It was great to be back in class yesterday! It felt like the two-week practicum again. In fact the students thought I would be coming back the next day again, I wish I were!

One of my main goals for the rest of the term is to work on classroom management. After having the class on classroom management earlier this week, I realized that a lot of the strategies we talked about are used in my practicum class. So while I was in my practicum class this week I made a conscious effort to keep notes about specific classroom management strategies my S.A. uses and I used throughout the day. I was amazed to see just how much management is needed, even in my grade seven class. And because of this I noticed there are many different strategies that are used for different type of situations. I think I observed three main different types of situations in which different classroom management strategies were used.

The first situation sort of falls into classroom discussion participation and how my S.A. wants this participation to look like. Being in grade seven, mostly when my S.A. or I ask the students questions they automatically raise their hands. Generally they know not to be calling out without being asked to. However, sometimes my S.A. is direct and says “hands up,” and then asks the questions. I feel like this works really well when students are really distracted or excited about the discussion topic. This is because when they are excited they just want to quickly voice their opinions. So in order to regulate this, the students need to be straightforwardly told to only raise their hands to speak and wait on their turn. I also found that whenever I have taught, I do usually ask for “hands up” before I ask the questions just because it helps me better manage the classroom and maintain students’ focus. Also, this simple direction giving adds to the students’ perception of my presence as another form of teacher in the class. This is important because if they develop that perception of me early it will allow for better classroom management moving forward into the 10 weeks. In other instances my S.A. also tells the students that she will be calling out on individual students to answer questions or offer ideas. I have noticed this works well when only a small number of students consistently reply whereas the others – mainly the students towards the back – are not participating. This plays out especially well when my S.A. or I keep a class list with us while asking questions so that students can actually see us keeping a record of their participation. From experience I can say that when this is done, students are more motivated to participate and the number of hands raised increases significantly. The last strategy my S.A. has used a lot recently is “think-pair-share,” she does not necessarily call out “okay time to think-pair-share,” she just simply says okay think about “x” for a x amount of time and then put your thumb up so I know you are ready to share. Then they share with a neighbor after which students who want to can share their ideas with the entire class. I feel like this strategy works well to boost participation as those students who just don’t participate because they don’t want to share with the entire class have a more comfortable chance to offer as well (in pairs). I also really like the idea of “thumbs up when you are ready” and I have used this when I teach because it helps a teacher understand how much time is needed for students to answer a specific question.

The second situation revolves around direction giving. In my opinion giving clear directions is one of the most important aspects of classroom management in any grade level. Because without well-defined directions, students will be guaranteed to be simply lost; thus affecting their learning. There are 3 parts to direction giving that have stood out for me and I have tried incorporating these into my teaching – being slow, repetition, and multimodal. By being slow I mean delivering instructions at a pace that works for your specific class’ understanding. For me this took practice, the first time I taught I thought I was a little too quick (because this is how we have been taught for the last 4 years in university); therefore, I have tried to slow down in my more recent lessons. Moreover by being slow I think it is important to emphasize important details of instructions and I usually do this by using hand gestures, eye contact, and my voice tone. Second I listed repetition and by this I mean after giving instructions myself, I think it really works to have students repeat the instructions – and if one person misses something, others can add in. This benefits both students and the teacher I believe because students can fully understand the instructions by repeating out loud and the teacher can gain an understanding for where the class’ understanding is at a given point. Lastly, something that I have gained from our Socials class is the importance of giving instructions in different modalities. I believe it can be as easy as just giving instructions verbally and visually – so speaking out and writing on the board/smartboard/overhead. This way even after you have verbally given instructions, students are able to refer to a visual reminder as well.

The third and last situation is just as important – getting and maintaining students’ attention. My S.A. is great at this and so I have been paying close “attention” to her behavior as she gets students’ attention. What really works for my class is counting down from 5 after which the students are to clap twice and essentially freeze. So I have consistently made use of this strategy as well and what I make sure to do is thank them after for giving me their attention – again to add to building a positive relationship with the students. Proximity is another tactic that I know I have used frequently as I circulate around the room while my S.A. teaches. This works well with the students who are situated more towards the edges of the classroom, as they seem to believe that the teacher cannot see what they are doing. Lastly, I think it can be important to sometimes even remind students why it is important to listen. For example, so that they don’t miss information, or even something like “when you spoke, everyone else listened, so now you should listen too.” Again this just ties into motivation and using different strategies to boost student motivation in the various areas I have discussed above.

In the end, I feel like the more days we spend in the class, the more we will keep learning about classroom management (another reason why I wish we could just stay there!). Also, the workshops on Tuesday mornings are really helpful as we get to share our experiences and hear about other strategies we might not have known of before!