Classroom Management of Student behavior

1/13/2020

There are several classroom elements that help establish and maintain a productive learning environment.  Most importantly, teachers must present a calm, assertive demeanor.   The other elements, which I will discuss below, are a part of "proper prior planning".  Effective planning helps to keep students engaged in purposeful work and behaviorally appropriate.   Read on or watch my Youtube video below to see how I manage student behavior in my high school biology classroom:

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Before students enter the classroom, I place their classroom folders and "do-nows" on their desks.  During the opening week of school I taught them my expectation that they enter the room quietly and begin guessing words based on the context of the science article, their "do-now". As students are seated, making their guesses, I paraphrase the article to assist them in guessing appropriate words.  I tailor the amount of my guidance to the capabilities of the learners in my class. After about five minutes of independent work I lead the class in a discussion of what words work best in the article.

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​The "do-now" activity takes about ten minutes, during which I also complete "housekeeping" tasks like attendance.  After, students complete the day's lesson, which may be a lab, notes​, or other assignment.  

During the last five minutes of class, I project a sentence starter on the board.  Students complete the sentence starter on the back of their "do-now". The completed sentence is the student's "exit ticket" as they leave class.  An example of a typical sentence starter is, "The main idea of today's class was….".

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​Both the "do-now" and exit ticket activities promote academic engagement from bell to bell.  The completed activities are collected daily and grouped by student name. I make daily notations, as appropriate, on the "do-now" regarding individual student behavior and work habits.

On the last day of the week I review the students clipped "do-nows", a set of five in a typical week.  I assign a fractional grade based on my evaluation of their class participation for the week as evidenced by their work on their "do-nows" and the notations about their behavior and work habits.  A student exhibiting exemplary behavior and work habits would earn 5/5, or if fewer days in the week, a fractional amount equalling 100%. ​

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Whatever the student's fractional score, that number is entered in my gradebook as the week's participation grade.  Students generally get ten participation grades a quarter, though sometimes short weeks are combined. Student's participation grades are calculated with assignments, and cumulatively, are worth 45% of their biology grade.

​In addition to being entered in my gradebook, student's participation grades are also recorded on their ten week charts on their classroom folders, along with comments.  When I hand students their weekly student reports, typically on Mondays, I show them how the positive or negative choices they've made in class have affected their grades and what they can do to improve.

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Like many teachers, I work with students with diverse abilities, some with very limited reading skills.  Some of my students also make choices and exhibit behaviors that further hinder their abilities to learn. 

I started using abridged, edited science articles in my classroom several years ago as a way to acclimate students to developing an academic focus the moment they entered my classroom.  I found the science article do-nows to be a useful practice, so I edited five articles each week to use in my classes. In subsequent years I organized them by science topic so that students could read about research from the field we were currently studying.  My collection includes 180 articles covering the ten biology topics I teach.

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Those do-now articles, along with exit ticket sentence starters are available in my book Life Science "Do Nows" & "Exit Tickets"Life Science "Do-Nows" and "Exit Tickets": 180 Days of Warm Up and Closure Activities. Buy your copy here or on Amazon.

If you do, you'll be following through with the "7 Ps"! 

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