Goal One

Explore a variety of classroom management techniques to ensure that the classroom environment is conducive to effective learning for all students.

Reflections

Being involved in a class from day one of a new year has been a privilege and I have learnt so much from this opportunity. I spent some time in the classroom in the days before school opened officially and seeing how it was set up has been invaluable for me. One task I was involved in was naming the children’s books (stationery provided by the school for $10) and placing them in their (named) tote trays. Having their equipment ready and named and their tote trays set up gave the children an immediate sense of belonging in the classroom.

From day one the children were made to feel special for being selected to be in this classroom, the teacher said, “I talked to Matua Regan and asked for each and every one of you to be in this class”. This was reiterated over the first few days, along with comments about the class being the best in the school and the children not being junior juniors anymore, but senior juniors. All of this fostered a sense of community and value for each child, and I would like to do this with my own class.

A reliever was in the class one day, it was useful to see how she kept control of a class when she didn’t know a lot of the children. Observing her teaching the children settling techniques that she then used through the day was helpful, and I started using one (“Hands on top”, place hands on head, children reply “Everybody stop”). This has given me ideas of how to introduce new techniques to a class, which is something I have found difficult in classes with established routines and techniques. It also highlights that every teacher has different ways of managing their class and I need to find what works for me.

Being in a junior classroom, personal care and responsibility is something children are still learning, and there is a wide variety of ability in this area. For example, some children can tie shoelaces, others find it difficult putting a jersey on the right way and many found it hard opening packets in their lunchboxes. My AT told the children that she would help with shoelaces on the first day and lend hats for the first week – after that, they would need to do their own laces or bring shoes without and sit in the shade at playtime if they forgot their hat. My AT explicitly taught the children how to blow their nose (she had an ice cream container with the end of a large toilet roll for the children to use) and wash their hands (which I built on in a science lesson). We also put scissors near the eating area so children could open their own packets. One child found it difficult to open his yoghurt pouches and would ask for help opening them. I linked it to the growth mindset disposition we were working on and was thrilled when he came up a few days later and showed me the pouch he had opened.

With a junior class in particular, there is a large component of general life skills that they are still learning, and I saw how important it is to empower the children to do things themselves, rather than just doing it for them. Skills such as tying shoelaces, opening packets and blowing noses are important for children to learn and while these skills are the responsibility of whānau to teach to children, they can be explicitly taught at school as well, or strategies (such as providing a pair of scissors) introduced to provide the children with a level of independence.

I explored a variety of different techniques on this practicum, and I feel like my classroom management improved significantly from practicum two. Being with the children from day one definitely helped and I have lots of ideas for setting routines in my own class.