Classroom Management, Engagement, and Motivation - Assignment Example

Introduction Classroom management is very important in helping manage all sorts of students with different characters. Some students have special needs that they would need the help of their teachers to identify and apply specific strategies to deal with. This paper is aimed at analyzing the case study that is on an elementary school student name Sarah. Part A Sarah is a fifth-grade student in an elementary school where in their class; they are a total of twenty students. She has this character of wandering around the classroom as she destructs other students. She also is a member of an extracurricular photography and movie-making club. The student's behavior is considered disruptive to the classroom environment as such an environment is always expected to maintain a learning-conducive condition (Kathleen, 2014). Learning-conducive environment should always be kept orderly, quiet and without any form of disruption. While walking around to cause destruction to other students, it is possible that Sarah may end up involving in a fight, quarrel and even accusations of interference with other's properties. Such behaviors always cause scenes in the classroom, thereby turning it into a theater full of drama. She may also become a nuisance to the others while she keeps walking around the classroom. However, the possible antecedent of Sarah’s behavior could be the fact that she does not enjoy class work and cannot contain boredom due to being in one place. It is also possible that Sarah is used to being jumpy as a member of photography and movie-making club where moving around is part of the curriculum. Sarah may, therefore, end up wasting a lot of her time in causing trouble while walking around the classroom instead of concentrating in her studies. Her behaviors may also consume other students' time while they try to catch up with her drama. It might, therefore, result in poor performance for Sarah and other students in the classroom. To mitigate this behavior, a lot of assignment should be given to this student with close deadlines to make her sit in her seat for longer times trying to work on them (Mayer, 1995). Sarah can also be allowed to attend to her club duties where she will be able to engage herself in duties that require frequent movement around the stage (Hirsh, 2004). If the above instructional intervention is applied, Sarah will be able to change and become get used to sitting down for longer hours as she completes her assignment. This will lead her into improving her class performance (Kees, 2003). If the second intervention is applied, Sarah can discover and shape her talent in photography and movie-making that can also help her in her future. Part B Self-management: Students can show self-management through observing classroom norms, rules and regulation. By planning their time well, they will be able to complete their classwork and assignment on time and have extra time for extracurricular activities. The students also need to get in touch with their teacher for consultations that may help them plan ahead and manage themselves (Colin, 2013). The teacher can help the students to self-manage themselves through encouraging self-assessment. Self-management involves teaching students on how to engage in appropriate behavior by themselves without being monitored. The students should be encouraged to correctly report whether or not they performed the task that was left for them by the teacher. The teachers are also required to question the behaviors of their students. A part from that, the teachers are supposed to help the students identify specific behaviors for self-management. After the identification, the teacher can instruct the students on what to do following logical steps. The actions demonstrated by the teacher need to be displayed by visual media that are easy to remember. The teacher should also create a reporting system and provide the students with incentives to motivate them when they try the actions to self-manage themselves (Emily, 2014). Self-efficacy: To be able to achieve self-efficacy, students need to ensure that they device their short-term goals for all what they want to achieve in class by either the end of the day or by the end of the week. They then need to get down and review whether the set goals were achieved by the end of the period (Pamela, 2012). Students can also learn the skills of self-efficacy through the context of personal aspiration. The students will have to have the ability to identify long and short-term aspirations that are personally meaningful and are capable of contributing to a sense of well-being in the students. The teacher will also help the students to set short and long-term but concrete goals that are achievable and related to one’s aspirations, to be able to achieve self-efficacy. The students will then monitor their progress towards achieving the set goals that will help them to revise the goals and actions as required. The teacher can also help the students to achieve this by helping them to identify, monitor and change personal habits and beliefs that may act to impede the one’s goals successfully (Robert, 2012). Student engagement and motivation: For students to engage themselves and feel motivated, it is wise for them to keep themselves busy by attending to group discussions on the topics provided by the teacher and even attend to their classroom assignments. The students can also be provided by further reading or research topics that will make them engaged when they are in class. For motivation, the students should receive applauses when