|
So I use a stoplight graphic as a visible behavior gauge, and last Wednesday was my roughest day of the first week, as far as behavior/personalities went, with only one class out of six getting a green. This week, only two didn't!
And my sixth graders, the ones I was warned would give me the most pushback from hating music last year, haven't strayed from green, save for one little pocket of assholes in the Monday morning class, which I've only gotten to see once, for 15 minutes, on the first day of school (assembly cut the class short, and Labor Day eliminated it this week.)
The fourth graders have been acing everything in regards to both behavior and content as well! They're a bit behind on actual concept comprehension, due to inconsistent teachers from previous years, but they've been trying everything I ask, and most of them are attempting to decipher any challenges I throw at them. That last point is especially important to me, because that's a rather disturbing personality trend I've been noticing more and more, the younger the kids are: A lot of them have been so sheltered from actually experiencing failure and real difficulty, that they shy away from attempting things that they aren't absolutely certain of. That's normal to a certain extent in most people, but I've been noticing kids up to adults about my age that just immediately give up at everything. Instead of "I'll work on it/I'll figure that out later," it's "Iunno. this is stupid."
Anyway, enough self-righteousness. I am so thrilled that the majority of my kids (even a few of the ones I've been particularly stern with) seem to like me and my class more than what I was set up to expect.
Also, if anyone's wondering about the stoplight behavior gauge:
Green indicates that everyone is giving full effort, listening well, being safe/kind, generally following the expectations for the situation.
Yellow alerts the class that a lot of people have stopped following the expectations for what we're doing, and it's dragging the class down. They need to check what they're doing, and see which of their many neighbors are being a good example still. (I usually don't move it to yellow until at least a third to a half of the class is being too unruly to proceed.)
Red is when everyone/virtually everyone is off-task, and refusing to adhere to expectations. And I mean it has to actually be everyone or all but one person. This basically never happens after kindergarten, although I did see it happen for first grade ONCE.
If the kids manage to end the class on green (either by staying there, or by fixing whatever the yellow problem was), they get a green sticker. Or a red or yellow. If they get a certain amount of green stickers on the class chart, they get a party day. However, only greens can count toward the party day. Each yellow the class gets has to be covered up with a green later on, and reds have to be covered up twice (with greens, not yellows). Some degree of modification gets applied to each class as I get familiar with how completely bonkers they go in which ways. Like I've got all my tiny kids at the very end of the day, when they're at their squirrelliest, and if I get a class with four assholes in it, they can manage to derail half of the students in the class simply through proximity. So my choices end up being to punish the whole class for the four assholes (not gonna happen), adjust the expectations and basically do my best to shut the assholes down until they participate, or exclude them altogether (very reluctant, unless there's a safety issue).
|
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
