September Eight, Two Thousand + Ten

Behaviour Management.

I was finding that I was needing to raise my voice a lot during the session between recess and lunch today. The stopping and waiting was not working, the children just kept talking. And as for raising my voice, while it did work I don't feel that this is a teaching technique that I personally want to adopt once I am a new graduate.

I also tried to use touching my head or nose to gain the children's attention. Again while it does work for a small period of time I am finding that the children are just talking again within a few moments.

So at lunch time, I asked the teacher how she coped with the talking and the noise level once she graduated. My MT was very helpful and told me that she did the exact same thing when she was newly out and that while the noise level with the class was slightly higher than when she is in control of the group, it was to be expected and that when I have the children on my own in November that I will probably notice a huge difference in their behaviour as they aren't trying to impress me or used to having both teachers.

It was great to hear that I wasn't doing so badly with the children.

But in the afternoon I thought that I would try some of my MT suggestions of stopping and waiting, raising an arm or whispering.

These did work, but I was still finding the children talking. The trip to the zoo was mentioned a couple of times as the children need to ensure that for the excursion that they are able to listen to either the parent or teacher that they are with.

Once we were wrapping up the lesson and it was still fifteen minutes before home time. The children got awfully noisy. Which was quite unusual. I quickly pressed play on the CD player and then re-paused it.

The children danced for a moved, whilst sitting and then froze when I paused the music. I had a few ask if we were going to play musical statues but said no, I explained that I played to music as they weren't listening and Miss Lloyd wasn't going to raise her voice.

The students went extremely quiet after this and I asked one of the students to grab me a book.

They all sat quietly and intently listening to the book until the bell.

I ended up finding a new behaviour management strategy and am quite glad that I had the discussion with my MT during the lunch break. Allowed me to ensure that I wasn't going completely off track and that she still thinks of me as being a capable teacher.