Scribbler's Den

My school has a spilt campus.  Staff hate it and most have to travel between the two which means a ten minute trip at best.  That inconvenience is just the tip of the iceberg though.  The real disruption comes when you HAVE to leave your class on the bell at the end of your lesson to get to your next lesson on time.  This means I forfeit one of two primary weapons in my behaviour management arsenel - lunch time detentions and spending time with students at the beginning and end of clas to aid my rapport with them.

At the end of last year's school year I specifically asked to be on one of the two campuses only.  It seems my request has been granted.  But a slip of the tongue by my HOD (head of department) has alerted me to the trade off.  She mused about how up to scratch my behavour management skills were.  On reflection I have taken this to mean that I would be getting one of the 'high maintenance' classes in the junior school for my year 9 english and social science class. I don't mind this.  Although I have grown weary of the subject content in English and Sose I am looking forward to the challenge of dealing with what I expect to be some errant student behaviour.

There is no doubt that I am rusty.  A couple of years in the upper grades, namely year 11 and 12, has left me somewhat coddled. So, how should I prepare?  What systems should I introduce to my class that will establish good behaviour?  The old school tyrant in me wants to break out endless overhead transperencies and have the students writing until their hands drop off should the class give me trouble.  The hippie idealist in me wants to design outside activities that sees my class on the school oval dazing (running amok) at daisies and contemplating the issues the class curriculum presents.  Obviously the new year will see me teaching something in between those extremes.

One of the curveballs I have been also been thrown is not having one classroom for every lesson with the class.  We will be moving around the school from day to day.  I will be asking admin to change this but ...

Anyway, what strategies do you employ for classes that are low level and have behaviour problems?  I welcome any ideas really but particularly those I can started on now, ahead of time.

My very first English HOD (Head of Department) had a great voice.  We used to call her, 'She of the iron fist and the velvet glove'.  She earned this moniker because she was ruthlessly strict AND disarming.  She would never rant or rave at a students, nor would she grandstand or threaten.

My HOD, you see, had the softest of soft kid gloves.  She would smile, nod her head, and speak ever so softly to her charges slowly, slowly grinding them into the dust (In a responsible, respectful way of course).  Occasionally I would have to send some of the toughest, rudest, brashest students to her and they would all return cowed and resigned to their fate.

Other staff would smile to themselves when they saw her outside the classroom or staffroom conducting a 'chat' with a students because we knew that student was in a world of hurt whether they realised it or not.

Her secret was her voice.  The way she used it was extraordinary.  She was a dimunitive lady and yet her control of voice gave her more presence than any other teacher I have known.

I am sure she had other qualities that contributed to this 'presence', experience and reputation surely two of them, but her voice control was a standout feature of her management arsenal.

So what can you do with your voice to improve behaviour management?

• Vary your voice.  Monotone will put students to sleep or make them act out with restlessness.
• Raise your voice rarely.  Establish a signal early that gets student's attention so that you don't have to shout.  Remember that screaming at a student, or class, lets them know you have lost control and also invites them to respond in kind.
• Don't be a screamer.  You will lose your voice, and endure an early and painful end to your teaching career.  The stress isn't worth it.
• Pause.  Use silence.  The very absence of words lends weight to them when you do talk.

Not only can a teacher NOT do everything, but if they try to things will soon start to fall apart.  There is no sense in doing a dozen things at once if they aren't going to be done well.  So, delegate!  Set up roles for your students to do each lesson or each day.  The time spent setting up a roster will pay off a hundred times over.

Getting students to open and shut the windows, set up and pack up the projector, collect and return the text books saves you time and establishes a routine all students love (even if they won't admit it).  Even if the task is a minor job like writing the date in the corner of the white board it is an opportunity for the student to be involved in the class team.  Errands are an opportunity too.  I delegate errands to those students who always have energy to burn.

With students contributing to classroom management teachers can focus on their pedagogy rather than being distracted by the petty organisational aspects of classroom management.

Jobs I have in my classroom include:

Floor Manager (keeps the floor clean)

Table Crew (return tables to a specified layout)

Chair Stackers (pack up and dispense chairs)

Fan Controller (controls the ceiling fans)

Window Openers & Window Closers

White Board cleaner

Whiteboard Date writer (Otherwise I get asked 10 times every lesson)

Projector Setup & Projector Packup

Note Deliverer/Errand Doer

Text Book Collecters & Text Book Returners

Handout Deliverer

Whiteboard Writers (must have neat handwriting for short passages or note taking)

Time Keeper (oral presentations, activities etc)

What roles do you delegate in your classroom?

(This is an article I submitted to a local English Teaching Journal.  Hopefully they will publish it.)

When teachers think of technology, it is the application of it in the classroom that often comes to mind.  This is understandable, after all classroom pedagogy is a large part of a teacher's core business.  ICTs also help to make pedagogy easier to implement.  However, classroom implementation of technology shouldn't be the only use of technology in a teacher's arsenal of best practice.

Blogs too can be a powerful influence on classroom practice.  No longer are blogs the private domain of the internet geek, the navel gazing teenager telling the world what they had for breakfast or the star struck proclaiming their love for Rob Patterson (The new Brad Pitt?).  With internet use now ubiquitous blogs are common place and used widely by teaching professionals.  Blogs are quickly gaining a reputation as a valuable resource for almost any industry.  They offer a range of benefits to teaching professionals too.

1.  What is Blogging?

For those not yet familiar with the practice of blogging, ProBlogger (a popular blogging blog) has an interesting article discussing what blogging is -  http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/02/05/what-is-a-blog/ Typically though a blog is a journal website with a mixture of articles, videos and discussions between readers.  Alternatively, think of blogs as a series of open letters or a live and organic personal magazine. Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and often (but not always) written on a particular topic.