done reading yet?" and so on and so forth. This way he could look for himself to see when we will be going outside and know what we have to do before we can go outside. If he forgets and asks, I will simply direct him to the schedule. Since he may be too young to read the schedule- posting pictures next to the words so he can figure it out would be a good alternative.
In order to deal with Willard not staying where he is suppose to, I would make a point to monitor what my students are doing. When I notice Willard if wandering to a different part of the classroom, I would give him a discrete gesture to let him know I see him. Hopefully this would be enough to make sure he knows, that I know he is off task and needs to get back to what he is suppose to be doing.
Getting into others personal things is a big issue. Whether Willard is just bored or whatever it may be, this is not ok. If something goes missing, he will most likely be the first person to get blamed because he has a pattern and history of going through others things. Since this is something that can be a big deal, I would generally address the whole class about the issue. I would come up with a lesson to address why going through others personal belongings is not ok. ---------- I would, also, do something similar with the walking out of the classroom without permission issue. Maybe do an interactive modeling activity. I might model what to do when you need/ want to leave the classroom. This way the students will know to ask before they leave.
In order to keep the students more involved, I would examine my teaching strategies and modify accordingly.
