I have only tracked two lessons since Easter break. Both of those were successful with 10 total times talking out one lesson and 6 total talking times during the other lesson. In both lessons, the focus students were quiet overall, with the most talking out from any one of them being two times in the lesson, and most were quiet on both.
But I can tell, even without the official documentation of it, that the students have been able to maintain their quiet as long as I keep the variety of modifications in effect. Some days are better than others, but overall I do feel like I have control in my class, and it is definitely an improvement over how the days all were in the beginning of the year.
My last lesson that was observed was a writing assignment on what improvements they have made throughout the year. The observed portion was actually the lesson where we edited the assignment that they had written the previous day. The lesson was extremely successful, and both of my case study students were successful. As a matter of fact, there was only one student in the entire class who I had to place in the category of far below standard because she did not do anything on her assignment. The rest of the class successfully edited at least one thing in their paper, and many of the students went beyond expectations and were able to either complete all of their mistakes, or even better, make more changes that I had found or expected of them.
N was one who made corrections that I didn't expect, in that he took the time and effort to erase and rewrite the beginning of his paragraph neater. R found all of his spelling mistakes and fixed them, he only did not find the one punctuation mistake on his paper to correct it. This was a major victory for both students because it shows that they were taking time and effort to really work and complete the assignment instead of getting off task.
It may have taken until almost the end of the year, but I truly feel like it was a success because of the amazing change that has taken place in the classroom and their ability to work quietly and diligently during assignments now.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Stressing about Mornings
A big area of talking in my classroom has always been the morning time, right when the students come in. Their first step is to answer the magnet question, then they turn in papers, tear out seatwork, write their behavior goals and then they are asked to read a book quietly.
For the majority of the year, until probably March, this time was a struggle for me because I wanted them quietly reading, and they wanted to talk to their friends. I would have to start the morning by giving students tallies just for talking during this beginning morning time, and although I hated starting the morning with tallies, I also wanted them to read quietly.
After a particularly bad morning, I was reflecting on what I could do to make it better, and I realized that I was actually asking something that was not necessary. I realized that at any adult gathering, our first inclination is to chit chat with our friends and catch up from the day before, and then we are ready to start the day. Where on the other hand, if we didn't have that, we would be more likely to talk.
If that is how we, as adults operate, how could I expect my students to do better than that, or even if I can get them quiet, then they have burning things they want to share with their friend, they will talk out during a lesson, than during the morning time when it is less disruptive.
So the decision I came to, and have been happy with it since, was that they can have the first 10 minutes or so to get those little talkings out while they are still getting ready. Kids are not allowed to mess around or just talk, but if they are still answering the question, turning in work, tearing out paper etc. and having a conversation at the same time, its okay. After 10 minutes, I use an attention getter, and announce that everyone needs to be quietly reading now, and I can keep the class quiet because now I can discipline those few who are still talking even after my request for quiet instead of the majority of the class first thing in the morning.
Just like relaxing on chair check, I have found that relaxing on this area makes everyone happier for the day.
For the majority of the year, until probably March, this time was a struggle for me because I wanted them quietly reading, and they wanted to talk to their friends. I would have to start the morning by giving students tallies just for talking during this beginning morning time, and although I hated starting the morning with tallies, I also wanted them to read quietly.
After a particularly bad morning, I was reflecting on what I could do to make it better, and I realized that I was actually asking something that was not necessary. I realized that at any adult gathering, our first inclination is to chit chat with our friends and catch up from the day before, and then we are ready to start the day. Where on the other hand, if we didn't have that, we would be more likely to talk.
If that is how we, as adults operate, how could I expect my students to do better than that, or even if I can get them quiet, then they have burning things they want to share with their friend, they will talk out during a lesson, than during the morning time when it is less disruptive.
So the decision I came to, and have been happy with it since, was that they can have the first 10 minutes or so to get those little talkings out while they are still getting ready. Kids are not allowed to mess around or just talk, but if they are still answering the question, turning in work, tearing out paper etc. and having a conversation at the same time, its okay. After 10 minutes, I use an attention getter, and announce that everyone needs to be quietly reading now, and I can keep the class quiet because now I can discipline those few who are still talking even after my request for quiet instead of the majority of the class first thing in the morning.
Just like relaxing on chair check, I have found that relaxing on this area makes everyone happier for the day.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Technology Lesson -March 26th
On March 26th, I taught a lesson in the computer lab, drawing on what we had already completed in class.
