Resource: Incredible Teachers by Carolyn Webster-Stratton, PH D
Chapter 6 & IYT Workshop
Reflection on Engagement and Behaviour (Term 2, Week 3): I am continuing to reflect on the level of engagement and on task / positive behaviour in my class, and what is / isn't working. I feel like we are making small steps increasing both positive behaviour and engagement. Collegiate support and ideas have been critical to this, e.g. Dorinda's Self-Regulation Tools and observing Sue and Dorinda teaching the students.
Other things that are working:
* Noticing..making time to share with students, in detail e.g. I noticed that you looked at me when you said that; I notice you came straight to mat
* Trying to ignore low level distractions/challenges, and focus on those learning
* Having the children demonstrate or lead the class
* Limiting time on the mat with lots of short movement breaks
* Songs: start of day, rhymes to re-engage students during the day
* Consistency, calm and confidence that things will improve
* Whispering when leading the whole class
* Bringing in the fun! Small jokes, funny rhymes, youtube cartoons are providing time to mentally reset and refocus, and reward focus to that point
* Focusing on the learning: going with student comment at times, e.g. a student mentioned going overseas, we viewed the world map and discussed cultures...100% of the class were attentive and many were asking questions.
Incentives
WOW! So much food to inspire me here! While I've often steered toward intrinsic motivation (e.g. encouraging children to self-reflect and feel proud; using priase), I discovered that:
* Incentives can be useful, but only if coupled with social incentives (praise, encouragement).
* Incentives are effective if they have an explicit focus/behaviour which is discussed with students.
* Brainstorming and agreeing incentives with students increases the success of the incentive.
* Incentives are developmentally selected and individual to different children: some children may need an incentive every ten minutes, some may benefit from a daily incentive, or weekly.
* At start, an incentive may be earnt quickly....a teacher will generally make it a little harder each time and gradually remove it, using praise/self reflection instead
* Incentives don't need to be things...I have found that special responsibilities (this also allows student to feel trusted), privileges, sharing success with another class/teacher, phone call home, certificates etc.
In my own class, I am using:
* Incentives with explicit focuses: our marble jar for a good working noise level. Children have already earnt a class party!
* Aiming for a 5 positives to 1 negative with the whole class.
* Maintaining calm (see Ministry Behaviour Training Notes)
* Individual charts/incentives for some e.g. DC reading and JD sitting still
* Kete awards each week and our daily kete bear.
* Phoning / contacting parents to share student progress and work, relaying this to student.
* Maintaining consistency (and following up on) expectations, e.g. LD with his writing
* Lots of talk around taking on challenge that is appropriate for our learning, i.e. not taking the easy road. Similarly, discussing use of different strategies and persistence with some students. See the "Praise Effort" article.
* Identifying and building relationships and strategies for target students (IS, JD, JL, MH, DC)
* See all the points at the top of the page - movement breaks etc
Things I may use in future:
* Individual charts/certificates (see IYT handbook for templates).
* Having a mindset tree and Circle Time on mindset.
* Tic-tac-toe for tidy up time: class gains one space on tic tac toe board if class is tidied within 4 minutes.
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