Interruptions from young children can become a major distraction in the classroom. Check out the following two ideas from teachers of elementary students, which I saw this week on Teaching Channel. Both are brilliantly simple ways to help young students not interrupt the teacher when he/she is working with a small group on a certain task.
The 3 B’s. The teacher has a particular necklace that stays at a back table where focused reading groups take place. When the teacher wears that necklace, the other students are to work on their assignments without interrupting the teacher and students at the back table unless one of the 3 B’s is happening. The 3 B’s are: Barfing, Bleeding, or Burning. Watch how this teacher explains this system in her classroom {subscribers will need to click through to the site to view the videos}:
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Ask Three, Then Me. This first grade teacher has developed a simple strategy for collaboration in the classroom. Students have to ask three other students their question before they ask the teacher. When a student interrupts the teacher with a question, the teacher will simply hold up three fingers, nonverbally reminding them to ask their peers, first. The teacher briefly explains how this plays out in her classroom here:
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One of the most highly searched character-related education topics is how to teach kids respect, according to google searches. It’s the character trait teachers scour the internet to find ideas on how to teach most often. And it’s not difficult to see why– respect has its fingers in almost all classroom management issues. Respect can also include a student’s relationship with oh-so-many: the elderly, the authority, the younger, the environment, animals, and for various races/religions/genders, etc.
And since teachers globally are googling it so often, I thought we’d take a day to highlight a few of the top resources for teaching respect in the classroom I’ve found, to date. Enjoy.
Character Counts Lesson Plan Ideas. This list of 18 lesson plans on respect spans several different grade levels. Lesson ideas range from a focus on showing respect for the non-native student, listening skills, respecting each other, and giving respect to everyday heroes.
35 Activities You Can Do to Learn Respect. Dr. Michele Borba assembled this excellent list of 35 practical activities you can encourage students to do, or do as a class, that encourage respect. Activities include: creating a “recipe” for respect, making a button or bumper sticker with respect’s motto, and engaging in classroom discussions on specific questions.
School Counselor Rob’s Video on Respect. In this 5 minute simple, drawing-style video, a teacher explains practical examples for respecting places, things, and people. Suitable for elementary grades.
Create a Respect Rap. Show students the following short youtube from some elementary students. After you talk about respect and brainstorm what respecting others and ourselves might involve, group students and have them write and perform a rap for the class.
Fearless Lions Respect Video and Rap. {Don’t Miss This One Below! It’s really good!} This 5 minute video would be an excellent lesson starter or quick reminder to your students of what respect should look like. The first two minutes videos a common classroom scenario of disrespect, while the last three minutes shows a well-done rap/music video by a class of older elementary students and their teacher. {You can see just the rap itself, without the first scene, here.}
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Have any other ideas for teaching respect in the classroom? Have you found a lack of respect to be an issue with your students, parents, or co-workers?
How many of the students with whom you regularly interact are disorganized, frequently lose papers, bring many reasons why something is missing, don’t do homework, are physically aggressive, like to entertain, only see part of what is on the page, only do part of the assignment, cannot monitor their own behavior, laugh when they are disciplined, don’t know or use middle-class courtesies, or dislike authority? These, according to Dr. Ruby Payne, author of A Framework for Understanding Poverty, are characteristics of students who live in an impoverished culture.
When I read the checklist of behaviors above, I actually laughed out loud because it aptly described more than half of my students. Obviously, this population commands excessive amounts of my attention during class, but I had no idea that they most likely live in poverty and come to school with skills for surviving in the world of poverty but not the world of middle-class school.
Dr. Payne writes, “One of the reasons it is getting more and more difficult to conduct school as we have in the past is that the students who bring the middle-class culture with them are decreasing in numbers, and the students who bring poverty culture with them are increasing in numbers.”
I bring a middle-class culture to my classroom and expect middle-class behaviors and attitudes from my students. After all, that is what I know, but this leaves around half my students struggling to survive. How can I relate to them? How do I help them succeed in this foreign world?
The book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, is an excellent starting point for answering these vital questions and happens to be the best professional book I have ever read. Ruby Payne’s website, aha Process, also includes a plethora of information, resources and professional development opportunities for teachers and community leaders who work with students who come from poverty. In the following video clip Dr. Payne and Rita Pierson demonstrate the different voices with which students speak.
Reaching the impoverished is vital to the success of the schools in my area. How about you? What population in your area is hard to reach, hard to teach? What is your school doing to reach them?
I have a thing for the naughty kids, the ones who curse and spit and do the exact opposite of what successful students are required to do.
I like the kids who frequent the office, refuse help, and show some fight.
Those kids make me smile. However, those kids drive most crazy.
Tough kids keep you from hitting your grove. They consume time and energy and often negatively impact the learning of others.
And if we are honest, it’s easy to want to write-off kids who drive you crazy, but resist the urge. Instead, I challenge you to follow these four steps to help you begin a positive relationship with that tough kid in your class.
Find the good. Dig. Fine, dig deep, really deep, and search for good. It’s buried underneath years of attitude and most likely learning problems, but find something good about this kid. Hold onto it. Guard it, and when you feel like giving up, keep coming back to the sliver of good.
Show others the good. Tough kids need a support network and so do you. After you find the good in your tough student, share it with others. Tell colleagues about the time he did the right thing or showed compassion. Focus on his sense of humor or his art skills, and allow this student to shine in a positive light. Help others find a reason to like this student so later when you are frustrated, they can remind you.
Connect on a personal level, but don’t take it personal. Tough kids act out, and here’s a secret. It’s rarely about the teacher. Try not to personalize poor behavior. You cannot allow talking back or slamming books to ruin a relationship.
Review short and simple behavior expectations frequently. Kids don’t need lectures twice every class period. They need short reminders in a matter-of-fact tone.
What about you? What are some tips and tricks you’ve seen succeed when working with tough kids?
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Appointment Clock. An Appointment Clock is a classroom management tool that teachers can use when students will be working in pairs. Appointment Clocks save valuable class time, empower kids to make meaningful choices, ensure that students have the opportunity to work with a variety of classmates, and facilitate smooth transitions. Here’s how [...]
Teaching Tip {And-It’s-Not-Even-a-Tuesday}: Energizers. Looking for some fresh ideas for classroom energizers? Need an activity that refocuses your students and provides a fun way to get out some of that extra energy that seems to be coming between them and their math problems? Consider the following several ideas from an excellent resource called Responsive Classroom. [...]
Under the approach I mentioned in Part 1 of this post, rather than administer rewards and punishments to control student behavior, I need to bring my kids together, much as a basketball coach does during a time-out. I need to call attention to what I see happening, explain why I believe that behavior to be [...]
A Note from the Editor: This is an exciting time for our contributor, Steve Reifman. Steve has two new books coming out this month. Chase Against Time, the first installment in his Chase Manning Mystery Series for readers 8-12, comes out March 15th. Each book in the series features a single-day, real-time mystery thriller that occurs [...]
Organization is important to effectiveness in the classroom, and there’s no place that seems to gather the mess like a teacher’s desk. Pens and broken pencils. A parent’s note that came with Johnny last Tuesday. A flier about the upcoming bake sale. Lesson plans and worksheet copies. And piles of this. And piles of that. [...]
We talk lots about positive classroom management around My Teachers Lounge, because, let’s face it, if your classroom is out of control, then learning becomes about as fictional as a flying unicorn. And so often, our default as teachers {and as parents!} is to LECTURE when the class begins to spiral into bad behavior. We [...]