The lesson was to learn how to copy and paste something from one document to another, and also practice editing on the computer. Our computer lab is not equipped with Microsoft word, so we had to do it with word pad.
Because of the limitations of our computer lab, I was not able to analyze the work done from this lesson, but I was tracking their talking, and since my primary goal in the inquiry question is to decrease the amount of talking done by the focus students especially, but also in the class as a whole.
When I first looked over the talking for this lesson, I was really discouraged. One of the main things that I am tracking is the class total times talking out during the lesson. At the beginning of my inquiry, they were all easily over twenty, a few were around 40. But since then it had seriously decreased, with just one more time over twenty until this lesson.
This lesson was not up to my record highs by any means, with a total of 21, but it definitely wasn't as low as I had hoped either. I attribute this to the fact that it was in the computer lab, not our natural classroom, and so I automatically lose some control there, and then I lose more by the fact that they have a computer in front of them and are having to listen while having this very distracting object in front of them.
Still a huge improvement over my averages the first few weeks, and I think it was pretty good for being in the computer lab.
However, my main victory with this lesson came later, when I looked closer at the data.
I may have had 21 times talking out as a whole in the classroom... but only four of them came from my 7 main focus students.
One was from N, who has been diagnosed with ADHD, and just one time shouting out in a lesson is a victory for him. The other 3 came from G, who was somehow placed next to his best friend (I should have noticed this and moved him, but by the time I caught this mistake, they had both started working, and I didn't want them to have to start over) so that is understandable, it was unusually high for him.
But the other 4 (one was absent)... didn't talk out AT ALL... in the computer lab... with computers in front of them. I was amazed! Here I am feeling discouraged about my class talking times, but the truth of the matter is that of the 6 kids present who I really wanted to improve their talking out behaviors, 5 of them have improved immensely (and the one other was next to a friend, and understandably suffered), and were able to focus and listen to instruction without talking at all.
This also demonstrates that the extra talking in this lesson was from my "general population" who were understandably more excited because they have a new location and computers in front of them, but they are typically quiet, and so their extra talking is a non-issue.
As far as the instructional part of the lesson went, most of the students were on task, and understood where the mistakes were and tried to fix them. The biggest problem that I encountered is that they were not sure how to fix the mistakes once they found them, and would accidentally misspell a word that they knew was misspelled, etc.
Overall, against my initial feelings about this lesson, I count it as a success based on the behavior of my focus students.
The lesson was to learn how to copy and paste something from one document to another, and also practice editing on the computer. Our computer lab is not equipped with Microsoft word, so we had to do it with word pad.
Because of the limitations of our computer lab, I was not able to analyze the work done from this lesson, but I was tracking their talking, and since my primary goal in the inquiry question is to decrease the amount of talking done by the focus students especially, but also in the class as a whole.
When I first looked over the talking for this lesson, I was really discouraged. One of the main things that I am tracking is the class total times talking out during the lesson. At the beginning of my inquiry, they were all easily over twenty, a few were around 40. But since then it had seriously decreased, with just one more time over twenty until this lesson.
This lesson was not up to my record highs by any means, with a total of 21, but it definitely wasn't as low as I had hoped either. I attribute this to the fact that it was in the computer lab, not our natural classroom, and so I automatically lose some control there, and then I lose more by the fact that they have a computer in front of them and are having to listen while having this very distracting object in front of them.
Still a huge improvement over my averages the first few weeks, and I think it was pretty good for being in the computer lab.
However, my main victory with this lesson came later, when I looked closer at the data.
I may have had 21 times talking out as a whole in the classroom... but only four of them came from my 7 main focus students.
One was from N, who has been diagnosed with ADHD, and just one time shouting out in a lesson is a victory for him. The other 3 came from G, who was somehow placed next to his best friend (I should have noticed this and moved him, but by the time I caught this mistake, they had both started working, and I didn't want them to have to start over) so that is understandable, it was unusually high for him.
But the other 4 (one was absent)... didn't talk out AT ALL... in the computer lab... with computers in front of them. I was amazed! Here I am feeling discouraged about my class talking times, but the truth of the matter is that of the 6 kids present who I really wanted to improve their talking out behaviors, 5 of them have improved immensely (and the one other was next to a friend, and understandably suffered), and were able to focus and listen to instruction without talking at all.
