This Friday at school we had a very busy day. I think it is normal for Fridays to have less instruction because there are many other things that come first in fourth grade. The students had a pretty normal Friday because they went to specials, had stations in the morning, and then had lunch and recess. After lunch was when things got a little crazy. The students had a chance to go to the library because they hadn’t gotten to earlier in the week. The problem on Friday was that the students were a little unfocused. That Thursday they had went on a field trip to the Erie Canal and then Thursday night was trick or treat in Findlay. Then at 2:00 on Friday the students had a Halloween party. The students get to dress up but they had fun games and snacks. Needless to say it was kind of a crazy day at school.
So most of the past posts I have written about the norms of the classroom and today’s post I want to focus instead on classroom management. My CMT has great classroom management skills. Friday was a day that classroom management was very important. I know my CMT usually does those types of parties without any help. I don’t know how she does it because the whole time I was cleaning, helping, keeping students in line. My teacher gave each student an apple that she spent a while cutting. We also covered pumpkins in shaving cream and the students had competitions over who could shave the pumpkin the best. It was a lot of fun but we had one student who did not do well all day.
This student has been one of the students I have been focusing on during my time in the classroom. I know that this students misbehaves a lot and is difficult to get interested in topics. The past few times I have been in the school I have been impressed with his behavior. Friday was not a good day for him at all. Both the teacher and I spent a lot of time with him while he was doing morning workshop trying to get him to work on his vocab quiz. All of the other students pick up the vocab quiz and do it automatically. I had to go over and ask this student if he did it or not. Then I had to hand it to him and ask him to put his book down. Then my CMT spent probably ten to twenty mins. trying to get him to do it. She had to take away his book so he would do it. After all that time an effort he only wrote two out of the six sentences and they were not good at all. The problem is I know this student is very smart but he does not put any effort into anything. This is a worry for me when I start teaching soon. I am not sure how to get him interested in what I am talking about. I know I will have to put extra effort in getting him involved. I know that the student is interested in cars, reading, and Harry Potter. I have tried to involve a lot of reading into my lessons. I just know that classroom management is going to be very important when I am teaching and is something I am thinking about.