Thoughts on Class Environment Management

Classroom management is necessary to a classroom for learning to take place within that classroom, but students need to feel that they are being treated with appropriate respect, as fellow human beings. Treating them as if they are recruits in boot camp is counter-productive to a trusting and productive learning environment. The teacher can model the behavior desired in the students which also reinforces the trust and respect that are optimal for the classroom.

Although a teacher can have established classroom management techniques that are planned in advance, implemented as needed there is always room for improvement. So self-reflection allows the teacher to assess how effective the management techniques are and if alternate techniques should be considered.  Add to that, that over a period of time certain techniques can grow stale and need to be updated to remain relevant to the student population.

When planning a special project based or problem based lesson, classroom management needs to be part of the plan. If the lesson involves an unusual addition to the classroom, a new substance, or is taking place in non-standard area(s) then classroom management needs to be planned to suit those conditions. Since “no lesson plan survives first contact with the students” it is helpful to have back up strategies in place, but also to set the students expectations when introducing the topic(s). “Safety First” and then guidelines for behavior will help keep the students on task.

We plan to use the Indirect Instructional Strategy of using case studies. Each team will be told that they represent a company and then assigned a form of pollution that is caused by their company. They will devise ways of dealing with their form of pollution. There are 6 teams and each one will have a different form of pollution.

In addition, we plan to have the groups work through a simulation of how run off from different areas can combine and flow into surface water. This will be done with tin foil, food coloring and spray bottles.

Since the lesson is only 3 days we don’t have enough time for a field trip, but if we had the time we might have also considered bringing in an outside expert.  The North Texas Water Treatment facilities have a great field trip and it might be possible to invite someone out to talk to the students about some of the challenges in keep in our water safe.

 As a non-typical student I have been part of older learning environments that had no collaboration as well as (more recently) learning environments that combined some of the more questionable aspects. I have been part of a group where each member worked alone and learning was minimal except for one’s own task, I have been the only one working in some groups and I have been part of groups that contained one or more members who did nothing, intended to do nothing from the start and took credit. Presentations have ranged from mind-numbingly pointless to dazzling display of multimedia brilliance that had little content to show for all the bells and whistles.

Collaboration can be done one-on-one or with larger groups of students. It is considered collaboration when one student tutors another. Since science is often a collaborative that requires sharing ideas and insights it is useful for the students to be familiar with working in collaborative situations. Whole technically there is collaboration between student and teacher, when there is collaboration between students there is no one in charge. Ideally, all group members participate.

To form a successful collaboration environment there is a need for all the students of the group to have similar enough level of experience and knowledge so that they can accomplish the task together, although they can have varying degrees of knowledge and experience. They also need to have a common goal, even in the situations where the students choose or are assigned a job. While they each may have individual goals, there is still a common goal for the group.

Since my partner and I are working with a mentor teacher who has already placed her students into groups, we are planning to use the groups she has already created based on the assumption that she knows who will work well together. We plan to use an entry document that outline general job descriptions although group members will choose what job each member will have. Each group within the classroom in made up of 4 members. There is a mix of boys to girls in each group. The students have been working together since the beginning of the semester, so ice-breaking activities between group members should not be necessary.

During observations I noticed that there were a few students who might need to be redirected back to the task on hand. We will need to make sure all the job descriptions are fairly equal and preferably that none have a higher perceived “status”. Group members should be on even footing. Some students may feel anxious at first, being part of a new situation such as having 2 outside student teachers leading a Problem Based Learning experience, so it will be important to help the students feel safe enough to participate and ask questions.

Proposed 8th grade Problem Based Instruction based on the following TEKS:

(11)  Organisms and environments. The student knows that interdependence occurs among living systems and the environment and that human activities can affect these systems. The student is expected to:

(C)  explore how short- and long-term environmental changes affect organisms and traits in subsequent populations; and

(D)  recognize human dependence on ocean systems and explain how human activities such as runoff, artificial reefs, or use of resources have modified these systems.

What knowledge or understanding is required to become competent on this standard?
The student will need to understand what an organism is, as well as what a short term or long term effect is on that organism. They will also have to know what a trait is and how traits can change over time. The students will also need to understand that humans are dependent on ocean systems and which human activities can modify these systems.

What reasoning (if any) is required to become competent on this standard?
The students will need to draw inferences on cause and effect. They will need to be able to recognize interdependence.

What product skills are required to demonstrate competence on this standard?
Power Point presentation skills will be needed. All students have laptops and at least one in each group has already demonstrated Power Point skills. They will need basic writing skills and the ability to extrapolate from examples for constructing their Power Points presentations.

Entry documents in Project Based Instruction:

In Project Based Instruction an entry document is used to set the scenario. The students are given a situation which provides the framework for their project. It is assumed the situation given uses material that has been recently studied but also provides opportunities to build on that material, setting the student’s expectations for the end product they are expected to generate. 

The entry document can go as far as outlining job descriptions for the team members and the expected outcome of the team’s efforts, may also contain the timeframe for results and may possibly provide a general idea of what the end product should look like.

The idea behind an entry is not only to set the parameters but also to relate the project to a real-life scenario. This can be used in any number of ways to tie the project into multiple lessons as well as giving students the opportunity to sharpen skills such as public speaking and presentations, which will be useful as they go on.

Receptional and Transitional Approaches to Teaching Applied to
If a traditional classroom is part of a movie or story there is almost always a teacher next to a blackboard, lecturing students who passively receive the information and then do assignments that are supposed to indicate that that they understood that information and can parrot it back. The scene might be updated only slightly with the use of a whiteboard but the basic idea of a class setting has remained the same. Still widely in use today, this can be described as a “receptional” approach to teaching.

An example of this is the math lecture on a topic such as derivatives. The students then are shown simple examples, and then they work sample problems. They are then shown more complex examples and they work more complex problems and so on, until there is a test.

An alternate to the receptional style of teaching is described as the “transformational” style of teaching. In this style the teacher provides the means for the student to explore and truly understand the material. The knowledge means more if the students can put their hands on concrete examples and relate it to their own lives.

After discussion with our mentor teacher the following standards were chosen for the lesson my partner and I will be teaching:

(11)  Organisms and environments. The student knows that interdependence occurs among living systems and the environment and that human activities can affect these systems. The student is expected to:

(C)  explore how short- and long-term environmental changes affect organisms and traits in subsequent populations; and

(D)  recognize human dependence on ocean systems and explain how human activities such as runoff, artificial reefs, or use of resources have modified these systems.

Our tentative plans involve having the students build a beach environment of their own design to model some of the difficulties associated with runoff effect ocean environments. They will be able to modify their design to help solve or lesson the associated problems. My interacting with their own micro-environment they also become emotionally as well as intellectually involved in saving and preserving their own ecosystem.