This also demonstrates that the extra talking in this lesson was from my "general population" who were understandably more excited because they have a new location and computers in front of them, but they are typically quiet, and so their extra talking is a non-issue.
As far as the instructional part of the lesson went, most of the students were on task, and understood where the mistakes were and tried to fix them. The biggest problem that I encountered is that they were not sure how to fix the mistakes once they found them, and would accidentally misspell a word that they knew was misspelled, etc.
Overall, against my initial feelings about this lesson, I count it as a success based on the behavior of my focus students.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Camera on students revisited (March 23)
As my tracking talking has shown, and continues to show, my talking is steadily going down.
I decided I needed to revisit videoing a lesson and see how my case study student did again, as well as the rest of the class this time.
The class did very well in this lesson, actually setting a new low record for total amount of talking times.
I have mixed feelings about how my two case study students did.
To refresh your memory and mine, I took the summary from my last post when I observed one of my case study students: R.
"In summary,
My case study student started showing problem behaviors when:
-direction wasn't given after he had gotten his supplies ready
-he wasn't able to keep up with lesson
-we changed to an activity where he could not write with his marker
-his partner distracted him
-after he was punished
-he had given up on the lesson"
The major positives for this student on the more recent filming are that he did participate with every question that I asked the class to do, both when I had them use markers and not. Also, he only talked out once during the entire lesson, and he didn't have to be punished during it, which partly allowed him to keep working.
These are both major accomplishments for this student, and ultimately he did significantly more work during this lesson than he did on the last one I recorded. Part of it is my changes, for example, I tried to start the lesson quicker to not allow for distractions, I also have changed how I did my lesson (mostly from watching Donalyn) to include ample amounts of praise, and he, as well as the rest of the class, was able to benefit from my correcting everyone in the class as the lesson went on.
Part of it I attribute to the behavior charts, and the realization that he was able to be quiet with those and gradually wean himself from needing to give himself the happy faces to be quiet. Part of it is from him setting his personal behavior goals to stay quiet, or earn one of the prizes in phonics.
Unfortunately, it is not all positive. He did get out of his seat without permission a lot. I have no idea what he was doing as I didn't notice it in real time, and he walks out of video range when he gets up, but he does somehow manage to return to his seat for every question. I wonder if he was just bored as I gave affirmative or corrective answers to the class on each question and he found that it was easier to amuse himself by just walking around instead of getting in trouble for playing or talking. And honestly, although he shouldn't be randomly walking around during a lesson... the fact remains that him doing so kept him quiet, and stopped him from fiddling with something in his desk, and again, he answered every question that I posed to the class... so still a plus in some ways. But it was after almost every question that he got up and went... somewhere.
N's behavior was mixed on this lesson as well. He talked out a rather high amount, just short of his highest in the beginning of the inquiry, 3 times (the highest recorded was 5, but he probably could have gone higher, but I won't let him talk out that much without higher consequences, and those subdue him temporarily). After the three, he did receive a tally for his continual shouting out, mostly because I felt it was unfair to ruin one of the prizes for the class all due to his lack of self control.
However, he has a positive too- He actually was participating on every question as well. He was upset when he got the tally, and he refused to get into his chair after it, but I have learned to pick my battles with him, and since, while sitting on the floor, he was still answering each question, I ignored his choice of seat.
This seems like a major compromise to count it a victory for both students when one was still getting out of his seat all of the time, and the other pulled a tally for talking, but the fact remains that they did both show full participation as far as the phonics lesson goes, practicing each thing that was going to be on the next day's test, even with all of their problems in between. And for these two, although I, for logistical reasons, cannot track the amount of on task behaviors for the phonics lessons over the time, I know from my personal experience that this is an improvement for both of them. They both tend to fiddle, or walk around, or draw on their white boards and generally do anything besides the task at hand, so to see them now managing to stay focused on the lesson rings of success.
The flip side is that it does show that the classroom is still not perfect, much improved, but still not perfect. I know this is the reason that the last step is always apply, because there are almost more things to apply in the classroom, and I know that every particular collection of students will present a new challenge that will grow and stretch me in new ways, and that's good.
I decided I needed to revisit videoing a lesson and see how my case study student did again, as well as the rest of the class this time.
The class did very well in this lesson, actually setting a new low record for total amount of talking times.
I have mixed feelings about how my two case study students did.
