Group items tagged

Here is a book website about a different way to deal with challenging children. It explains that there are 2 main reasons for children have challenging behaviour. These reasons are that the child has lagging skills in some area(s) and the have unsolved problems. The site has a link to a list of common lagging skills. If the website piques your interest, I recommend the book "Lost at School" by Dr. Ross Greene.

Some interesting ideas - some that I'd want to use all year round! Learning centres, co-operative learning, literature circles, outside learning, team challenges. Some great ideas to keep kids motivated with learning!

An article that uses coaching as a means of classroom management. It speaks about the importance of balancing offering support to students and challenging students.

This is a good resource for new teachers to consult for typical behavior situations teachers face on a daily basis. It provides a small scenario with a few tips on how to best deal with the issues at hand. Each point offers a different method, given that all students have differing reactions to different classroom management techniques. All these ideas are authentic situations posted by teachers on how to manage some of the most common behavioral challenges in the classroom.

Great strategies for specific classroom management problems. Going into an associate teacher's classroom you do not get the chance to develop classroom culture. This site shows many tips for dealing with different behavioral problems in the classroom you may encounter as a student teacher in your final practicum. The one for a student constantly calling out came in really handy for me already! An important idea we have learned in class is represented here too : "Be sure the child understands that it is not he/she who is unacceptable, but rather the behavior."

This is a link to a Barbara Coloroso's "Winning at Teaching". Although it is not a source that you can read, it is a cd which you could buy. I have not listened to this extensively, however, from experience seeing her video "Kids are Worth It" this would be worth listening too. She takes on a humorous approach to all the topics she discusses. In this she will talk about the daily classroom challenges that many teachers face. Her video "Kids are Worth It" is a parenting video which could also apply in many cases.

This handy site proves that educational challenges are universal! It is run by UK teachers and has a number of articles on it from managing bathroom breaks to getting student's attention to detailed management techniques. There are lots of hands-on practical tips (and stuff to print out and use in the classroom too!). If you are short on time there are single sentence to single paragraph articles and for those with more time there is a 107 page article with greater detailed ideas. These have been submitted by teachers and they indicate the age range they are useful for at the begining of the articles.

A few tips on how to deal with disruptive behavior caused by troubled students.

When you feel like you are loosing them, get them standing and doing a Brain Break. They take only a minute or two, need no real preparation or fancy supplies and they can contribute huge dividends to your classroom management by allowing students to re-engage after a mental shift. They can be done with students of any age, usually make you laugh and challenge your brain often by crossing your mid-line thus engaging both hemispheres. They have even been suggested for use during exams and standardized tests. They are backed up by some action research I found on http://abllab.com/ which even shows some cool brain scans illustrating the difference in mental activity when someone was active right before or not! Definite food for thought to do more than your DPA to keep them engage, learning and not creating mischief!

This is a good, in-depth read about how to effectively run classroom meetings in your own class. It talks about what classroom meetings promote amongst your students, some objectives you can address, ways to deal with challenging situations, and how to set it up for different age groups, and some questions you can use to start communication. If you're interested in implementing classroom meetings in your next practicum (or later on as a teacher), this document will give you everything you need to get started.