Classroom management – how to nip potential troublemakers in the bud (4)
Coming to the end of the semester. I’ve learned a few things from my troublesome students. One is, they don’t pay much attention to what the teacher says. You first have to get their attention and show that you mean business right from the start. The sooner you demonstrate this (not talk about it), the [...]
Classroom management – how to nip potential troublemakers in the bud (3)
How I’m trying to manage some troublesome students, using ideas from Fred Jones’ book “Tools for Teaching. (See this blog entry for an intro to the book. Part 1 of this series is here, part 2 here.) As usual: Re-arrange the furniture. Assign seats. Today they filled seats from the front in the order in which [...]
Classroom management – how to nip potential troublemakers in the bud (2)
Re-arrange the furniture Assign seats Assign bell-work. Coming up with good bell-work (work that actually engages them and keeps them quiet yet productively busy) is difficult. Problems: Today’s bell-work was not so hot. I was so busy photocopying and cutting and pasting (literally, not digitally) to prepare for today’s classes (which run back-to-back with just [...]
Classroom management – how to nip potential troublemakers in the bud
From Fred Jones: I re-arranged the furniture – blocked off all but 21 chairs (the number of students enrolled) broke up the 2 columns of 3 desks-in-a-row into 3 columns of paired desks. made a big space between the rows so that I could walk between them. placed a card on each desk with [...]
Generating a random list of students for testing
I test my students by asking them to tell me (or re-tell me) a story, man-to-man, face-to-face, one by one, just the student, me and my voice recorder. But what order to call them in? Alphabetical? By student number? Reverse alphabetical? Reverse student number? There are only so many changes you can ring, and even [...]
Students who sulk
Do you have students who sulk? I just gave a final reading/writing/listening exam to my college freshmen English class. The final question asked them (in English) to put 10 sentences in the correct order. The sentences were related to a story, the text of which was provided on the exam paper. Several students asked me what [...]
Tools for Teaching 3
Competition – students love it! When I first read about games and PAT (Preferred Activity Time) in Fred Jones’ “Tools for Teaching”, I immediately thought, “Nah! That’s kids’ stuff. Not for me and my university students.” But then I read the chapter again, and understood better how competitive games fit into Fred Jones’ overall [...]
Tools for Teaching 2
Having had my first day of teaching since beginning to read Fred Jones’ “Tools for Teaching”, I can now give you a preliminary report. I know you’ve all been dying to hear about it, so here it is. I had 4 classes today, 3 of which are pretty draining. I used the following ideas from Fred [...]
Tools for Teaching
Fred Jones Tools for Teaching: Discipline-Instruction-Motivation by Fred Jones is proving to be one of those books that soon gets me pulling out my pen and note cards – not to record things I want to rememberfrom the book , but to write down new ideas I’m getting as I read it. Here’s an example: in [...]
Is it ok for teachers to use corporal punishment? Discuss.
Image via Wikipedia I left the following comment on a blog entry about corporal punishment in (UK) schools (I’ve reposted it here so that I can add stuff and edit the writing). A succinct summary, with rebuttals, of the various arguments against corporal punishment. The non-aggression axiom provides a principled argument to the responses which [...]
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