FLES Classroom Management Reflection
Shannon Shi
The main considerations teacher should make when managing a FLES classroom:
1). To be familiar with the school's policies and procedures and to get to know the students better. These goals can be achieved by reading school's staff handbook and other related documents or by asking teachers and relevant administrators about school's policies; by visiting other teachers' classes to have general knowledge or feelings about how their classrooms function, how the students behavior, what the school and students' cultures (atmospheres) generally look like.
This is important because any classroom management plans have to be conformed with the school's procedures in order to be functional or effective; knowing the school and the students better would put the new teacher in a better position to develop a workable classroom management plan and give her/him the confidence when managing the classroom.
2). Set up clear classroom expectations in the very beginning and then enforce the rules consistently. This is extremely important for creating and maintaining a positive learning environment. Language classroom has different dynamics comparing with other classes like English language or science classes, so language teacher must decide what behaviors are important for language classroom, and then put them in short, simple sentences that are easy to understood by elementary students. The rules should be stated in target language; the teacher models and demonstrates them to students clearly in target language, and then involve students in real practice using TPR. e.g. I can make a poster with pictures for each rule putting it on the wall, when there are students talking during instruction, I'd point to the poster first then point to my mouth say:" 嘴巴， 嘴巴， 不说话!" (mouth, mouth, don't talk). Using this kind of method to communicate the classroom rules is easy for students to understand; at the same time this is a process of language learning. As the language learning becomes more complex, the statements of rules can be changed to more complex ones.
When managing classroom behaviors, teacher has to be clear about consequences --what consequences a student would get if he/she breaks the rules and most important, keep consistency when enforcing the rules for both punishments and rewards.
3). Building classroom routines and activities. The purpose for establishing classroom routines is to let children know what to expect, for examples, the procedures of starting the class, ending the class or for activities and transitions. These predictable routines give children sense of security, are good for maintaining a organized, positive learning environment, and they also open up opportunities for teacher to do scaffolding and for students to develop language skills (Cameron, 2001). Same as classroom rules, teacher also needs to model classroom routines, ask students to practice and role play them until the students become the owners of these routines. The classroom activities for elementary children have to be diversified; teacher needs to plan as many different activities as possible for each class in order to engage the students throughout whole class period of time. The duration of each activity should be just a few minutes considering young children's short attention span.
4). the teacher, as the manger of the classroom, should have clear goals of classroom management; have a ability to motivate students, build loving, positive relationships with students and parents; be able to be firm, stay calm when dealing with behavior or disciplinary issues.
Other considerations include setting up a comfortable physical classroom environment. It should be inviting, welcoming, easy accessible for materials and activities (areas for whole class or group activities); it should be maintained to be neat, clean and organized; the signs, posters and visual aids on the wall should be clear, meaningful, positive and motivating.
My preferred style of classroom management, strengths, weaknesses in managing a classroom of elementary students:
Among these four classroom management styles, I prefer to the authoritative style. I believe effective learning requires teacher's control in classroom. Teacher decides what to learn and designs age appropriate activities according to students' interests, abilities, motivations and
learning styles. Teacher control is specially important for younger children. Although the authoritative management style has high level of control, it promotes student involvement, encourages discussions, questions and feedback, which are good for achieving language learning goals. And it is also easy for teacher to implement differentiated instruction. For behavior management, an authoritative teacher has clear classroom expectations and consequences, reinforces the rules with consistency and fairness. And this management style is especially suitable for language teaching in FLES, because with this style students have a lot of opportunities to interact with teacher and peers; teacher spends a lot of time to talk to students, the verbal communication and feedback teacher provided are essential for students to develop language skills.
My strengths in managing a classroom of elementary students are my strong teacher's efficacy. I believe every child can learn and teacher's goal is to teach all students to learn as much as they can. A teacher's role is to guide students to learn, provide them support needed, and help them develop intellectually and academically. My strengths are also in curriculum planning and delivering, organizing activities, and building relationships with students. The areas I need work are behavior management and taking disciplinary actions. When I taught in high schools, sometime I don't want to reprimand a student because I am afraid of hurting the student's feelings and I tend to give students a second chance. All of these may undermine consistency.
I think I can use preventive approach to classroom management, by using my strengths --motivating students to learn, building friendly relationship with students, engaging students by differentiated teaching, to reduce misbehaviors in classroom, therefore to overcome my weaknesses in behavior management. And more important, I have strong commitment for teaching and helping students achieve learning goals, which motivates me to learn new skills and grow in classroom management.
Effective classroom management skills take practice, it is a learning process for new teachers. If I am willing to learn I will find the strategies that work for me.
The goals of my classroom and what it would look like:
My
classroom management goal is to establish a learning environment that is
safe, friendly, and promoting children's academic and intellectual
development.I picture my classroom as a safe, comfortable, and respectful learning place. The classroom is organized, clean, neat and students are responsible for cleaning up after activities. Students' good work are recognized and displayed. Classroom expectations are clearly stated and taught to students by modeling and practicing, students understand the rules and consequences; the rules are enforced with consistence and fairness.
Teacher stays in
control of instruction and activities; students are quiet when teacher talks;
students are encouraged to ask questions during instruction and collaborative
learning activities.
Classroom routines are practiced daily; learning objectives/tasks
are posted before each class.
Directions are written on board and given verbally.
Directions are written on board and given verbally.
Students will have some fun during learning and
activities, however completing tasks is the goal.
The teacher builds a positive relationship with students;
the teacher is genuinely concerned each child’s learning and development, and makes
best efforts to connect with each child to know as much as possible on the child’ interests,
strengths, weaknesses, and learning styles.
References:
Curtain, H.
A., & Dahlberg, C. A. (2010). Characteristics of young learners. In Languages
and children: Making the match: new languages for young learners, grades K-8
(p. 1-30, 235-256). Boston: Pearson.Cameron, L. (2001). Children learning a foreign language. In Teaching languages to young learners (pp. 1-19). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Arnett, K. (2003). Effective teaching in immersion: Helping under-performing learners succeed. Handout and presentation. Summer immersion institute at the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition. Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Everson, M.
E., & Xiao, Y. (2009). Understanding the culture of American schools,
managing the successful Chinese language classroom. In Teaching Chinese
as a foreign language: Theories and applications (pp. 31-46). Boston: Cheng
& Tsui.
Notes:
The pictures used in this blog are from the web, three are clip art images; other two to be credited with the following resources
http://dpsible.weebly.com/classroom-management-styles.html
The pictures used in this blog are from the web, three are clip art images; other two to be credited with the following resources
http://dpsible.weebly.com/classroom-management-styles.html
