Sunday, October 7, 2012

Bode Week 6

     This week I wanted to focus on the discipline system my mentor teacher uses in the classroom, which I believe other classrooms in the school use. Each time a child misbehaves, not listening, not following directions, etc you give the child a check next to their name which the child should know you are doing it. If the child gets 4 checks in one day then they have to move their card from green to yellow, if they get about 6 or 8 they have to move their card to red. At the end of the week my teacher adds up all the checks they got that week and the number of checks a child got means that that’s the number of minutes you have to sit out during choice time. This really gets to the kids when they don’t get to start playing right away like some of their classmates do if they got none. What I keep noticing is happening now is that every week it’s the same two children who have to sit out for like 15 to 20 minutes of choice time because they continuously are misbehaving in class. Each week we sit down with them and discuss why they had to sit out for so long and what they need to do next week so they don’t miss choice time.
I believe what’s important here is that maybe their needs to be an additional consequence if the students got that many checks, like they cant participate in choice time at all or maybe in the middle of the week we need to do a “check update” so students know how many checks they have. Some students I think forget how many checks they have and they forget that choice time is being taken away when they keep misbehaving. These students are only first graders so you can not expect them to remember yet that the checks they are getting at the beginning of the week won’t hurt them that day but instead at the end of the week so the consequence may not be making a big impact on them. If you have the same students getting that many checks and it’s the same students over and over again you’re telling to “please stop talking to your friend” or “pay attention when the teacher is talking” what needs to happen in order for them to understand? Because right now I feel that the consequence at the end of the week isn’t making an impact on them yet, then again maybe it is because it is still the beginning of the year and they will catch on after many weeks of choice time being taken away. This will be something I want to watch as the weeks go by, is the strategy my teacher is doing building self-responsibility? It’s making me contemplate what kind of discipline system I want to put in my own classroom. I feel it should have the max effectiveness and push for student responsibility growth and less need to discipline or raise your voice at those not listening. 

1 comment:

  1. You are making good observations; my general reaction is to encourage you to reiterate / justify the rules and routines and expectations with your students; this way, when you try to get them back on task, they will understand why, as opposed to thinking about their off task behavior in terms of "checks", which, to them, probably mean very little.

    ReplyDelete