Hello, and I once again apologize for my absence. Remember that Teacher Burnout my last post talked about? Well it hit me, big time. As is the case with Murphey's Law, right about when my teacher burnout started to hit, my kids behavior also went completely haywire. I actually had my first formal observation this week, and my students disengagement was the worst that I have ever seen!
While all of this has been a myriad of tragedies, I was reminded that I have yet to make a post about my management of student behavior using PBIS Strategies in my classroom! With my classroom taking a bit of a reset to 'beginning of the year expectations', I thought that it would be a perfect time to check in on the behavior management strategies that I am currently using to promote positive choices with my students! First, I started with the most tried and true method of improving student behavior: changing my students seats! My students until this point had been at the same tables for months, mostly because my classroom structure kept changing. I had three students enter my class, and so my 'balance' would continue to be disrupted, giving new personalities for my students to get used to. However, we had reached the point that pretty much all of my tables were in some form of conflict. Plus, with "table seating", students are constantly facing one another, leaving more opportunities for students to talk during whole group instruction. I changed my structure to "row seating" in each cohort. There are two to three students in the back "row" of each table, with one to two students in the front "row". Student rows face away from one another, leaving students only real option the people next to them to talk to. I tried to put students next to people that they could work well with, but that they wouldn't talk to during lessons. I used my group of "rule following girls" very strategically for this part of my seating chart! This is how I set up cohorts 1-4. Cohort 5 is a cohort of 'independent seating' with student desks placed far away from each other. I put students in this cohort who have shown to be a distraction to the students sitting around them, or who are easily distracted by those around them. These seats form a "row" down the middle of my classroom, which actually opened up a lot of space for student movement. With the table system, my formal observation noted that student movement was cramped. So far, the change in student seating has significantly improved inattention and overall understand of classroom expectations. Hopefully, this peace will last until their Field Trip to Fenner Nature Center April 11th-14th, as field trip groups were determined by these cohorts! Team 5 was split up into the other four teams during centers, and also when setting up field trip groups. For classroom systems, we can start with the widely debated: CLIP CHART! When utilizing a clip chart, as you can see in the picture below, I make clips based on student numbers instead of student names. This is because, while I can have a list of student numbers for reference at my desk, students won't necessarily have the numbers of other students memorized. This leads to a certain level of anonymity in student behavior, and discourages "tattletale" type of discussions regarding other students clips. Students can use the clip chart to earn "Barnhart Bucks", which can be used in our classroom store to buy things like pencils, notebooks, journals, fidgets, etc. Students only get bucks if they are on "Ready to Learn" (1 Buck) "Good Job" (2 Bucks) "Great Effort" (3 Bucks) and "Role Model" (4 Bucks). Students on "Think About It" miss five minutes of their recess, students on "Slow Down" lose their entire recess, and students on "Oh No Stop" lose their recess, and get an email or a phone call home at the end of the day. Until this point in the year, the Clip Chart was really the only behavior management system that was necessary to keep student behavior in check. Well, that, and the weekly Barnhart Bucks store. This started small, with me selling just pencils, erasers, new boxes of crayons, little notebooks, stickers, basically just materials to make students educational experience customizable within my classroom. Students receive Barnhart Bucks at the end of each day, and are expected to save them in their "wallets" which are stored in the classroom. Students are expected to keep track of their Barnhart Bucks, as well as their wallet. This was intended to replicate real life, and increase the feeling of my classroom as a self contained "Community". My students were EXTREMELY motivated by the Barnhart Store and I have included things like: squish animal fidgets, headphones, card games, pop its, colored dry erase markers, water bottles, markers, and colored pens. I add and take things away from my store, based on paying attention to the things that are high demand in my classroom. Students hate the headphones we use? I add a couple pairs of cool ones from Five Below. Students are constantly breaking their crayons? They can buy them from me, on a single level, for ONE BUCK, or buy a whole new box for 15 bucks. They don't like the broken orange pencils? I bring in some cool glitter ones. I used to do store every Friday, but as the store grew, this