Day 24

Tuesday

Today I made my classroom expectations clear. I started the day by writing my rules on a poster I created while my students sorted their homework. When I finished writing the rules, I passed out rule sheet for each of my students to copy the rules down on to. This way they would always be able to refer back to them. After my students wrote down the first 4 rules, I had them read each rule aloud with me and help me to understand what they mean. The first rule was "Be NICE all the time". One of my students raised his hand and said it means to always be good, don't be mean. That was exactly what I was looking for. After he explained what this rule meant to him, I asked the class if pushing my friend would be nice or if helping my friend would be nice. They said helping would be nice. Since it seemed like everyone understood the first rule, I moved on to the second which was "RAISE your hand". I had the class show me what this looks like and everyone raised their hand in the air. I asked them if its okay to yell out or if its ok to raise my hand. The class said it is ok to raise your hand. I explained that if everyone yells out at the same time its too loud so we all need to raise our hands. To support that, I went into the third rule "Talk with an INSIDE VOICE". The concept of inside/outside voices is very foreign to these students. They have never heard it before and are allowed to yell in class. I demonstrated the difference of inside and outside voices by yelling and then talking quietly and asking my students which sounded better. They said the the quieter voice was better. I then called on a student to explain what quieter voices are better and this student said that if everyone yells it will get too loud. I said she was exactly right and went on to the fourth rule, "LISTEN to the teacher". For this rule I explained that no matter which teacher is leading the lesson, they must always listen to that person. I asked them who they should be listening to now and they pointed to me and said "Ms. Maddy". After we discussed that rule I asked them to think what they think of one more rule that they would like to make for their class. After my students thought about it, one little girl raised her hand and said the last rule should be "do not run". I asked the class to raise their hand if they would also like this to be the last rule. Everyones hand was in the air. Since they had decided what the last rule was I wrote it on the poster and had them copy it and write their name on the bottom of the paper where it says they will always follow the rules. After they wrote their names one of my students asked me why my name wasn't on the poster. I asked the class if they would like me to write my name and everyone said yes! So I signed my name and explained that now everyone in this room-me included- must follow the rules all the time. After I signed it I had students come up and sign it as well.

Throughout the day I continued to refer back to the rules and remind students that everyone is held accountable to them. When a student would break the rule, I would have him/her walk up to the poster with me and tell which rule was broken. I'm hoping that the rules will form a sort of consistency with my students.

After I taught my rules, I led another lesson following The Important Book. In this lesson I reviewed what important means and gave examples of various things that are important to me. When I opened the lesson I had students share with me what they remember about the word important and what is important to them. After that I pulled out different items that I brought with me in my bag and we discussed how each item was important. While we were doing this, I pointed back to the word strip I had created of "important" on the chalkboard. After we discussed how the different items I brought were important, I held up the pictures of fruit I brought in and for each picture had the class tell me what it was. Since we have tried the worksheet a few times now with no success, I thought I would try again from a different approach. This time I put the worksheet under the document camera so it was visible to the whole class. As I went through the worksheet, I explained what should be written on each line. After I passed out their worksheet and walked around monitoring their work, I realized they were not ready for it. Almost everyone was still making mistakes with how to write the worksheet. Even though my students weren't successful with the worksheet I still feel the lesson was successful; they were able to talk with me about what important means and describe how various items are important. I think I'm approaching this lesson way differently than anyone else would because instead of choosing a camera, phone, or laptop as important items, I chose every day items and had my students seek out the importance in each. For example, some of the items I brought into this lesson were a water bottle, tissues, a pencil, and a chair. I want my students to be able to understand what important means and be able to identify what is important about any given object.
I think with time they will be able to do that more easily instead of being prompted by me.