To refresh your memory and mine, I took the summary from my last post when I observed one of my case study students: R.
"In summary,
My case study student started showing problem behaviors when:
-direction wasn't given after he had gotten his supplies ready
-he wasn't able to keep up with lesson
-we changed to an activity where he could not write with his marker
-his partner distracted him
-after he was punished
-he had given up on the lesson"
The major positives for this student on the more recent filming are that he did participate with every question that I asked the class to do, both when I had them use markers and not. Also, he only talked out once during the entire lesson, and he didn't have to be punished during it, which partly allowed him to keep working.
These are both major accomplishments for this student, and ultimately he did significantly more work during this lesson than he did on the last one I recorded. Part of it is my changes, for example, I tried to start the lesson quicker to not allow for distractions, I also have changed how I did my lesson (mostly from watching Donalyn) to include ample amounts of praise, and he, as well as the rest of the class, was able to benefit from my correcting everyone in the class as the lesson went on.
Part of it I attribute to the behavior charts, and the realization that he was able to be quiet with those and gradually wean himself from needing to give himself the happy faces to be quiet. Part of it is from him setting his personal behavior goals to stay quiet, or earn one of the prizes in phonics.
Unfortunately, it is not all positive. He did get out of his seat without permission a lot. I have no idea what he was doing as I didn't notice it in real time, and he walks out of video range when he gets up, but he does somehow manage to return to his seat for every question. I wonder if he was just bored as I gave affirmative or corrective answers to the class on each question and he found that it was easier to amuse himself by just walking around instead of getting in trouble for playing or talking. And honestly, although he shouldn't be randomly walking around during a lesson... the fact remains that him doing so kept him quiet, and stopped him from fiddling with something in his desk, and again, he answered every question that I posed to the class... so still a plus in some ways. But it was after almost every question that he got up and went... somewhere.
N's behavior was mixed on this lesson as well. He talked out a rather high amount, just short of his highest in the beginning of the inquiry, 3 times (the highest recorded was 5, but he probably could have gone higher, but I won't let him talk out that much without higher consequences, and those subdue him temporarily). After the three, he did receive a tally for his continual shouting out, mostly because I felt it was unfair to ruin one of the prizes for the class all due to his lack of self control.
However, he has a positive too- He actually was participating on every question as well. He was upset when he got the tally, and he refused to get into his chair after it, but I have learned to pick my battles with him, and since, while sitting on the floor, he was still answering each question, I ignored his choice of seat.
This seems like a major compromise to count it a victory for both students when one was still getting out of his seat all of the time, and the other pulled a tally for talking, but the fact remains that they did both show full participation as far as the phonics lesson goes, practicing each thing that was going to be on the next day's test, even with all of their problems in between. And for these two, although I, for logistical reasons, cannot track the amount of on task behaviors for the phonics lessons over the time, I know from my personal experience that this is an improvement for both of them. They both tend to fiddle, or walk around, or draw on their white boards and generally do anything besides the task at hand, so to see them now managing to stay focused on the lesson rings of success.
The flip side is that it does show that the classroom is still not perfect, much improved, but still not perfect. I know this is the reason that the last step is always apply, because there are almost more things to apply in the classroom, and I know that every particular collection of students will present a new challenge that will grow and stretch me in new ways, and that's good.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
March 8th, 9th, 11th, and 16th
As I said in the last post, the week of Open House I had a phonics lesson where I pulled out all of the stops, and it was extremely effective.
So for all four of the dates in the title, I maintained the same strategies. Each of the phonics lessons had students writing personal behavior goals in the morning, five dollar prizes possible, chance for popcorn kernels towards our party, and behavior charts.
It is consistently helping our talking stay low, and all of the students that are special focuses are doing well with them as well. The most that any of the seven have talked out during these four dates is three times in a lesson, which is still an improvement over where we started.
A more telling sign is the total talking out times for the class during the lesson. I started with an average of 30-40 times total talking out incidents during a lesson, and these four lessons were extremely low at 9, 18, 21 and 15. See the chart below (the spike on 2/8 was when I found that the novelty of the behavior charts had worn off and I needed to readdress the situation):
Their positive behavior has spread to other subjects as well, and the art teacher who comes in once a month even commented that the class has made such a vast change that it is like "night and day" with how they were in the beginning of the year.
