Nicholas Andreozzi
Classroom Management
I performed
my observations in an eighth grade science class at Feinstein Middle School of
Coventry. For this class, the instructor
decided to have the students answer questions about earthquakes from a released
NECAP assessment. This was their second day answering these questions so the
students already knew what they were supposed to be doing. However, the
instructor reminded them to answer each question to the best of their ability
and try to cite things they did in previous classes. Since the students knew
this already and had done it the day before, every student in that class knew
what was expected of them. This allowed the students to focus on the content of
their work, not how to do it, or what the teacher wants to read.
The school
does not have bells, so the students move from class to class based on times
that the team outlines as periods. Students enter once the other students
leave. They are typically talking but they go straight to their desks. The
instructor is at his desk in the front of the room, working on his laptop. A
few of the students in his class also work with a resource teacher. Since the
students were quietly working throughout this lesson, he was working with the
resource teacher to write the upcoming test so that those students would have a
fair shot at it.
Once the
students have taken their seats and he quickly checks to see who is not here,
he begins the lesson by telling the students to take out their agendas and
record an upcoming assignment or assessment. This is a routine for the
students, which benefits them because they know what to expect, and the
instructor does not have to lose time organizing the class before they start. The
students had an outline of their paper due today. He tells them to open their
Chromebooks and submit it online to the website on Google Classroom. This took
about 5 minutes because some students couldn’t connect, didn’t have enough
battery life to open the laptop, or just forgot it was due today. Once this was
all sorted out, he proceeded to tell them about the day. The students went
about solving their NECAP problems quietly. They were not permitted to work in
groups, and it was going to count as a grade. In a later class, they went over
it as a class so they could all see what a perfect score answer looks like.
I did not
get to see much in terms of classroom management, but I liked how this teacher
uses systems to run his classroom. He starts each class by telling students to record
things in their agenda, and then tells them to turn in papers if there are any
due. The students have respect for him and that makes them more probable to
behave positively. In my future classroom, I will use systems like this to help
my class run smoothly. I believe that students need to be able to learn before
they can start thinking about learning. Being able to learn doesn’t mean being
smart, either. It is more concerned with
what kind of environment are they attempting to learn in. A proper
learning environment should be one in which students feel safe to answer and
ask questions, understand what is expected of them and how to get an A in the
class, and the class should be a community of learners so that each member of
the class wants each other to succeed and will actively assist in the success
of their classmates.
