This week (the third week of school) is when I begin to actually work with my own set of students. Remembering my training, I’ve already come up with the rules, consequences and rewards that I want to use, and I plan to use the first few days of the week (at least) to have the kids come up with our rules and things as a group. I read about a “Rules Workshop” in Bill Cecil’s book, Best Year Ever! Book. Definitely gonna use that. Because I have actual students now, my daily schedule has changed big time. Gone is the free-flowing flux time that I’ve had for the last few weeks. Now, my day is scheduled into blocks of time with each grade level, with very little ‘transition’ time in between. It’s all good… I’m just glad to have the job and be able to work with the kids… I’ve just got to get the schedule down so that I make sure I’m where I’m supposed to be when I’m supposed to be there, ya know? For those of you that are about to go into a Resource Room kind of schedule and are wondering what that might look like, here’s my schedule as an example. Everybody’s is different, and yours will probably look very different once you start teaching. Just in case, though, at least you have a general idea of what to expect:
- 7:30 – 8:30 Arrival and preparation of classroom for the day
- 8:30 – 9:00 Inclusion with 5th grade class
- 9:00 – 10:00 Resource room with Kindergarteners
- 10:00 – 10:25 Walk from the main building back to trailers and get ready for my next class
- 10:25-11:25 Fourth grade kids come to my trailer for resource services
- 11:25-12:25 Third grade kids come to trailer for resource services
- 12:25-1:25 Fifth grade kids come to trailer for resource services
- 1:25-2:00 Lunch
- 2:00-2:30 Grade-level planning meeting for either K, 3, 4 or 5
- 2:30-3:00 Inclusion with 5th grade class
- 3:00-3:30 Planning or IEP meeting time, if needed
During the third week (aka my first week with the students), I set up a Do Now on the board for each class, and taught them to enter the classroom quietly then look for the Do Now and get started right away. This way, the kids would know what’s expected of them on how they should come into the classroom (procedure), and they had some direction as well to help them get on task right away. And, I could take attendance silently while they were mid-procedure, so no learning time would be wasted with that later. They did okay the first few days. Most of them came right in and sat down on day one and two, then realized the Do Now was on the board and got up to get the needed materials and get started a few minutes after. By Thursday, they were pretty well acclimated with this process. On Friday, they nailed it. I WAS SO PROUD!!! After introducing the process the first day, I walked into the classroom with them the rest of the days and stood off to the side near my desk and watched them to see what they would do. By Friday, they came straight into the classroom walking (yay), quietly (yay again), read the Do Now and got straight to work (Awesome!!!). I could see in that moment just how helpful our training had been this summer, and I was so appreciative. Now when we get down to content next week, they’ll already know the process and they’ll get themselves on task as soon as they come into the classroom. Yay… I’m a teacher!!!
I pretty much did the same thing with the rules and our other procedures. We did a modified version of Bill Cecil’s Rules Workshop (modified b/c of the ages of my kids and the short amount of time I have with each group). It worked so well. We started out by talking about what rules we think we should have in our classroom and why they might be important. Then we narrowed them down into a concise list of 4 or 5, and kept them phrased In the positive. We reviewed and talked about them each day so they were constantly reinforced. About midway into the week, we began to act out the rules in skits. The kids LOVED this part! What does following this rule look like? What does NOT following it look like? They seemed to come alive when they were given the freedom to act out the do’s and don’ts of the classroom, and I so enjoyed their creativity in all this. I guess the greatest reward is that they’re remembering the rules (well, most of them anyway, lol) and that our group time is relatively controlled and everything. I see them self-correcting sometimes, too, which is great. When we get into content next week, we’ll have the expectations at least initially explained, discussed and practiced, so we could just do reinforcement throughout the year to keep things intact and our time purposeful.
I also took time out to explain our rewards system, because my intention is to really focus on the good and not harp so much on negatives, if that’s at all possible. I introduced Scholar Dollars (for my little scholars, haha), our sticker chart and a series of other rewards that were simple but effective (like 10 minutes extra computer time, being able to do your work sitting at the teacher’s desk, an extra water break, etc.). That went well too. I guess we’ll see how everything pans out as the year goes on, and I’ll tweak things as needed once I see what actually works and what doesn’t. We’ll see!!
Days I’ve been a teacher with real live students: 4
No comments:
Post a Comment