Managing the behaviours of 13 kids is not a big deal, so I thought. But it does indeed take a lot of strategies and positive reinforcement to keep them from hitting each other, from shouting out the answers, from slumping on the desk and day dreaming. So it starts with my class rules, which I introduced to my kids in the first week of school.
1. Listen to Didi 2. Speak in English 3. Raise your hand to speak 4. Be nice to all
This 4 covers more or less all my behaviour expectations from my kids.
We have a star chart in our class to track how the kids are fairing. If they follow the rules they get stars. Every day each kid starts with 3 green points. Then for each breaking of rule, they lose a green. If they lose all 3 greens, they start getting red points. They can also gain green points by doing something really nice. By end of the day who ever has 3 green points remaining, will get a silver star the next day morning. Those who have got red points cannot go out for recess the next day, they have to eat food in class and stay put.
Who ever gets the maximum number of stars in a week will become the superstar on next Monday. Superstar is an assistant to teacher and gets to distribute things, rub the board, clean the duster etc. Once anyone reaches 5 silver stars, they are traded for a golden star. Together with the star on their name, they will also get a golden star in their notebook. When they reach 5 golden stars they get a dairy milk. The teacher's assistant job is more alluring to them than the dairy milk ofcourse.
The moment a kid breaks a rule, my hand goes to the chart. It is so instantaneous, I dont need to tell it loud, I just need to look at the kid while doing it, the kid realises that a point is gone and why the point is gone. It has been instrumental in putting structure and order to my class so much. But there are exceptions.
There are 3 kids who never got any silver star till a week back. One kid got one silver star last week and we celebrated that nicely. But these 3 kids have real attention deficient problem and cannot be handled with the star chart. I am in search of how I can handle these 3 kids' behaviour issues and make them sit and listen to me. They are the brightest of the lot, but if only they could sit and listen. Any ideas?
To think of this in a Software company.. i guess the same strategies apply.. though we grow old, we are still have that child in our hearts ;-)
ReplyDeleteParam, You will never leave drawing parallels between my class and your office :) But ya, indeed it is true....
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