
Poor Grumpy Cat, this picture serves no purpose other than I am sure this is how my face looks rather regularly! And I found it rather amusing.
Recently I was very lucky to watch a visiting teacher in my prac classroom, to cut to the point she was sensational!! I felt so fortunate to witness her brilliance I had to send her an e-mail thanking her. The funny thing was this amazing teacher in my eyes, had been having a really tough week in her own class, of which I obviously had no idea about, and she was so thankful for my acknowledgement. It just goes to show even the brilliant teachers have tough days and a kind word goes a long way.
I thought I would share with you some of the very simple tips she used so get a rather ‘tough’ grade one class (as confirmed by the teachers that avoid the class at all costs), under control.
Step One – The children were lined up outside, making a noise…let’s call our brilliant teacher Mrs B… Mrs B, quietly walked up and down the line, asking the students “can you tell me where your hat goes?” “can you show me what voice we use?” “can you show me what a straight line looks like?”… Well, the poor love could see quickly that this was not working, so she dropped that idea, grabbed a loud bell rang it and said “new teacher new rules”. SILENCE.
Still outside Mrs B thanked the students, then explained to them, she was the sessions new teacher and she was “SOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!!! TO BE TAKING THIS CLASS” …whisper voice… “now I am your new teacher for the session and I come with new rules (Mrs B. shakes a small stick of bells, and introduces her ‘mime stick’) “this is my mime stick when I make this sound (rattle) you freeze like a mime artist trapped in a box, show me your mime face” (the faces were hysterical and adorable), and the students were hooked she was excited to teach them and fun!
The students quietly moved indoors and found their desks…The fun started again with one of the ‘regular’s’ (a little love that loves to test every last nerve you have). Mrs B straight away called his name ….let’s call him ‘Poppet’ for the sake of the story… “Poppet, I am making you, your own box on the board just for you!” Poppet was thrilled and smiled from ear to ear. Mrs B drew a box, smiley face one side, sad face on the other, for every, inappropriate thing Poppet did he received 1 tick. Poppet was soon up to six ticks rather quickly, and you could see Mrs B was waiting to catch a good tick, she finally got her moment when Poppet sat up straight “Excellent, Poppet you are so straight I am giving you 2 smiley ticks”. Poppet was won over, he still earn’t more sad ticks, but the behaviour was shorter than usual and back on track quicker and Mrs B ensured that the ticks stayed as close to level as possible catching him being good as often as she could.
Reading this simple explanation you might think, well that was Okay, it doesn’t sound that amazing. And by description, it might sound very basic, but to watch such simple techniques and the calm that came over the kids was fantastic. So thank you Mrs B!
Oh, I almost forgot I also saw a lovely TA play a game of freeze whilst moving kids in their lines from one class to another, both the kids and the TA were loving the game and the kids moved quietly through the school, what more could you ask for!
As this post has a very definite behaviour management feel, I will also share just a handful of great looking behaviour management tips I have found out in the world wide web.
How To Improve Classroom Behavior In One Lesson (tempting title, I had to read this one)
Top 5 Behaviour Management Strategies (yes I know Behaviour is spelt differently in my two links, I have copied the link title and not used my own spelling, for the record behaviour is my choice of spelling)
Behaviour Management Strategies for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (this one is a handy little PDF document)
Till next Time 🙂 x
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