Classroom Management

A classroom environment of order and mutual respect allows children to get the most from their education. The relationship- and community-building that guides my teaching will be the basis for the respect; the clear structure and expectations will bring the order. I frequently acknowledge and praise positive behavior, as I did in creating a token economy in my fifth grade placement. I use a continuum of strategies for responding to inappropriate behavior, including planned ignoring, physical proximity, praising approximations of appropriate behavior, and specific error correction. Out of respect for students, my corrections are always private. I have received training and in-school practice in the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports framework. In my kindergarten internship, I created and implemented a tier 1 procedure called “Rug Talk” that decreased the frequency of unwanted call outs and increased the frequency of the replacement behavior (pictured in the poster below). Rug Talk was an interdependent group contingency, which meant that after a week of successfully following it, the whole class was rewarded with an extra recess at which I played with them, and which was my favorite 20 minutes of the year.

I created this slide to explain the new token economy to our fifth graders.

The poster I designed to explain “Rug Talk” to our kindergarteners

Giving students the “Call Out” signal to direct them to call out an answer to the question, “What is this squirrel’s shelter?”

I was in charge of checking in with several kindergarteners about their behavior plans at the end of each period.