Wynton Marsalis did an interview with Colbert recently. I think Colbert is really, really funny (I just love his deadpan schtick) and I love Marsalis’s understated way of putting things that are really quite wise. My favorite parts of this clip are the “duet” at the end and also what Marsalis has to say about “winning” at jazz.
As I was looking through the IWB Challenge I happened across the SMART Notebook Lesson and Activity Toolkit. This is a downloadable set of gallery items which DRAMATICALLY expand the functionality of your SMART Notebooks. There is an activity for playing a memory-style tile game, matching, sorting and all kinds of activities that provide instant feedback on right or wrong answers to your students. I still wish SMARTTech would get on board with something as simple and useful as Promethean’s containers, but I am really excited about the possibilities provided by the Lesson and Activity Toolkit.
I’m also embarrassed to admit I only JUST figured out that I can add my own objects to the gallery. It’s too bad it took me so long to catch on, but just think how much easier my life just got!
In the past five years I have taught a great variety of ages (pre-K through 12th grade) in a variety of locations from an upper class high school in the suburbs to a rural middle school to my current location at a preschool serving at-risk children in an urban setting. Through all of these different experiences I have learned tons about teaching and music and children, but mostly I have learned that the most important element in the success or failure of my classroom is classroom management.
It’s no secret that it doesn’t matter how much you know or how brilliantly you communicate it if you can’t get the kids to shut up and listen. Even though the motivation of misbehavior varies widely between students of different ages and the effectiveness of various punishers or reinforcers also varies, there is one motto that seems to apply to every age of kid: Have a system, work the system.
It sometimes surprises me how many of my colleagues throughout the years have struggled with discipline in their classrooms and yet do not have an explicit classroom management system. By “explicit system” I mean a specific set of rules paired with a specific set of consequences. It is a psychological fact (as much as anything in psychology can be classified as a ‘fact’ I suppose) that elementary and some middle school students see “the rules” as written in stone and delivered from on high. You and I know that “don’t chew gum” is an arbitrary regulation that we invented and we can just as easily bypass, but the children do not necessarily know that! If you have a set of rules and you stick to them, following them with a consistent set of consequences you can maintain the illusion that you are all subject to some sort of higher power. This is an excellent classroom management technique because it puts an end to arguments, negative feelings directed at you and complaints that things are not fair. It is in your best interest as a teacher of young children to promote the illusion that the rules are the rules and the consequences are the consequences, it is not up to you.
Some middle school and almost all high school students are too clever (or morally developed) to fall for this trick, of course. Even so, if you have an explicit, fair, consistent system adolescents and teenagers will respond to it. There’s nothing worse to an adolescent student than the perception that discipline is applied unfairly or inconsistently. Teenagers will, in general, respond positively to rules if they make sense and are applied fairly. Once again it is in your best interest to have a system, work the system.
Teaching preschool as I do I like 123 Magic for Teachers. It is simple, and I strongly agree with the idea that behavior management should be implemented without emotion and with as little talking as possible. I have learned first hand while I was teaching middle school band that yelling, begging and pleading are not only ineffective they are also damaging to the classroom community. There are a million and one effective classroom management strategies out there and every individual has to find one that suits her personality. The important thing is to establish specific rules and pair them with specific consequences, then work through those consequences as misbehavior dictates. Promote the illusion that you are all subject to a higher moral authority that imposes “the rules” and demands “the consequences” when they are broken.
I put off the IWB week 3 challenge for awhile first of all because I had a lot going on and second of all because I didn’t know how to do transparency and I thought it might take some effort to figure out. I was wrong, it’s extremely simple and wonderful to be able to remove that pesky white space from around images!!
I am recycling the Transportation notebook I posted below as my week three challenge file. Transparency is a wonderful, useful tool in the software!
I have expanded my Country Crossing idea into a larger Transportation SMART Notebook. I am still working on it and brainstorming to add some more pages, but i haven’t posted in awhile so I though I better share something!
