Sunday, May 13, 2012

Behavioral Management via Engagement

There's an easier and more rewarding way to manage students than calling them out, taking away recess time, talking to them one on one, and so on. Simply involve them as much as possible. I'll give you an example.

A couple weeks back, I taught a lesson on interjections. I had several points throughout the lesson where I gave students opportunities to express an exclamatory sentence, read examples of sentences containing interjections with expression, come up to the front of the class, place an interjection on the whiteboard, and read it with expression, and show their sentences to the class after writing them. They were all very preoccupied. So, few students had much time to distract the class from the purpose of the lesson. And, they really seemed to enjoy the activities.

Some classes might be more difficult than others. I've been a substitute teacher for 6th and 7th grade before. They generally tore me apart. Many of the students weren't interested in learning (or at least, not when I was there). Maybe I was missing something important that I learned afterward. I dunno. All I know is that with the class that I had for this school year, as long as I made lessons fun and involving, the lessons went smoothly. I speculate that presenting classes satisfying the criteria of being fun and involving would work for all other grades as well.

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