education blog

The end of the semester has come – I cannot believe it went by so fast! Student teaching has been a great experience, and I think this case study has helped me get a closer look into a specific behavior management problem, which as been very helpful and taught me many things.

My student slowly began to respond to a few of my interventions, but I could see how I could definitely tweak them to match her personality more and to help her in a more effective way. I think a type of reward system could have been put in place for her behavior on the carpet. I don’t want this to be a bribe, but it would be something to remind her why she should make good choices on the carpet and how this positively makes her feel.

I think this would work better because the student did sometimes respond positively to praise. I tried to point out all of the times she was doing a great job on the carpet, which seemed to make her continue the behavior, if only for a short period of time. She also got a purple falcon one time for helping a classmate and she was absolutely beaming. She can definitely be a very proud individual and I think there must be a way for her to see that all of the time.

Although I have really been at wits end with the child through most of the semester, through the disruptions, mocking, tantrums, and often disrespectful behavior, I know that in some way I am touching her life and in those moments when I was one on one with her, she was a really nice little girl. On my last day she kept giving me hugs and saying she was going to miss me, so in some way I suppose I touched her life. I hope this is true, and I hope she can find the means to prosper because she has a good heart and has a lot of potential. I have enjoyed getting to know her, and will in some ways miss her now that the experience is over.

There were a few articles I was leaning towards, but I decided that rules, praise, ignoring, and reprimands would be most beneficial for me. I think classroom management in the kindergarten classroom as a whole has been the most challenging aspect of student teaching for me. I have made a lot of growth, but I think this article was really helpful in even more strategies I could use.

When reading, I kept comparing it to my classroom. I have noticed how effective praise is in my classroom, and I was glad it was included in a positive light in the article. From reading it, I found new ways to praise my students for appropriate behavior. I also will try to phrase negative statements differently, such as telling the student why I am asking them to stop a certain behavior and then asking them to please “make a good choice” or “be respectful”. It is so many little things you wouldn’t think of…how the different phrasing of statements can be so important.

I also am still finding the balance between when to reprimand a child, and when to ignore them. I think this is a hard line to draw (at least for me anyway) but I think I’m slowly figuring it out. I also like when the article talked about reprimanding kids to the side in front of the class – I’ve always though this is a good way and I have started to try that with my case study student. There hasn’t been a tremendous amount of progress, but I think I am going to keep trying and see what happens.

I want to stick with teaching younger grades, because as the article says, praise works best for them!

Monitoring my specific student in a sea of 20 other students is becoming increasingly more difficult, and honestly myself and my CT and TA are at wits end with this student. I feel like I try everything with her. She is rude to everyone and very disobedient all of the time. She can’t sit still and will mock us if we reprimand her. She is on a yellow falcon everyday (and often should be on red, which is a phone call home). I have tried a few different techniques with her, but a behavior chart just won’t work and we have started to take away recess time and she just throws tantrums.

I don’t know what the answer is. She is a good candidate for a behavior management case, but very hard to deal with in the classroom. She also picks fights with a lot of the students and thus makes these students a behavior problem as well.

I’m trying to keep notes and checklists for her, but it all gets hard to keep up with and track of among the millions of other things I have to do and remember for student teaching. I know I should focus on each student as individuals, so I feel as if it should be easier, but it is proving to be rather difficult. Time is just the issue.

When scanning this article, I saw disruptive behavior and went straight for this part first. I was reading it and just kept confirming in my head that everything the article was saying, is what my case study does. She talks constantly, gets out of her seat always for no reason, moves around on the carpet, and does not follow directions or requests from teachers. It was also interesting to read the bit about passive noncompliance, direct defiance, simple refusal, and negotiation because she does all four of these at different times in the day. I think read about inattentiveness and hyperactivity, which all fit this student. My case study does every single thing on the list for signs of hyperactivity: she constantly is disruptive and off task, she cannot sit still in one place, she has immature behavior, she does not have any true friends in the class, she always offers to help us with everything, and she will erase her paper several times because she doesn’t think it looks right or she will arrange the crayons/markers until she thinks they are perfect. She is the perfect example, and had gone on medicine for ADHD, but her mom has decided to take her off of it, so it is another struggle we are continuing to deal with in the classroom.

