My Final Single Day Visit!

Today was the 6^th and final day of my day-a-week prac visits. It was also my first experience at teaching an official lesson! Luckily, it went better than I expected and the kindergartens exceeded my expectations. I did not go crazy attempting to manage the class and for this I can only thank the incredibly useful tips I have learnt from university. Below are the strategies I employed for classroom management:

•  I began the lesson with a review of the classroom rules which were in full view for the students to see throughout the lesson 
• Any students who were being disruptive were asked to sit elsewhere
• When sending students back to their seats, they were sent off in small groups at a time rather than the whole class transitioning together
•  Positive appraisals were given for any good work or behaviour

 Rudolph Dreiker developed a model which outlines the four outcomes of student behaviour – attention seeking, power, revenge and escape (Konza, Grainger, & Bradshaw, 2004) . Even when I am not teaching a lesson, I still find myself getting caught up trying to deal with these behaviours effectively. Below are Dreiker’s suggestions for appropriately responding to these behaviours:

-        Always ignore attention seeking behaviour

-        Do not engage in power struggles

-        Don’t allow yourself to be upset by students wanting revenge. Instead, find a way to convince them that they can belong if they interact positively with other students.

-        Avoid feeling as though a student is “helpless” and encourage any positive efforts. 

I did not have any major issues when doing my lesson today, but when I have taken on small groups I have found it a struggle to follow these suggestions. I acknowledge that this is something I need to work on and I believe it can only come with experience. We are all going to make mistakes when starting out, but it’s a matter of learning from them and doing the research to better yourself professionally. I cannot wait until the day I master these skills!

We won't always have a classroom that looks like this...But we can try!

References

Konza, D., Grainger, J., & Bradshaw, K. (2004). Existing models of behaviour management. In  Classroom Management: A Survival Guide (pp. 79-100). Social Science Press.