Another interesting thing that I noticed at the end of these four days of tracking is that the boys who have been using behavior charts no longer need this tool to maintain their quiet working. They have developed self discipline without having to give themselves happy faces for not talking.
I decided after seeing more than one day with no happy faces on most of the cards, but quiet boys that they had outgrown this extra intervention, and so my lesson on March 19th no longer used this tool.
They were still able to do well, and the class as a whole only talked out 10 times, and most of those 10 shout outs were not from the boys I have been focusing on. Three of them talked out once, but that was it, all the rest of the talking out incidents were from other students.
I feel much more successful as a teacher now that I am able to get and maintain order over my class this year. I know it will become more difficult as it moves closer to summer, but I hope that the students have learned enough self control that we will be able to still be a quiet working class up until the last day of school.
So for all four of the dates in the title, I maintained the same strategies. Each of the phonics lessons had students writing personal behavior goals in the morning, five dollar prizes possible, chance for popcorn kernels towards our party, and behavior charts.
It is consistently helping our talking stay low, and all of the students that are special focuses are doing well with them as well. The most that any of the seven have talked out during these four dates is three times in a lesson, which is still an improvement over where we started.
A more telling sign is the total talking out times for the class during the lesson. I started with an average of 30-40 times total talking out incidents during a lesson, and these four lessons were extremely low at 9, 18, 21 and 15. See the chart below (the spike on 2/8 was when I found that the novelty of the behavior charts had worn off and I needed to readdress the situation):
Their positive behavior has spread to other subjects as well, and the art teacher who comes in once a month even commented that the class has made such a vast change that it is like "night and day" with how they were in the beginning of the year.
Another interesting thing that I noticed at the end of these four days of tracking is that the boys who have been using behavior charts no longer need this tool to maintain their quiet working. They have developed self discipline without having to give themselves happy faces for not talking.
I decided after seeing more than one day with no happy faces on most of the cards, but quiet boys that they had outgrown this extra intervention, and so my lesson on March 19th no longer used this tool.
They were still able to do well, and the class as a whole only talked out 10 times, and most of those 10 shout outs were not from the boys I have been focusing on. Three of them talked out once, but that was it, all the rest of the talking out incidents were from other students.
I feel much more successful as a teacher now that I am able to get and maintain order over my class this year. I know it will become more difficult as it moves closer to summer, but I hope that the students have learned enough self control that we will be able to still be a quiet working class up until the last day of school.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Whole Class Behavior Goals- Open House week
I did not track talking a lot this week because first off, our schedule was way different than normal because of Open House related projects. Also, having tons of school work come out and go up on the walls did not help the kids behave very well. In addition, normally Open House comes at the end of May, just a week or two before school is over. So many students have already switched into summer mode... way too early.
I knew that something needed to be done to help keep them in check, mostly for my own sanity.
I decided to extend the goal setting behavior to the whole class. I had every student write up three behavior goals for themselves at the beginning of the day, and then try their best to achieve those goals that day. They could choose from any number of goals that I listed on the white board in the morning or they could choose their own.
Overall, I think it was a really effective way of getting the class to think about their behavior in the same way that the writing assignment did without having to have them spend the day doing writing assignments.
On a side note, I tried a control for the behavior writing assignment, where they had to write on something else just to see if it was having to sit and write that kept them calm and quiet or actually the assignment itself of reflecting on their behavior. It was the topic... when they were writing about something else, they were all loud and talkative, and I had to keep refocusing them, much like I did in the beginning of the year.
I liked the behavior goal idea so much that I had them reassess their goals for the next day, and they could change them or keep them the same, with good success both days.
For my one phonics lesson that I did track during the Open House week, I pulled out all the stops. It was my second day of the behavior goal cards in the morning, I also had my "problem" students use the behavior contract cards, and I also said that I would choose two winners of the people who talked out the least to receive five class dollars. Oh, and we were really close to getting the rest of our pasta for our popcorn party, and I told the class that if overall they were good, they could earn it during this lesson (they did manage to earn the rest of it).
It was a very effective strategy. During the whole phonics lesson (which was a very typical lesson in every way) there were only 13 times that anyone talked out. My focus students did exceptionally well on this day as well: J, B, D, and G all did not talk out at all, R and T only talked out once. N continues to struggle, and talked out 3 times.
