Classroom Management and Assessment

Managing the Classroom

My Opinion

To me this is the most frightening thing I can think of when it comes to teaching a class, because at times I can be a push over. As a student I was one of the worst behaving, I picked fights, was loud and talkitive, but I now see why I did it. I was a student who just wanted to seek attention. The one teacher I really admire is one who used my outburst as a teaching tool to me. She gave me options and treated me like a person not just a child, she understood where I was coming from and helped me through my behaviour. I think that when I am a teacher that I would use her as my greatest inspiration.

Dealing with classroom problems is a matter of timing, and the best time is before the problems occur (preventive), but sometimes problems arise and the teacher must deal with issues even if there was preventative measurements (reactive).Balance between preventive management and reactive management.

Teachers should ask what the function of the behaviour is, and why are they misbehaving? (Functional Approach)

Assessing the Seriousness and the Three Things to Consider

1. Severity: overall potential impact.
2. Chronicity: How chronic is the behaviour where does it take place?
3. Frequency: How often does it happen? If it happens all the time how effective is the teacher’s response?

Minor Interventions: These minor issues arise when the activity isn’t moving along and appropriate transitions are not in place.

Progressive Discipline Approach

1. Non-verbal: eye contact
2. Proximity: move closer to the issue
3. Redirection: make a general situation
4. Give needed instruction
5. Directly and Assertively tell them to stop

Moderate Interventions: Semi- Formal, like detentions, time outs, and with holding privileges.

Serious Interventions: Formal interventions that involve school administration, like suspension, in-school detentions, at home detentions, or even expulsion (usually last resort)

Assessing Students’ Learning

Alberta Assessment Consortium (AAC): Program of studies → Teacher as Planner → Teacher as Coach → Teacher as Judge →Program of studies …

Four Types of Assessment

1. Before instruction assessment: provides teachers with a baseline, where students are at before assessment.
2. During instruction assessment: Formative assessment ( FOR Learning) the teacher as coach stage, serves as a diagnostic to help the teacher and students know how they are doing.
3. After instruction assessment: Summative assessment (OF Learning) final exams, are the teacher as judge stage and assess the overall learning.
4. Assessment AS Learning: Self – Reflections involve meta-cognition allows for a higher level of cognition.

Three Features of Assessment

1. Reliability: Yields similar, predictable, reproducible, stable, and dependable results.
2. Validity: Measures what it claims to measure.
3. Fairness: All learners have the same opportunity to learn and show how they have learned the knowledge.

Current Trends

1. Use at least some performance based assessment
2. Examine some higher order cognitive skills
3. Use multiple assessment methods.
4. Have high performance standards
5. Use computers as part of assessment, incorporate new technology.

My Opinion

Assessment I think will be a easy part of teaching, but being the evaluating I think will be very tricky because at times you will know what the student is trying to say but the ideas presented will be too vague, and you might have to read between the lines. The questions is do you give the student a mark based on what you see or what you know, being completely objective to the situation and trying not to be subjective will be difficult. I hope that I will use as many different kinds of assessment so that all students have a chance to succeed this means I should use types for each type of intelligences. How can you find a way to teach math using music, or the students who ask why are we doing algerbra, when I have no need for it in real life? How can a teacher be truely fair?