A complex problem I have faced in the past year was an issue I was having with classroom management. The situation was I had a 6th grade homeroom made up of 20 students, about half boys and half girls. At the beginning the year, we had discussed rules and proper classroom behavior. The students were well-behaved and were following classroom rules. However, as the year went on, I started to feel like I was losing my control of their classroom behavior. The students were pretty well-behaved overall and never did anything that I would specifically think of as really "bad" or disruptive behavior; however, I was still feeling as if I didn't have the class under control sometimes. This was becoming very stressful for me and was causing me to feel frustrated every day.
I decided I needed to think about what was going on and why I was feeling at a loss for control in the classroom. I figured out that the times when the students were the chattiest and hard to refocus was during transition times. The students had a hard time going from once subject or activity to the next without talking to their friends and starting to lose attention. This was hard because I would have to refocus the students after each class, and it was wasting instruction time. This transition time was the problem. I figured out that the factors were the students understanding of "transitions," expectations from previous years, how I expected them to behave, and how I conveyed the transition rules to the students. The students were expected to transition to the next subject in an organized and quiet way, but obviously they weren't clearly getting this message. Obviously the stakeholders in this problem were the students and I. I knew that the desired state of affairs would be that the students would make easier transitions. The perceived contradictions between the desired state of affairs and the desired outcome was the loss of instruction time and transitions that were taking too long. This would allow me to take full advantage of instruction time, keep me less stressed, and allow the students to benefit from the best use of our time during class. The problem was......how do I accomplish this?
I decided to brainstorm how I could solve this situation. I knew I could talk with the students about proper transitioning behavior. I could also make an individual behavior system for each student, where they would get a consequence if they weren't following directions. However, neither of these options seemed like it would do the trick. The students in this class had to be held accountable, but I wasn't sure how to do it. As 6th graders, I knew that they cared what each other thought and didn't want to be seen as un-cool. I thought I could use this to my advantage. Instead of having an individual behavior system, we would use a whole class behavior system. I figured this would hopefully have a good affect on the students who were transitioning well, because they wouldn't want to let down their classmates.
I would write the word "Cardinal" on the board at the beginning of the day (it is our school mascot). During transition times, if the students weren't able to get ready quickly and with little disruption, they would lose a letter. Each time this would happen, they would lose a letter. Their goal was to have at least one letter left at the end of the day. If they had a letter, they would get a tally mark. When they reached 5 tally marks, they would get a reward. Later in the year, I increased the amount of tally marks to 10 to make it more challenging. A few of the possible rewards were an ice cream party, 20 mins. to play games, extra recess etc. These were obviously things that the students wanted, so using a whole class behavior system was a good idea. The benefit would be that I could make the most of my instruction time and be less stressed trying to get everything accomplished in a day. The students would benefit not only because of the instruction time, but also because they are affected by a teacher's mood. A calm, stress-free teacher makes for a much happier classroom environment.
I found this system to work very well. As I thought, the students had a good influence on each other and helped keep each other in check. I felt less stressed at the end of each day, which in itself, let me be a better teacher. The students were more respectful of my rules and responsible for their own actions and those of their classmates. If one student was being disruptive, a classmate would remind them to get ready for class or to follow directions, because they were working together as a team. If one student messed up, the whole class would be affected, and it might cause them to not get the reward they had been working towards. The whole classroom environment and “classroom family” mentality was better and allowed us to make the best use of the time that we had together each day.
I decided I needed to think about what was going on and why I was feeling at a loss for control in the classroom. I figured out that the times when the students were the chattiest and hard to refocus was during transition times. The students had a hard time going from once subject or activity to the next without talking to their friends and starting to lose attention. This was hard because I would have to refocus the students after each class, and it was wasting instruction time. This transition time was the problem. I figured out that the factors were the students understanding of "transitions," expectations from previous years, how I expected them to behave, and how I conveyed the transition rules to the students. The students were expected to transition to the next subject in an organized and quiet way, but obviously they weren't clearly getting this message. Obviously the stakeholders in this problem were the students and I. I knew that the desired state of affairs would be that the students would make easier transitions. The perceived contradictions between the desired state of affairs and the desired outcome was the loss of instruction time and transitions that were taking too long. This would allow me to take full advantage of instruction time, keep me less stressed, and allow the students to benefit from the best use of our time during class. The problem was......how do I accomplish this?
I decided to brainstorm how I could solve this situation. I knew I could talk with the students about proper transitioning behavior. I could also make an individual behavior system for each student, where they would get a consequence if they weren't following directions. However, neither of these options seemed like it would do the trick. The students in this class had to be held accountable, but I wasn't sure how to do it. As 6th graders, I knew that they cared what each other thought and didn't want to be seen as un-cool. I thought I could use this to my advantage. Instead of having an individual behavior system, we would use a whole class behavior system. I figured this would hopefully have a good affect on the students who were transitioning well, because they wouldn't want to let down their classmates.
I would write the word "Cardinal" on the board at the beginning of the day (it is our school mascot). During transition times, if the students weren't able to get ready quickly and with little disruption, they would lose a letter. Each time this would happen, they would lose a letter. Their goal was to have at least one letter left at the end of the day. If they had a letter, they would get a tally mark. When they reached 5 tally marks, they would get a reward. Later in the year, I increased the amount of tally marks to 10 to make it more challenging. A few of the possible rewards were an ice cream party, 20 mins. to play games, extra recess etc. These were obviously things that the students wanted, so using a whole class behavior system was a good idea. The benefit would be that I could make the most of my instruction time and be less stressed trying to get everything accomplished in a day. The students would benefit not only because of the instruction time, but also because they are affected by a teacher's mood. A calm, stress-free teacher makes for a much happier classroom environment.
I found this system to work very well. As I thought, the students had a good influence on each other and helped keep each other in check. I felt less stressed at the end of each day, which in itself, let me be a better teacher. The students were more respectful of my rules and responsible for their own actions and those of their classmates. If one student was being disruptive, a classmate would remind them to get ready for class or to follow directions, because they were working together as a team. If one student messed up, the whole class would be affected, and it might cause them to not get the reward they had been working towards. The whole classroom environment and “classroom family” mentality was better and allowed us to make the best use of the time that we had together each day.
Nice narrative. Can you relate this to something we have discussed in class?
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