This week was the start of many new units and teaching methods as well as a time to refine the old ones. This week I started a math unit, a poetry unit, and a theatre unit. I taught lessons of my own but also continued with impromptu lessons and even team teaching with my SA. Overall it was a good week full of lots of waiting.
What I mean by waiting is my approach to classroom management. My SA’s biggest piece of feedback last week was that she wanted me to make sure I had 100% of the students’ attention before speaking and moving on. Her suggestion when you only have 80%: wait. Just stop talking, breathe, and wait. Eventually, they catch on and stop talking. Those that do not will be moved up on our traffic light system. Did it work? Yes, but a lot of time was wasted. In total, I probably wait 30 minutes a day for what I have asked for, usually silence or a pause in activity and/or work. However, it was worth it when I had 100% of their attention because then there was no reason for excuses about not actually completing my instructions when everyone heard.
In relation to the traffic light, I had three incidences of tears this week when moving students up due to not following directions or the rules of the classroom. Two were quite serious breakdowns with tears, screaming and body shutdowns, which resulted in trips to the office. The other, I was able to manage on my own. After reflection with another teacher about strategies to deal with this, as I have never seen such dramatic expositions before, we came to the conclusion that for some, it is not an effective method. Now, I knew that about my certain students who are on the light every day, many times a day, but I never had thought about the opposite end of the spectrum. I will have to keep brainstorming methods on how to deal with these specific cases.
On a more positive note, my theatre unit went off with a bang this week. I walked into Mr. English’s grade 4/5 classroom and I felt like I was in a whole other world. Seconds after the morning bell had rung, all of this students were sitting on the carpet, having quiet conversations in a calm manner and facing him at the front in his chair. It was amazing. Then, as I took over, I was quick to get to who I was, what I was doing there, and what we were going to accomplish together as a group on Thursday mornings. I also laid out my expectations, brainstorming a list of them with the students. In my head, I knew I did not HAVE to do that with this group of cooperative and respectful students, but did it anyways and received praise for it by Mr. English. We then moved into our activities and they all went very well. In particular, one boy who has a developmental disability and a SSW with him everyday was making great strides. Both Mr. English and his SSW told me how amazing it was to see him present the way he did and they want to film his work next week to show progress in his development. For me, that was a very touching moment and I cannot wait to work more with this group and especially him.
Finally, Friday afternoon, after school, I joined a group of teachers from Carr and played in the Baldwin Bash, a fundraising volleyball tournament of teachers versus teachers. I had a really great time. I enjoyed interacting with my fellow teachers from Carr in a more relaxed environment. This school has always been very inclusive of us TCs from the beginning and I am very appreciative of it.
Here is the board I created with my students in art classes the past two weeks. Students were given a choice from a number of projects they could work on that would add to this board. After we finished up our unit on soil in science, we added our labels for the different layers and added rocks to our bedrock. Next week, we will start our unit on plants. The intention is to add to the board next to this one with art and information that we learn about plants.