N has been struggling a lot lately. One day was because he didn't have his medication, but even on days with it, it seems that he has lost his self control completely. I am not sure what the best solution for this is. I have talked to his mom about it too, and she feels that he is not really trying his best to control himself. It seems that no amount of motivation is really working for him at this point, but it does definitely give me a place to focus on.
R has been doing exceptionally well as a contrast. I made him an island, where instead of being part of a 4 person team to be able to earn points, he can earn them on his own, and the other three members don't have to worry about him doing the right thing to earn points, which helps them as well. The great thing is that when he was part of the team, the two ( him and the rest of the team) were always arguing, because the times when R was ready, they weren't, and when they were ready, he wasn't. I separate them into two separate point earning entities, and they are BOTH doing better, even winning sometimes.
I had talked about differentiating for the focus students, where each has a different technique that I had tried in the past. But one thing that I have to remember about the classroom is feasibility. Having one student working for his goal, another for money, and another for a class competition I think is too difficult to set up and maintain.
I think the biggest benefit of my last phonics lesson on behavior is that it differentiated without extra work on my part. The students who were motivated by goals had the goals that they had written down in the morning to guide them. The students who were motivated by the behavior contracts, and charting their own good behavior had that tool available to them. The students who were motivated by the desire to earn the 5 dollar prize/ the competition had that strategy as well. I do recall that part of differentiating is simply giving them the choice. This phonics lesson did just that, gave them the choice in what would motivate them and I can't be sure which was the effective portion for each student... but at the end of the day, does it matter, since most were quiet?
I knew that something needed to be done to help keep them in check, mostly for my own sanity.
I decided to extend the goal setting behavior to the whole class. I had every student write up three behavior goals for themselves at the beginning of the day, and then try their best to achieve those goals that day. They could choose from any number of goals that I listed on the white board in the morning or they could choose their own.
Overall, I think it was a really effective way of getting the class to think about their behavior in the same way that the writing assignment did without having to have them spend the day doing writing assignments.
On a side note, I tried a control for the behavior writing assignment, where they had to write on something else just to see if it was having to sit and write that kept them calm and quiet or actually the assignment itself of reflecting on their behavior. It was the topic... when they were writing about something else, they were all loud and talkative, and I had to keep refocusing them, much like I did in the beginning of the year.
I liked the behavior goal idea so much that I had them reassess their goals for the next day, and they could change them or keep them the same, with good success both days.
For my one phonics lesson that I did track during the Open House week, I pulled out all the stops. It was my second day of the behavior goal cards in the morning, I also had my "problem" students use the behavior contract cards, and I also said that I would choose two winners of the people who talked out the least to receive five class dollars. Oh, and we were really close to getting the rest of our pasta for our popcorn party, and I told the class that if overall they were good, they could earn it during this lesson (they did manage to earn the rest of it).
It was a very effective strategy. During the whole phonics lesson (which was a very typical lesson in every way) there were only 13 times that anyone talked out. My focus students did exceptionally well on this day as well: J, B, D, and G all did not talk out at all, R and T only talked out once. N continues to struggle, and talked out 3 times.
N has been struggling a lot lately. One day was because he didn't have his medication, but even on days with it, it seems that he has lost his self control completely. I am not sure what the best solution for this is. I have talked to his mom about it too, and she feels that he is not really trying his best to control himself. It seems that no amount of motivation is really working for him at this point, but it does definitely give me a place to focus on.
R has been doing exceptionally well as a contrast. I made him an island, where instead of being part of a 4 person team to be able to earn points, he can earn them on his own, and the other three members don't have to worry about him doing the right thing to earn points, which helps them as well. The great thing is that when he was part of the team, the two ( him and the rest of the team) were always arguing, because the times when R was ready, they weren't, and when they were ready, he wasn't. I separate them into two separate point earning entities, and they are BOTH doing better, even winning sometimes.
I had talked about differentiating for the focus students, where each has a different technique that I had tried in the past. But one thing that I have to remember about the classroom is feasibility. Having one student working for his goal, another for money, and another for a class competition I think is too difficult to set up and maintain.
I think the biggest benefit of my last phonics lesson on behavior is that it differentiated without extra work on my part. The students who were motivated by goals had the goals that they had written down in the morning to guide them. The students who were motivated by the behavior contracts, and charting their own good behavior had that tool available to them. The students who were motivated by the desire to earn the 5 dollar prize/ the competition had that strategy as well. I do recall that part of differentiating is simply giving them the choice. This phonics lesson did just that, gave them the choice in what would motivate them and I can't be sure which was the effective portion for each student... but at the end of the day, does it matter, since most were quiet?
