Case study power point

View more presentations from atoone.

">

Mike goes to Washington

So are our class prepares for our of so exciting trip to Washington, D.C. Mike has become VERY excited about the trip and very interested in what we are going to see when we go. He has checked out a book on Washington from the library and every time he turns to a new page he looks for either myself or the other teacher to show and ask if we are going to get to see this in Washington which means that he has been doing really well in social studies and he has been "reading" during reading time (he is reading the captions in the book but mostly just looking at the pictures... not the most stimulating reading but he is looking at a book and reading short captions). However, when it comes to his focus in math and writing - he is still struggling. The strategies that we are using (him getting up and the timer) are working pretty well but it's gotten to the point to where it is less self motivated and more teacher motiviated. When we see him getting frustrated and zoning out we implement the strategies where as a few weeks ago it was Mike that was doing it which makes me think that we need to find a newer strategy for him because he has become accustomed and familiar with the strategies that are being used now.

Mike's social behavior seems to be improving in the sense that there are fewer outbursts because he has a way to express his issues with other students all the time (the journal) and he is still talking to his friends about animated tv shows/books but other students still need to approach him - he rarely approaches them to talk to them on his own. He has become less withdrawn but he still has a ways to go to really come out of his shell and I fear that he will just be getting out of his shell at the end of the year and then go right back to the way that he was at the beginning of the year when he reaches middle school - hopefully that won't happen though!

Effective Classroom Management

I read the article titled "Effective Classroom Management: Teacher Preparation and Professional Development." This semester I have really focused on classroom management and the importance of it. At the beginning of the semester, I had a difficult time getting the class to listen to me and a difficult time getting lessons completed because the students would not listen to me. This created a problem for myself since I couldn't teach the lessons, the students that wanted to listen because they became frustrated during the lesson with the other students that were not listening, and for the students that were not listening because they were not getting what they needed to out of the lesson. My teacher gave me a few articles about classroom management and I have really benefited from the suggestions that I have read over the past few months.

I really liked the section about class management preparation - especially when it talked about new teachers. It is so true that newer teachers have a much more difficult time when it comes to classroom management. The article talks about how as a younger and less experienced teacher, the first response to a student that is disruptive in the classroom is to send them out - however, the students that are most likely disrupting the classroom are the students that really need to be in the classroom for instruction. Teachers that have been prepared for these types of behaviors and have the training and instruction on how to handle these situations will have a better way of handling the conflict and both the students and the teachers will benefit from this.

It has been very difficult learning how to manage my classroom and I feel that I have recently grasped it in my classroom - however, that took about 1 or 2 months to do so. In my own classroom, that's just too much time to spend getting the class under control and too much instructional time wasted. I would really like to do more research about various management strategies so that I can be prepared for my own classroom next year!