Module 3

The first little section of Chapter 7 really resonated with me with the story of the teacher playing a game with her students and it getting out of hand.  That has happened to me a few times within my classroom and each time, I remember that I need to work more rules and guidelines into what I am doing and to keep focusing on the task at hand.  Moving on this chapter discusses a lot of the factors surrounding conditioning.  All the terminology is somewhat confusing but I understand and remember learning about Pavlov’s experiment.  People have reactions like this everyday and I think in the classroom there are things that we do so frequently that the kids are conditioned to act a certain way.  When the lights flick on and off it’s cleanup time, and without fail there are a few kids who groan aloud.  I think sometimes they do it unintentionally; it’s just a reaction.  We also like to use positive reinforcement with the children.  They often react in a more favorable way if we reinforce behaviors and actions in a positive way versus maybe removing something that is causing an issue.  I hate to be that teacher but on occasion you have to use a punishment or consequence to stop an immediate action.  What we will do after the immediate time out will be to talk to the child.  “What happened there?  Why did you do that?  Do you think that was the right thing?  Do you think there would be a better way to do this so that we are all happy?  Time outs are not really fun, but I think talking to me after everything has happened really brings them back into the moment and helps them understand that their behaviors were wrong in that moment, and there is a better way we can act so we can be happy.  Some of the reinforcement token systems or academic contacts or things like that aside from praise because they are too young to understand that type of situation.

Chapter 13 deals all about the learning environment we set up in the classroom.  This is one of the most important things we can do aside from teaching the children.  How the classroom environment is set up will be a key factor in how the children feel about school and education.  I enjoyed the section about self-management, how we as teachers are preparing the students to begin to manage themselves.  I see that even in my level; we are teaching the children to make their own decisions about what center they will go to and how they will play there.  

On the first few days of school we discussed what the rules of the classroom were and how we hoped they would behave in school.  We also introduced our daily routine; it changes day to day so I like to involve the students in putting up the schedule so they become aware of what to expect.  I think those things become a part of almost every classroom at times.  I believe it is natural to have some consequences for not following certain classroom rules or regulations.  Most of that happens when we are in group time.  And in the sections about Group Focus and Overlapping describe much of what happens within my room.  Much of our learning is group centered, and keeping them engaged, while monitoring other situations can be very difficult.  There are a lot of aspects in this chapter that discuss other issues that may arise in classroom management: the dreaded bullying, discipline and other confrontations.  I think making sure your classroom is a place where students are free to express any feelings can help; if it is out in the open sooner it can stop other problems quicker.

Overall these chapters had a lot of interesting material on reactions and classroom management.  It is a lot to process, and something that I know I will keep working on as I grow as a teacher.