Organizes a Class, Technology, and Space in a Classroom
Successful teaching requires careful, deliberate planning and choices in terms of how to set up a classroom, implementing technology, and organizing classroom rules and procedures. In this section, you'll find evidence of how I've facilitated meaningful interaction between students and technology, their individual peers, the classroom community as a whole, as well as the class content itself.
Teachers make many decisions every day that I never anticipated until I was in that role myself that impact the way they interact with everything that's part of a classroom. And those teacher decisions can determine the outcome of a class.
Teachers make many decisions every day that I never anticipated until I was in that role myself that impact the way they interact with everything that's part of a classroom. And those teacher decisions can determine the outcome of a class.
Seating Arrangement (8th Grade)
The way you arrange the space in your classroom is an important part of how successful you classes will be. Throughout the year, I've arranged the desks and the students in a way that facilitates successful interaction and engagement.
In the beginning of the year, as a new student teacher, I was especially concerned about effective classroom management. That's not to say that it's not still something I focus on, but during the first few weeks I was largely untested and wanted to exert more control, so I arranged the desks in individual rows, so students had limited access to one another and were, at all times, facing the front of the room.
As the year progressed and I felt more comfortable in my role as the authority in class, I moved the desks to be in the table groups you can see pictured. This facilitates group work much more effectively, which is something I wanted to encourage in my class. After the first month or so, when my management was more firmly in place, I could trust the students to resist temptation and to sit in groups like this, but maintain focus on the work of my class.
I've also used strategic seating charts along with the desk layout to maximize student engagement and productivity. When students can be productive, I put them with friends because they're more likely to collaborate on group assignments with people they are comfortable around. However, when students are with friends and become unproductive and it proves to be a distraction, I offer second chances and explain the consequences of continuing this behavior, then change their assigned seat. This practice emphasizes one of my core beliefs about teaching: it's important to give students a chance to succeed and to incorporate student choice into the classroom, but as the teacher I must intervene if it disrupts their learning.
In the beginning of the year, as a new student teacher, I was especially concerned about effective classroom management. That's not to say that it's not still something I focus on, but during the first few weeks I was largely untested and wanted to exert more control, so I arranged the desks in individual rows, so students had limited access to one another and were, at all times, facing the front of the room.
As the year progressed and I felt more comfortable in my role as the authority in class, I moved the desks to be in the table groups you can see pictured. This facilitates group work much more effectively, which is something I wanted to encourage in my class. After the first month or so, when my management was more firmly in place, I could trust the students to resist temptation and to sit in groups like this, but maintain focus on the work of my class.
I've also used strategic seating charts along with the desk layout to maximize student engagement and productivity. When students can be productive, I put them with friends because they're more likely to collaborate on group assignments with people they are comfortable around. However, when students are with friends and become unproductive and it proves to be a distraction, I offer second chances and explain the consequences of continuing this behavior, then change their assigned seat. This practice emphasizes one of my core beliefs about teaching: it's important to give students a chance to succeed and to incorporate student choice into the classroom, but as the teacher I must intervene if it disrupts their learning.
Class Wiki: Story Swap (8th Grade)
Students today don't remember a time before the internet. Many of the important events in their lives occur online and they use it to find information, communicate with one another, and to share their interests. In an effort to use capitalize on that fact, I used a class wiki to facilitate peer revision during a writing piece.
Each student was given a login and password, and as the teacher I had complete control over the wiki, which allowed me to review the comments students were making and to delete anything inappropriate or off-task. This was essential, because the internet is notoriously difficult to control, but this website allows the administrator to control the content, which allowed me to be successful in implementing technology into the classroom.
The benefits of this type of platform are obvious when you look at the content of the students' discussions. Before they accessed the wiki, I went over a powerpoint that laid out the rules of effective and appropriate peer feedback. This helped them be successful because they knew what was expected of them. In their use of the wiki, students gave each other feedback on which strong verbs to use, how to structure their story, and maintained a polite, respectful, and supportive demeanor in their digital interactions. This is an area of my teaching that I want to expand, and I'm encouraged based on the quality interactions I brought out of my students during this activity. Check out the actual exchanges my students had for proof here: example 1, example 2, and example 3.
Each student was given a login and password, and as the teacher I had complete control over the wiki, which allowed me to review the comments students were making and to delete anything inappropriate or off-task. This was essential, because the internet is notoriously difficult to control, but this website allows the administrator to control the content, which allowed me to be successful in implementing technology into the classroom.
The benefits of this type of platform are obvious when you look at the content of the students' discussions. Before they accessed the wiki, I went over a powerpoint that laid out the rules of effective and appropriate peer feedback. This helped them be successful because they knew what was expected of them. In their use of the wiki, students gave each other feedback on which strong verbs to use, how to structure their story, and maintained a polite, respectful, and supportive demeanor in their digital interactions. This is an area of my teaching that I want to expand, and I'm encouraged based on the quality interactions I brought out of my students during this activity. Check out the actual exchanges my students had for proof here: example 1, example 2, and example 3.
Classroom Rules, Expectations, & Routines
Students, especially 8th graders, thrive on consistency. To maintain a structured, productive class, it's essential to lay out and maintain clear rules, expectations, and routines. Here's a list of some that I've implemented during my student teaching:
Many of these policies were explained verbally and shown on the Welcome Letter I handed out on the second day of school. The classroom guidelines for behavior expectations were discussed via my respect lesson, which I've linked towards the top of this section.
- The only real rule for classroom behavior is to be respectful. On the second day of school, students worked in groups to explore what implications this had for all aspects of the classroom environment, including respecting one another, respecting the course work, respecting the teacher, and respecting the class materials. For a more detailed description check out my "Joins a Faculty and School" tab.
- Students will be marked tardy if they're not in their seats, ready to work when the bell rings.
- Students turn in their work in trays, which are pictured to the left and located near the entrance to the room.
- Student work is returned in files, sorted by hour.
- Students leave their English binder in the room, in bins. This is effective because students are still responsible for keeping track of their binders, but there's a space where they can store it if they don't have homework, which eliminates lots of risk in terms of them losing their binders.
- Class binders are divided into 5 tabs, to separate the types of work that we do in class: Grammar, Writers Workshop, Readers Workshop, Word Study, and Portfolio.
- Any late work is marked down 10% for each day it's late, and can only be turned in one week late. Exceptions were made for extenuating circumstances, but that wasn't laid out in the beginning. I used my discretion when dealing with individual students, but didn't advertise that I was willing to be flexible because I wanted the majority of students to follow the protocols as they were initially described.
- Each day, I started class by describing the day's agenda, so students were clear on what would be expected of them that day, and why we were doing the activities we were doing. Students were required to copy this down in their own agendas, provided by the school.
Many of these policies were explained verbally and shown on the Welcome Letter I handed out on the second day of school. The classroom guidelines for behavior expectations were discussed via my respect lesson, which I've linked towards the top of this section.