Monday, June 10, 2013
Creating a classroom learning environment
I know it is imperative that I maintain a classroom where all of my students can learn, feel supported and safe, and still enjoy the learning process. Because I am more of a constructive learner and I know my teaching style will follow this pattern, I need to really put in place classroom expectations, rules and regulations, and consequences if not followed. The science classroom is a perfect environment to have hands on activities, movement and participation in experiments both indoors and outdoors, and student discussion. This type of classroom environment also creates the perfect opportunity for misbehavior and lack of self regulation. I want to the students to feel like they are a part of the classroom and that they contribute to the classroom in both the success as a whole and as an individual. Let's say we are participating in an activity and there is one person who appears to be getting out of control. They are loud, not working on task with their group, and causing their group frustration. My first approach to taking control of the situation would be to ask that the student consider the classroom expectations and rules and regulations and respond whether or not they are abiding by them. I would ask the student to offer me the infractions he was imposing during this activity and what the consequences will be if he doesn't get back on task. At that point, we could continue with our activity. The next intervention level would be to follow through with the appropriate consequence based on the rules stated for the classroom for that particular rule violation. If this did not work and the situation continued or escalated, I would have to determine the severity of the behavior and either send the student to the office, pull him away from the group for a period of time and try to reintroduce him back to the group still following through with the consequence from before. I want them to be able to come back to the group. I think that sometimes we punish the behavior, take them away from the class or group, and they feel like they are in a place where now it doesn't matter how I act because I messed up and it's over anyway. There has to be a consequence, but I think you can still give the consequence and have the student come back to the group to finish the activity as long as the behavior changes.
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These are good suggestions for maintaining classroom order. I'm curious how you think a strict constructivist would react around step two of your continuum. I think that having the child state that they know the rules in step 1 is appropriate, but how do you really know that they know them? Do they need to act them out, analyze them, work together as a classroom to understand the need for rules in a science lab? It's something to think about when you write your CSEL.
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