became too much to maintain. And with student behavior as off the chain as it has been, I wasn't exactly keen on rewarding my class. For now, I have solved this problem by employing a Visual Behavior Chart on one of my most predominant classroom whiteboards. For each part of my students day, then will either get a BIG SMILEY FACE (if they follow all classroom expectations, worth 2 points), a SMALL SMILEY FACE (worth one point, given if pretty much everything went well, aside from one or two mistakes), a MIDDLE FACE (minus one point, given when students complete classroom work, but classroom behavioral expectations aren't followed) and a SAD/MAD FACE (given when students don't complete their work, and also don't follow classroom expectations). The classroom expectations that we are going over right now as a class are: 1) Staying In Your Seat, 2) Raising Your Hand When You Have A Question, and 3) Maintaining a Level 0 or a Level 1 Voice During Independent Work Time. My students are working towards five points to earn store back, and right now are at 3. I'm hoping they earn it back before the start of Spring Break this Thursday! This has so far worked well as starting a conversation with my students regarding where, specifically, their behavior required improvement. Another thing that I have implemented from the start of the year with my students, was a 'Place Value Party' chart. Students unlock 'Place Value Party' cards with their behavior. If I really need them to be paying attention to the board or to me, I will tell them I need their eyes on the board, with voices off, and hands empty in "5, 4, 3, 2, 1... for a checkmark". If I really need their behavior to improve quickly, I will give them two checkmarks to getting to complete attention. If students get five checkmarks, we get to put a "Place Value Party" Card on our classroom Place Value Chart. The goal was to work with my students and visually draw out the numbers 1-100, as this is something that is asked frequently by my students math curriculum. Once students fill up the entire Hundreds Chart, they will earn a classroom party. My students are extremely motivated by the place value party cards, and enjoy unlocking each new card. They will go back and look at the chart independently, and come to me with observations they have noticed about the patterns in the numbers. I also have a student that is keeping track of how many more cards we need until we can unlock our party. When it gets closer I'll put a class vote for our party in the Google Classroom (though they have all been excitedly talking about an Encanto party, so we will probably do that). Oh yeah, and my students are obsessed with cats, and so I bought a reversible cat/unicorn that switches from "happy" to "sad/mad" and named it Sprinkles. Don't ask me why, I still don't know. So if my students are having their own discussions during whole group time, I can switch Sprinkles to mad and tell my class that "all of this noise is stressing out Sprinkles". Half the time I don't even have to say anything, as my students will all get extremely stressed, and start whispering to each other "sprinkles is mad, SPRINKLES IS MAD" every time I switch it. This is an upside to Sprinkles. The downside is that, oftentimes some of my more 'distractible' students will get out of their seats to apologize, personally, to Sprinkles themselves. Despite this distractions, the benefits definitely outweigh the cost of my new classroom mascot. Is this too much behavioral support in my classroom? MAYBE! But it's backed by what I believe to be the most crucial part of classroom management (and where I began when coming up with my classroom management systems), and that is KNOWING MY STUDENTS. From the beginning, I tried an build open and honest thread of communication amongst my students, and let them know that they could trust me with anything. There are times that they may overshare, or trust me with two much, but I'd prefer this any day to not knowing what's going on with my students. Every time one of my students raises their hand and asks to "take a break", or verbally asks for my help when things get challenging instead of melting down, I consider it a win. Anytime some of my more reactive students pull their desk to mine because "they're pushing my buttons, and I don't want to get upset" I consider it a win. Education is about more than just reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. Social and Emotional Learning is an essential, and important part to classroom learning, and overall classroom functioning. All the behavior systems in the world can be employed, but if the Social/Emotional component is missing? Overall classroom culture WILL remain stagnant. With a push towards academia following the pressure standardized testing places upon students, a lot of times it's easy to leave the SEL piece out, and replace it with academic content. It's IMPERATIVE as educators that we make room for these conversations with our students, to promote a well functioning classroom.
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Lindsay BarnhartJust a teacher, trying her best to learn as much as she can about Education :) Archives
March 2022
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