Positive Reinforcement and Appropriate Actions to Maintain A Healthy Classroom Environment

In my Music class I firmly establish a set of rules and procedures at the beginning of the school year and run through my expectations of following them with my students regularly. There is consistent positive reinforcement to give incentives to enhance student learning and participation.

Below are the positive management strategies I implement:

Verbal Affirmation

I always praise the students aloud for specific good behaviors and good performances.  For example: I would say, “ Thank you Jane for singing so beautifully, I can hear that you are projecting your voice.” This does not only have a positive influence on Jane, but the rest of the class too. I will continue to praise many others that I see singing well and I will normally end up saying, “ Wow! I really love how you all are singing. You are using your head voice to sing and you are pronouncing the words so clearly.”

Stickers

Following the praise, I immediately stick a sticker in the student's shirt. Also, for the purpose of encouragement, there are times the whole class gets stickers even though not everyone gets praised. This typically happens when there is no misbehaving in class.

Bee Cards (reward coupons)

I give out Bee cards to the students who work cooperatively throughout the lesson. They put their names down and tick what positive behaviors they have exhibited and turn in to the school counter. Upon collecting 10 Bee cards, the students will get a prize reward from the school.

For example, Susie is absolutely focused and cooperative while performing as well as responsible and mindful in handling the musical instruments. She thus deserves a Bee card.

Class Dojo

At the end of each lesson, I will fill out the students’ Dojo scores to keep track of their behaviors.  Sometimes, I encourage students to be honest and evaluate their own behaviors. When the class consistently fares well, the students celebrate at the end of the month by having a class party. Parents will also receive a message about their child’s positive behaviors.

Award certification

After rounding up the Dojo scores, high scorers will either get gold, bronze or silver certificates for being cooperative in Music.

 

In my Music class, two very common negative scenarios are students getting off-task and not following instructions. I have to carry out actions to help them realize their undesired behavior and find means to help them get back on track.

Actions to modify classroom misbehavior:

Close proximity and a nudge.

I constantly practice “withitness” during lessons. When I see that a child either gets off task or act silly while participating, I go close to him/her and sometimes give a nudge to express disagreement. The student generally shapes up.

Verbal warning

If the undesired behavior persists, I give a warning to the child by firmly saying “2^nd time” and expect the student to get back on track.

Withdraw from the activity

If verbal warning doesn’t work, I withdraw the student from the activity and have him/her sit aside for five minutes to watch how one should be behaving in that moment and have him/her tell me what the observation is. I expect the child to get back in the group with a better attitude. At this stage, the child will shape up as he/she has not only observed what is right but also missed out five minutes of fun learning.

Dojo Scores

The score will be affected for misbehaving students and communication with parents via Dojo messages will take place at this point.

Reflection note

On a few occasions, the really rebellious child has to write a note reflecting on what his/her undesired behavior is; what would have been a better choice; how will he/she not behave in such a manner in the future; and finally he/ she needs to let the parents know and get their signatures to submit the note to me. I go through the note with the child and keep him/her accountable for what has been written.

When the class management system is well articulated and executed, the students will know what is expected of them and the expectations will positively impact the learning environment.

This flow chart gives a summary of my classroom management: 

Analysis of Three Teaching - Learning Situations

I have in this week watched three videos of teaching-learning situations and would like to give my analysis about them.

                                                        

STEM in Action  ( Grade 5/ Science / Motion)

Academic expectations:

Firstly I would say this is a high achiever class; it looks like everyone in the class is a high-expectancy student. I also believe, based on their ways of interaction in this particular lesson, these students have had many practices of working as a team before landing in this last leg of the project.

I could see that it was a well-planned and systematic project based lesson. It is definitely student - centered. The students were expected to share and communicate their problems; to discuss and collaborate; to apply critical skills for self - evaluation and modification. The teacher expected students to share and solve problems without much of her involvement. Students were expected to communicate their ideas and become smarter through this learning mode. They were expected to take ownership and leadership in the project; to be good problem solver with barely enough materials as well as be responsible and independent learners. Certainly the teacher has stepped back in this last leg of teaching to allow students to take sole responsibilities of learning. This is evident in the way she prompted the students with questions to challenge their critical thinking skills.

Behavior expectations:

For grade 5 level , this group of students were overly well behaved. They were expected to be totally on task and knew exactly what they were doing. They were so drawn into their work that there was no time for casual chat. The teacher didn’t have a need to mention any behavioral expectations.

Norms and procedures:

The teacher must have set her class procedures very well as the smooth transitions in the activity showed high student performance. They knew how to transition from sharing their problems to discussion, from taking out their note books to sketch their work to running to the computer and finally to move around to work on their models. There seemed to be no flaws and no time wasted in the entire lesson because the students knew exactly what they were supposed to and were learning independently.

3^rd Grade Chinese Math class

Academic expectations:

 This is a typical traditional Chinese class lesson whereby the teacher stands in front of the class and the students are cooped up in rows facing the white board.

In the first part of this lesson the students were expected to belt out the multiplication facts, while the teacher wrote the answers on the board. The louder they sounded, the cleverer they were meant to be in their learning.  In the second part of the lesson the teacher was teaching the students to solve a subtraction problem. Again, students were expected to belt out the process loudly. However not everyone proofed that he/she knew the solution.

Yes, the students performed and behaved very well in routine learning. However, the teacher did not give chance to every student to showcase his/her understanding of math. This was more a teacher – centered lesson as the teacher was belting out the answer while solving the subtraction problem.

Behavior expectations:

The students were expected to sit properly throughout the session, legs crossed and hands behind their bodies. And they were doing so throughout the session except for one student in the third row. It was beautiful that these little ones knew how to be obedient in class. They were indeed submissive. By the sound of their response in class, the students seemed to be participating well in the activities.

Norms and procedures:

The students knew very well the verbal transitions from the first activity to the

second. When the teacher called for the first part, the students knew how to respond to the second immediately. Some of them knew to raise their hand to want to give answers.

Having said that, I am not convinced that this kind of learning style produces high student performance.  I only see these students as highly obedient and submissive but I can’t infer that their critical thinking and problem solving skills were challenged.

  

Whole Brain Teaching

Grade 9 Power teaching

Academic expectations:

These high schoolers were expected to not only know their facts but also to be able to reproduce and “teach” their peers the facts learned with expression and gestures. Their cognitive and social skills were stimulated. They needed to be well versed in class.

Behavior expectations:

In this Whole Brain class, the students were highly motivated and focused. There was no room for misbehaving, as they needed to receive and reproduce and dramatize their learning throughout the session. Active learning was taking place the entire time.

Norms and procedures:

The students knew how to respond upon the verbal calls; they knew how to mimic the teacher’s tone, as well as the movement and gestures for every call. The positive effect of these norms and procedures has truly supported the class performance.

 Setting High Performance Expectations Among My Students

 There are some strategies I have learned from these videos that I would like to apply in my classroom to ensure high expectation outcomes.  Certainly the project based learning mode is the number one strategy. It is the most fulfilling teaching experience for me to practice this in my Music classroom. I expect my students to collaborate and discuss how to perform in unity, problem solve and think critically to create and compose music, take responsibility of handling the instruments and take ownership of their performance. Finally, I want them to be independent learners.

I would also take from the WBT to implement successful transitions and procedures such as the “I Say, You Say”, mimicking the teacher’s tone, and adding motion while reciting the rules. I find these are also great tools in catching student attention.