I started videotaping myself in my classroom while I'm teaching. I got the idea from the criteria for National Board Certification. I thought I would go ahead and get used to videotaping myself and answering related questions that the National Board requires you to answer when obtaining your certification.
What an eye-opening experience!
Not only did I look like I have a mustache and I looked better in that loose, brown shirt than I thought I did, but I noticed that my kids are even more talkative than I thought. I immediately came up with behavior intervention plans for them, which I implemented today.
In my guided reading group, I wrote an agenda on the board (I always have my own lesson plan)with a movable arrow beside it and put RE in charge of moving the arrow as we moved to a new task. I created this agenda with him in mind to help him stay focused and it worked today.
I also started reward systems for two different groups of kids that I work with. I noticed on the video that I don't praise enough. So, in each group, I will constantly notice on-task and productive behavior and I slip the deserving child a token (in one group it's beads and in the other group it's stars made of felt). For every five tokens the child gets a piece of gum or a mint. Maybe later I'll add a prize bag instead, and I'll up the ante from five stars to 8 or 10. When I hand them the token I tell them very succintly and specifically why they earned it. (i.e., You went right back to work after that interruption. Or, you've been working hard for five minutes.)
Today, my fourth graders showed better behavior and they got so much more work done today.
I look forward to the afternoon session with the sixth graders. Let's see how it goes.
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