I have now completed the first week of my two week practicum!

It has been an amazing experience thus far, and I have come to love both of my SA’s as well as all of the students in my class…it is amazing to see all of their personalities emerging, I am getting to know more about them each and every day!

During the week my SA’s allowed me numerous opportunities to get my feet wet and informally lead a few activities with my class (marking spelling/ math, playing french Bingo, and working one on one with many of the kids). During these activities I discovered just how important classroom management strategies can be. While my class is extremely well behaved for the most part, having a new face standing before them compounded with the excitement of playing a game (in the case of Bingo), I found it very hard to keep them on task and paying attention to what I was saying. Because of this I took it upon myself to document my SA’s classroom management strategies with the hope that I will be able to effectively use them during my lessons next week.

Some of the most effective strategies were:

Before a lesson begins ask them what good active listening looks like to them. Take a few suggestions and then tell them that you are going to be watching to see if they are following their active listening guidelines.

If you do not want them touching the stuff on their desks count down from 5 and say that by 5 they need to all have their hands on their head (make them keep them their until you have finished explaining)

Say “I need to see active listening in 3…..2…..1” by the end of 1 they should all be sitting in active listening pose.

When asking questions to the class say “put your hand up if..” this is a good reminder to always raise your hand and not yell out.

If necessary call attention to the individual making noise/ off task.
E.g., Jim, is that proper active listening behaviour?

Erase/ give checkmarks *This is probably the most effective
When students are chatty simply going over to the checkmark section of the board will calm them down.

Waiting until they are all quiet before starting (and having the confidence to do this)
I.e., making a point to not start until everyone is silent

Use “Do you think….” to put it back on them (explain it and talk to them like adults)
E.g., I appreciate that you are all very excited to do this fun activity but do you think that I will want to do more fun activities with you if you do not listen and talk over me when I am trying to explain it to you?

When handing out worksheets/ papers have the students do something to get the paper.(Gr 4: Tell me one scary thing that you know/ Gr. 5 Tell me one thing that makes you happy)
*If they have grade specific worksheets/papers