Classroom Management & Online Projects
Wow! That was a long day we all spent together! I hope everyone was able to glean something from all the content we covered and discussions had over the seven hours or so of training. I also hope you are not already burnt out.
I wanted to revisit a few of the key points and some great resources to get you on your way…
Classroom Management: I know that many of you are masters at managing your classrooms and some of you are always looking for new ways to facilitate learning. With the new year approaching, you have different considerations for classroom management than you did just a year ago.
Really think carefully about your classroom norms. It’s alright to have a few in mind. It’s even OK to include a couple that are extremely important to you, but make sure to include student input on those norms. They will feel more ownership in how the classroom runs this year than if a list of rules are dicatated to them. Also, be sure to word your norms as what students should do instead of what not to do. For example, instead of the rule “no talking,” try the norm “listen to others when they speak.” The goal is to get students to pay attention to each other or the teacher. A norm should give the desired behavior.
To get your year off to a great start, you should focus your efforts on management and behavior almost exclusively. The best way to ensure that these norms can be maintained throughout the year is by building a positive classroom community. Check my links for community building activities here. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Use some of these resources to plan out your first days of school. For secondary teachers, you could do the same activity with every class. Elementary teachers may want to do one in the morning and one in the afternoon in order to break the monotony of the day. Either way, have a little fun with it and get to know your students. Building relationships with them now will pay off in the long run!
For the rest of my links related to classroom management, click here.
Online Projects: The key to a good online project is to think about the ways in which you can make it transform student learning through an authentic task. Start out small, like an email project or a class blog, then think of ways you can transform some of your old lessons into a real world project that incorporates some form of online tools or networking.
If you wanted to access many of the resources from our training session, go here.
Some tools to consider for online projects are listed below:
EduBlogs – This is a safe, user-friendly tool for blogging. You may remember that we had trouble with this tool last winter, but it seems to be working much better these days. I still use it, in case you couldn’t tell.
Gaggle – Gaggle offers blogging and email options that can make online projects interactive and transcend borders.
E-Pals – Some people mentioned E-Pals as a great resource for pen pal projects.
Youth Twitter – This is the kid-safe version of the micro-blogging pioneer.