When reading about the solutions to these behavior management problems, I feel like myself and my CTs do some of the same things, but they never work. She does get a lot of praise when she is doing the right thing (which is rare) but also gets reprimanded. I have often tried to ignore the behavior, but she will just keep on doing it. The hyperactivity part also said it helps if there is a set routine and that expectations of behavior are clearly stated – we do that everyday and go above and beyond for her. I’m constantly having to remind her of what she should be doing/what all of the other students are doing around her. It is quite frustrating, and I just do not know what to do. It seems all of these suggestions are great, but I can’t see them working. She gets notes sent home every other day almost, and rarely gets them signed and I think my teacher has taken action to get more involvement from the assistant principal to reinforce this negative behavior and her not showing the notes to her mother.

I think this article gave a lot of good points and suggestions and definitely was something I am seeing and can relate to in my classroom. It would be a good resource to keep and refer back to for other students in the future as well as for my case study.

I feel like I am really struggling with getting everything together for this project on top of everything else I have going on with student teaching. I have decided to use the check list method and note taking. I already take notes on a lot of my students and am trying to focus on my project student, but it is hard when I have so many others to account for.

My student has a hard time with calling out and constantly disrupting. I think keeping track of how many times she calls out will be beneficial and at what point she is to “pull a falcon” (our discipline system). She got tested on thursday for ADHD and it was positive so after two years (she’s repeating kindergarten), she is finally going on medication.

I got to see the sheet my teacher was required to fill out for the doctor about her behavior in school. We sort of filled it out together and it was shocking the amount of things on the page that she does “very often”. I am interested to see if the medicine will help.

I have also collected a lot of background knowledge and tried to have side conversations with the student. I know she lives with a young mother and some cousins I think. She gets frustrated easily with her school work, and is one of our lowest students, but during free centers friday I was able to make her laugh, which was refreshing. Half the time she is upset in class or arguing about something. She is such a handful and will be my biggest challenge in student teaching I believe. I hope this project will start to flow more naturally as I will have to invest a lot of time and effort into her as it is.

This chapter was very interesting to me because it deals with a lot of what I see in my classroom. As I was reading, I could relate almost everything it was saying to a few students in my classroom, especially the one I chose for my case study. I think the strategies the chapter gave for recording data about certain students is a big help for the project. I can see how I could easily use tally marks when my particular student calls out or is off task. I can also see this working for a few other students in my classroom.

My teacher uses the positive praise a lot in the classroom and I have definitely been trying it more recently. With my particular student, my teacher makes a lot of “deals” with her and it seems that it effects her the most if she gets recess or center time taken away for misbehaving. She gets the most upset. I have had many conversations with my teacher about what to do about this student and her calling out and not listening – although it seems like such trivial things, the only thing that often works is threatening taking away these things. Positive reinforcement works sometimes, but these are the most effect. I know that has rarely anything to do from an educational aspect, but it seems to be the only thing that works for her.

I liked the idea of the self management or self-evaluation systems, but I don’t know how well that would work for Kindergartners. I feel like that may be most effective for older students. I think the self-managed free-token response-cost strategy could be a really effective tool, but I can see it just getting pushed aside and ignored if tried to be used on my student I don’t think she would use it correctly. I think all of these are great tools, but wonder how they could be adapted for a Kindergarten student.

Overall, I thought this chapter was helpful and related a lot to what I actually see in my classroom, which was beneficial to read.

In my classroom, my CT manages the classroom through a lot of positive reinforcement. She uses a lot of praise to students who are doing well, who are always doing well, and will often point out students with challenging behavior when they are doing something they are supposed to be doing. There are a few students who have more behavioral problems than others, and the day can get quite hectic, but I think my CT does a really good job managing them and trying to control their behavior.

We have a school wide behavior management system and students “pull falcons” if they are misbehaving and get purple falcons if they are showing exceptional behavior. If the students do not pull a falcon all week, in our classroom, they get to go to the treasure box. some students have more chances than others, which is a good example of behavior management differentiation. She also gives students a few more chances and warnings than others to pull falcons. As a class, she’ll make overall deals with the students. If they have a phenomenal day they may be able to watch a video at rest or have a few extra minutes outside – this holds them all accountable for each other. they also have a system of “filling the bucket” where they have two buckets, one with marbles and the other empty and when people do nice things, they put marbles in the empty one, and when the students do things to empty their bucket, they put them back. when they transfer all the marbles to the original empty bucket, then they get a celebration. There are just little things my teacher differentiates for and class things she does. I think overall, praise is such a powerful tool in this classroom and she uses it very effectively everyday.

