Procedures are a critical component of ensuring students have consistency, understand how our routines work and translate into efficiency within the classroom. According to Harry Wong’s theory of classroom management, “Ineffective teachers begin the first day of school attempting to teach a subject and spend the rest of the school year running after the students. Effective teachers spend most of the first two weeks of the school year teaching students to follow classroom procedures” (The First Days of School). Therefore, I spent a lot of time teaching students effective turn and talk procedures, using agree/disagree signals, calling attention from a count down from 5, and silent signals (for the bathroom, drink of water, tissue, and pencil) the first few weeks of school. This video shows how these procedures have culminated after two months of repetition. According to Harry Wong’s research in effective classroom management, teachers should use a three-step approach for teaching classroom procedures. This includes explaining, rehearsing, and reinforcing (repetition) until students have it be a habit or routine (The First Days of School). Therefore, this video shows this in practice after being on stage three of his approach.
During morning meeting, students have incorporated 4 main procedures. First, students do a turn and talk. When this was first taught, I held students accountable to turning their bodies, facing their partners, looking them in the eye, and talking to them in order to teach social skills. Second, I wanted to ensure students were talking about the topic and not something completely off topic. This was modeled by showing that we can ask questions about the topic that might get us off topic but we cannot talk about anything completely off topic. The video shows that the majority of the class is doing this. At 1:20 you can see the girls in the front turning their bodies and engaging in conversation and the boys in the back turning their bodies and talking. However, three of the boys in the back of the room were not facing each other but still engaging in a conversation. I think for the small percentage of my class who need to work on the actions of the procedure, I will need to work on Wong’s second step of rehearsing under my supervision. The other part of the turn and talk (ensuring students are talking about the topic) is an area I still need to work on. When I am engaging in a turn and talk with students, it is difficult for me to be sure that 100% of students are on topic. Therefore, a strategy I might use for next time during the share is to have students share what their partner said so they are listening to each other and staying on topic.
The second procedure I implemented from the first day is an attention getter. I do a countdown from 5 to get students’ attention. The expectation is that by the time I reach 1, all students have their voices off, their bodies are frozen, and eyes are on me. At 2:45 you can see me doing the countdown. As I start on 5, students are already turning their bodies to face me, their voices are turning off, and their bodies are frozen. As I continue to talk some students are looking elsewhere but may still be engaged in what I am saying. I anticipate this being in Wong’s third step of reinforcing. Keeping eye contact with the speaker even after the countdown from 5 is important to show listening skills. Therefore, it is something I will continue to reteach, rehearse, and practice until it becomes routine. In order to reteach “eyes on me” I can connect a lesson we have already done in Second-Step about what active listening looks like to how students are showing me that they are listening with eye contact. I can have an accountability slip where they check-mark the amount of times a day they are not only keeping their eyes on me, but their eyes on a speaker in general.
The third procedure this video highlighted is using agree/disagree signals. Rather than yelling out that something excited them or they don’t like a certain food, students are encouraged to use silent signals. This also shows that they are actively listening since they have to form opinions based on what someone else said. Around 2:50 you can see me prepping the class to use silent signals when others are sharing. At the beginning, the majority of the students were doing the silent signal. Near the end, nearly no one was doing it anymore. Silent signals is in stage two of Wong’s three step approach for teaching classroom procedures. It is a procedure that needs to be rehearsed and practiced underneath my supervision. Students still need to be reminded to use it (2:50) and 100% of students are not consistently using it. In order to revise this procedure, I will continue to remind students to use silent signals at the beginning of something I want them to be actively listening to. In the beginning, if I don’t see 100% of students showing a silent signal, I will have the class retry the procedure until it becomes innate to doing it. I can also use an accountability buddy system by assigning each student a buddy and that buddy is responsible for making sure their partner is giving a silent signal.
The last procedure that was slightly evident in the video was silent hand signals for important things that might be common throughout the day (bathroom, water, tissue, and pencil). At 1:41 you can see the student is turning and talking to me give a two fingers crossed sign to me even though he is talking to me. He knew to use a silent signal to ask me to go to the bathroom rather than saying it outloud. While this video shows limited evidence of this procedure, it is something I continually work on throughout the day. 60% of my class is able to use the silent signals and patiently wait until I give them a nod yes or no for what they need. There is still 40% of the class that is in stage two of rehearsing and part of stage one of explaining. To reteach this procedure with 40% of those students, I will explain why we use silent signals (provides a flow in the classroom, no interruptions, and efficiency). Once they understand, every time they verbally ask me to do one of those procedures I will not respond until they show me a silent signal. That way, under my supervision (phase two/rehearse) it will eventually become routine.
Procedures are really working well for you and it is obvious in this video and in your classroom every time I visit. That work you put in up front and continue to do is really worth it!
ReplyDeleteSide note, do try to get the video embedded here. Whatever barriers you were having to doing so are the same barriers you're likely going to have to sort out with the video requirements for the edTPA. Better to sort them out now so it's not a stressor then.