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
February 16th, Goal setting
My idea for this week was to add something to the behavior contracts to help them be more successful. Last week, Linda had suggested that I talk with the boys, and that was part of the decision with this lesson.
I still used the behavior contracts, but I asked each boy individually what their goal was for how few times they would talk during the lesson today. All of the boys except for B set their goal very high for themselves at 0. My guess is that I have placed so much emphasis on not talking that they know that no talking is allowed, and thus should be the goal.
B placed his goal at a more achievable level of 2, compared to his 3-7 times that he was talking on other days.
Goal setting proved an effective technique for everyone except for N and T. N talked 3 times today, but I do think he was off today overall, and my aide even wondered if he was off his ADHD meds today he was so out of control. T had no such excuse for talking out 4 times.
R, J, B, and D made their goals or in B's case, exceeded their goal, in that all 4 boys were not caught talking out at all during the lesson. G was close with only talking out once.
When I collected the behavior contract cards from them, all the boys who achieved their goal got a high five and a good job and a lot of praise for making their goal and being so quiet during the lesson. G, for his overall good behavior, also was praised.
N and T were told how many times they talked out, and told that I hope that next time they could do better.
The interesting thing about the goal setting is that it seems to work apart from the behavior contract. Many behavior contracts that were returned today were returned blank, with no happy faces drawn at all. My guess is that this is in part because our lesson was moving fast today, and they didn't have time to stop and draw a happy face, but I am pleased that R, D and B were all able to be so successful without needing to draw a single happy face for themselves. N didn't draw any happy faces, and this might have contributed to his less than successful day.
T drew a bunch of happy faces, but again they did not match his behavior in class today. G and J both used the contract as a tool, since they both drew about 5 happy faces and were quiet in class today. Once I start differentiating, it is important to note that based on this lesson, G, J, and N would benefit from the behavior contract as part of their behavior strategies, while R, D, and B might be better off just setting a goal for themselves that they think about before the lesson starts.
Today's "expirement" will be duplicated on Thursday, and we will see if the results are the same.
Of note for B's positive behavior today- his seat partner, who he is frequently talking to, was absent today. If he declines again, even with a goal, on a day she is here, I will try finding a spot for him that is less distracting.
I still used the behavior contracts, but I asked each boy individually what their goal was for how few times they would talk during the lesson today. All of the boys except for B set their goal very high for themselves at 0. My guess is that I have placed so much emphasis on not talking that they know that no talking is allowed, and thus should be the goal.
B placed his goal at a more achievable level of 2, compared to his 3-7 times that he was talking on other days.
Goal setting proved an effective technique for everyone except for N and T. N talked 3 times today, but I do think he was off today overall, and my aide even wondered if he was off his ADHD meds today he was so out of control. T had no such excuse for talking out 4 times.
R, J, B, and D made their goals or in B's case, exceeded their goal, in that all 4 boys were not caught talking out at all during the lesson. G was close with only talking out once.
When I collected the behavior contract cards from them, all the boys who achieved their goal got a high five and a good job and a lot of praise for making their goal and being so quiet during the lesson. G, for his overall good behavior, also was praised.
N and T were told how many times they talked out, and told that I hope that next time they could do better.
The interesting thing about the goal setting is that it seems to work apart from the behavior contract. Many behavior contracts that were returned today were returned blank, with no happy faces drawn at all. My guess is that this is in part because our lesson was moving fast today, and they didn't have time to stop and draw a happy face, but I am pleased that R, D and B were all able to be so successful without needing to draw a single happy face for themselves. N didn't draw any happy faces, and this might have contributed to his less than successful day.
T drew a bunch of happy faces, but again they did not match his behavior in class today. G and J both used the contract as a tool, since they both drew about 5 happy faces and were quiet in class today. Once I start differentiating, it is important to note that based on this lesson, G, J, and N would benefit from the behavior contract as part of their behavior strategies, while R, D, and B might be better off just setting a goal for themselves that they think about before the lesson starts.
Today's "expirement" will be duplicated on Thursday, and we will see if the results are the same.
Of note for B's positive behavior today- his seat partner, who he is frequently talking to, was absent today. If he declines again, even with a goal, on a day she is here, I will try finding a spot for him that is less distracting.
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