Just a quick thought: classroom management. Such an
important concept and probably what most teachers stress out about. For myself, trying to figure out how to go about perfecting it has been a challenge
to say the least. It’s necessary, that's for sure- especially when your whole class speaks a
different language than you do, has the attention span of a gold fish, the energy
of a lighting bolt, the creativity of a mad scientist and the curiosity of,
well, a child- all under the age of 10. BOOM. So obviously classroom management
is a very necessary part of teaching. Discovering my own style of going about
it has been a very exciting journey.
In my classroom, I have no real punishment system in place. I don’t make my
students hold a chair above their head, stay late after class, or make them do
extra homework. Similarly, I don’t have any big reward systems either- no big
pizza party at the end of the semester for the most well-behaved class, no
giant sticker charts or fancy bar graphs. And this is why. . .
Sometimes students need motivation- and when it stems from
within themselves, that’s when they’re most productive, attentive and genuinely interested. So,
everyday, (not just on my open class day) I make my class so fun, so exciting, so
crazy and loud that the worst punishment is to be excluded from the activity.
Crazy concept? Not really.
I made Flip Cup into an awesome review game! The first person in line flips their cup over, runs to their numbered flash card, then runs to me and has to make a full sentence with the image on the flash card. Third and fourth grade did sentences with food, and fifth and sixth grade did sentences with activities to do over the weekend (swim, play soccer, study English, etc.) My students did get a little competitive though, haha, but overall a great game!
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