When I was reading this article, I really caught myself agreeing with every section and making a connection to what I see implemented in my Kindergarten classroom. I think one of my major beliefs in managing a classroom is creating a sense of community and thus creating the mutual respect between myself and the children. I feel like this would in tern facilitate more friendships and a better functioning classroom. I also think collaboration is a huge part of the classroom management, especially when referring to inclusion. It is important to get the help from others and talk about ideas or things that are going on.

The last chunk of the article is about the support of positive behavior. This was the main part that I definitely see in my classroom. My teacher is constantly saying “I like how…” and “I see ____ is doing a good job” or “I see that ____ is ready” and she also differentiates for different children. When those who have behavior management problems are doing the right thing she goes above and beyond to praise them. I was advised to try this approach in my lessons and saw a huge improvement for how the class was controlled and paid attention. My school also has a school-wide use of positive supports and a discipline policy.

In this article I mainly agreed with the positive reinforcement and strong sense of classroom community. I think these are two of the most important things I will use in creating my classroom environment in the future.

I know that I have said it already, but I really like this book. Some of the things we read for methods courses are useful, but do not engage me like this book does. It is real life, and that is what I really enjoy about it. I feel like everything Collins writes is something I can picture happening or even relate it to my own classroom. I love that she takes time to write out mini lessons in depth and then gives even more ideas with short summaries. I like how she includes time for behavior management and how the little side activities/talks she does with children only take a few minutes. I also love how she includes random funny stories that she has experienced and encountered (such as the apple in the book bin) because I feel like I can relate to these as a teacher and that some day I may go through these same things.

Beyond that, I love how she describes literacy instruction. She gives ideas and backs them up with examples, other things she has seen to support such ideas, and other relevant information. For example, I really love the personal book bin idea and think it would be great to implement this when I teach…but then she also says that she has seen other teachers call it something different and describes the organization of the bins in the classroom – such small but important and practical information!  The book just gives me a wide variety of quick tips and tools I am sure to use when I teach (both in the spring and years to come).

She does a great job of just laying out the classroom picture and transitioning her topics, from preassessments, just right reading, knowing your readers, and moving into helping readers figure out text and implementations in the classroom. I have to say that I have not yet finished reading all of the final chapters, but this is a book I could see myself reading on my own in my bed before I go to sleep as a teacher to pull ideas from and grow in my teaching, so I will definitely be finishing up the final chapters!

I thought this chapter was interesting and offered a lot of good support and advice. I like how it brought out that literature should be “socio-critical” and that literacy in itself is socially constructed. With that in mind, I know that as a teacher I need be aware that my own beliefs may effect the way I teach, but to be as unbiased as possible. I think motivation is such a key in getting students to read. I also think that I personally anyway want my students to be intrinsically motivated and read for the love of it. This brings up the issue of things like accelerated reader – I was surprised that some children are motivated by this. By that I mean that obviously some kids (like I was) are motivated to read in order to be able to pass the tests, but does that develop a love for reading? I think accelerated reader can easily turn students off from reading. It is a tough call to figure out how to get students reading. I like how the chapter focuses on student interest because I truly believe that is the one true way to get struggling readers to become interested in reading and to become an “expert”.

I think with struggling readers or writers, one mistake I make is always being willing to help to the point where I tell them the right word. I guess it is hard for me to distinguish when is the right time to tell them a word or spell out a word for them and when I should let them do it on their own, especially if they are not getting it. But maybe I jump in too quickly? I think it will just be something that develops in time.

I liked seeing the literacy reform programs described, and I liked the four blocks model. This made sense to me. I also liked the “Guiding Principles for Literacy” box at the end of the chapter. I can clearly see how all of these add up to an inquiry, interest motivated, reader/writer workshop, and socio-critical picture of literacy instruction in the classroom.