they answer questions in class even if they give the wrong answers. They need to be corrected in an encouraging way to motivate them. Those who excel in class work should also be rewarded for motivation. For the teacher to help the students become motivated, they also need to provide the students with conducive and motivating environment. This gives the students the message and insight that learning is interesting, worthwhile and satisfying. The students are willing to accept the risk inherent in learning when they experience an environment that foster self-worth and independence. Learning games should also be introduced by the teacher, especially for the elementary school, to motivate the young students in schools. Part C To create an emotionally safe classroom for students, the teacher can make the first few weeks of school very simple with lots of freedom for the students. When this is done so, students like Sarah can have adequate and ample time to walk around the classroom as much as they want to play with the others (Bruce, 2014). However, after this period is over, the teacher can implement seriousness for a couple of weeks before relaxing it again. The second technique would be making the classes short with various breaks in between in such cases, Sarah can be able to walk around the classroom and do her things before people resume and get serious once again (Elizabeth, 2012). Part D Teaching: in teaching students such as Sarah, various technologies can be applied including using well-prepared presentation using projectors. It is easy to show pictures to illustrate the concepts being taught in class using the projectors. Learning through observation and pictures is usually more effective. Being that Sarah likes wandering in class, her attention will be captivated by the pictures that will be shown using the projector, hence she will have less or no time to wander any more, but to concentrate and watch the visuals presented through the projector. Learning: in learning, some informative video can be provided to the students to watch in class so that they can pick their learning outcomes from it. This can be more appropriate for students such as Nancy, who can only concentrate when the class is interesting. Videos make learning more interesting and increase concentration time. Engagement: to engage the students, the teacher can start up an online discussion board where students can discuss and post their perception on various topics and also get a chance to review other students' work. This can possibly work best for the students in elementary school as their level of usage will vary from student to student. Such students visit social media a lot, therefore, can take the time to visit the discussion board to engage themselves in learning. For example, Sarah because of her wandering and disruptive behavior, she constantly requires the teacher’s attention to ensure that her she is learning and her work is being completed. Engaging her in her work daily will keep her mind occupied so that she will not wander around the classroom. Sarah can engage in online discussion with others frequently to confirm if what she is doing is correct even from her peers. She can as well involve the teacher constantly in such discussions. Motivation: the teacher can have an electronic system of listing the names of those who are performing well in the continuous assessment tests and reward them to motivate them and the other students to work hard. Such a method can be used for students such as Sarah who spend much of class work time wandering around, to turn this time into productive work as there will be listing, and they wouldn’t wish to miss out. When other students’ names appeared in the electronic listing system, without Sarah’s name, next time Sarah will try to avoid wandering and devote much of her time in her studies so that she can also do well and appear on this electronic list of performers. Conclusion We therefore realize that special attention needs to be accorded to the students with different characters in class to help them manage their learning. It is necessary that correct learning instruments and media be selected to promote learning for these students. Those students who do not have adequate concentration in class should also be engaged in alternative extra-curricular activities that will be beneficial to their lives. References Bruce, P. (2014). Creating an emotionally safe classroom. Scholastic, 4(2), 2. Colin, H. (2013). Classroom management plan. Journal of Stanford University, 12(3), 1-5. Elizabeth, S. (2012). Creating emotionally safe classroom environment. Optimus Education, 22(7), 2. Emily, K. (2014, September 14). 5 Ways teachers can help students learn to manage their emotions. Retrieved from Edudemic: http://www.edudemic.com/5-ways-teachers-can-help-students-learn-manage-emotions/ Hirsh, R. (2004). Early childhood curriculum: Incorporating multiple intelligences, developmentally appropriate practices, and play. Allyn & Bacon, 7(2), 3-5. Kathleen, M. (2014). Addressing students' needs: Dealing with disruptive behavior in the classroom. CIRTL Network, 3(1), 1-3. Kees, N. (2003). Creating Safe Learning Environments. (W. Timpson, S. Carnette, E. Borayo, & R. Wong, Eds.) Published in teaching diversity: Challenges and complexities, identities, and integrity, 8(4), 55-64. Pamela, S. (2012). Philosophy of classroom management. Illinois, 16(9), 1-4. Robert, M. J. (2012). Supporting beggining teachers. Educational Leadership, 69(8), 86-87. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/may12/vol69/num08/Teaching_Self-Efficacy_with_Personal_Projects.aspx Read More