I am working with Elfrieda Christensen at Spring Creek Middle School. She has another teacher she works with named Mrs. Monk. The classes they teach are sixth and seventh grade CTE courses. The classes are large, and this can be a challenge, but they have worked out some ways to help manage the size.
Classroom Management:
The biggest part of management that I have noticed, is that they divide the classes into two halves to keep things organized. Mrs. Christensen is currently covering the sewing portion of the course, while Mrs. Monk takes the other half of the class and teaches them the Career Guidance portion. This helps a lot. Most of the classes have 33-39 students in them. The school doesn't have quite that many sewing machines, especially if some break. Dividing the class allows them to each help a smaller group of students, and it also allows them to separate some students if necessary.
Discipline:
For the most part, discipline hasn't been too much of a problem. The students tend to work, and not get into arguments or anything. The most Mrs. Christensen has had to do is to tell the students to get back to work. They have always gone back to working rather than arguing with her or causing disruptions. The first day I went, she marked students down points for not bringing their materials to class. They were not able to work on their projects, so they helped other students with theirs.
Teaching Techniques:
Mrs. Christensen has worksheets which the students have her mark off each step of their projects on. This way she can make sure that they are not making mistakes and not getting them corrected, and she doesn't have to grade everything at the end. She has them form a line to talk to her (she doesn't have to come to them) and she grades them on each step, or tells them how to fix what they have done. She also demonstrates the beginning steps of the project for the whole class. This helps them to see what they have to do. However, she doesn't do this for later steps. The students are at so many different points in their projects, that showing them all every step at the same time doesn't help the ones who are behind. Most of the later steps are similar to the early ones as well, so they usually don't need much instruction to follow directions properly.
That was the first seven hours or so. Another blog will be on its way soon.
1 comment:
I'll bet the way the class is taught takes a lot of communication with the two teachers. I also wondered how the students got to the point that discipline isn't needed. Have you asked? Kim as you do your next blogs tell us whether you feel that you could or wouldn't use what you see in your own teaching practice. Full credit.
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