Hey y'all! Today's post as part of Blog Hoppin's Teacher Week '13 is all about classroom management. Now, I teach high school, so there isn't a whole lot of cutesy management happening in my room. As much as I would love to do it, I don't think a clip chart or anything like that would work in my classes. The one part of my ever evolving management that I do have a picture for is how I reward participation and on-task behavior:
I found these boxes in the Target dollar section last year (they always have some sort of little containers there) and labeled them for each of my classes. I bought a giant roll of raffle tickets and another little container serves as a container for the blank and ready to be used tickets. If a students shares a success on Fridays, gives a thoughtful answer, or is just following my directions, I give them a ticket. They just simply write their name on the ticket and put it in their class' container. At the 3 weeks mark, I do a drawing in each class for a class coupon. The coupons rotate among adding points to a test/quiz, dropping the lowest daily grade, an extra day on assignment, etc. At the 6 weeks mark, the drawings are for a small gift card (Sonic is always popular with my kiddos). At the end of the semester, I dump all the like classes together (last year I put all the geography tickets together and then all the economics tickets together) and do a course drawing for a larger gift card (I think I did a $25 Visa gift card both semesters last year). I wasn't always the best at remembering to hand out tickets, but the kids made sure I did the drawings. I always had one or two students who would really want to win the prize and when they didn't, they vowed to do better so that they earned more chances. I did notice that when I quietly passed out tickets to students who were completing work, the rest of the class would slowly catch on and settle down. So I definitely need to make following through on the tickets a priority this year.
Something I kind of started last year but never really did much with but definitely plan to change that this year is ClassDojo. I've heard of some teachers projecting it onto their screen while students should be working. That way students can see who is earning points and who is learning points. I know other teachers who just have the sound on and students then know whether someone earned or lost points and start monitoring their behavior and the behavior of their classmates. I like that you can send a code to parents so that they can track their child's behavior. I definitely need to do a better job of documentation and I think this will be a step in the right direction.
That's all I have for managing my high school classes. If you post, make sure you link back to Blog Hoppin'. Also, be sure to check out all the other posts on Blog Hoppin'! People are sharing some really brilliant ideas.
Does anyone have any management tips for high school? I would especially appreciate examples of consequences! For example, how do you address side chatter in a high school classroom?
For my students, I made "Restorative Justice Plans" that students had to fill out when their behavior became an issue. It had a spot for the student to explain what the problem was in their own words, what we had talked about together, and then the student had to come up with a plan to fix the problem themselves. The student had to sign it and it was like a contract between us. I didn't use it all the time, but I want to use it more -- I need to be better about fast-and-hard consequences for students because I let things go for too long.
ReplyDeleteI think the side chatter depends on how much it bothers you and when. During direct instruction is maybe more important than small-group work, etc.
When I had a guest speaker during one of my 9th grade classes, I incidentally sat next to one of my students that tends to have a lot of side chatter and she asked me SO MANY questions as she processed what the speaker was talking about... it was then that a light bulb went off for me -- some of my more verbal students needed that processing time to talk things out, and I had NOT been giving it to them particularly because that class was kind of crazy.
PS. I'm REALLY intrigued by your raffle idea. Do you find that the extrinsic motivation really helps their behavior?
DeleteSince I've been getting more and more involved with our AVID program, I'm learning more and more ways to structure my classes so that they do get those structured talking times. I really do try to allow for turn and talks and such, but it was my first year and a lot of stuff was thrown at me last minute (like ELL students and basic students), so I never really came up with a solid plan. I meant to do something like your justice plans, but again, didn't prioritize it. So that's another thing on the list to focus on this year. I'm hoping with some new organization systems I've been putting into place I can actually follow through on all these hopes and dreams for my classroom!
DeleteI found that the tickets and raffles worked a lot better with my freshmen versus my seniors. The seniors really only got excited about earning bonus points on tests. I think the idea works even better when you're more discriminatory about when you give out tickets. My kids came to expect them every Friday if they shared a success and that didn't really make much difference. But once I figured out that if I only gave one or two people a ticket, suddenly it became a much better tool for management. I found they also really loved stickers and stamps (my seniors too!). So when we did activities, they'd have to check steps or answers with me to earn stickers/stamps. That really got them moving and focused on the task!
Thank you so much for your ideas!