Re: feeling ANXIETY - Great advice

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I was reading your post and I teach middle school 6 & 8th grade. I
love the idea of the apple. Its brilliant! I'm going to try it next
year. I too have had problems with students disrupting the class but
this is something I can use.
On 6/23/09, TN wrote:
> I would be careful about penalizing the whole class for the
> behavior of some of the students. If I were a student who was
> not causing problems but I got in troube any way I would not be
> very happy with my teacher. This is more likely to make your
> classroom management worse instead of better. (Why should I
> behave correctly if I'm just going to get in trouble anyway.)
> My kids don't want to have the apple so they straighten up very
> quickly, but if they do get the apple they know that they have
> a chance of getting off the hook if someone else messes up.
> This gives it a light hearted way to maintain discipline and
> they respond with humor instead of bad moods.
>
> I also thought about your children that blurt out. If they
> blurt out an answer instead of raising their hands, I just say
> something like "That would have been a correct answer if your
> hand had been raised. Does anyone know the correct answer?" I
> then call on another child (usually one who struggles to answer
> things correctly). Hopefully they listened to the other child
> and can give me the correct answer and get the praise.
>
> My students also know that I will call on everyone in class,
> even if they don't raise their hands. I often use sticks with
> their names on them and pull the sticks to pick the student who
> is going to answer. Sometimes I put the sticks back in the
> stack so they can be pulled again and sometimes I take them out
> to make sure that eveyone gets a turn. I pay attention to who
> has not answered so that if someone's name gets pulled more
> than once I can fill in with another child (they don't know I'm
> doing this). This keeps everyone involved since they don't
> know when they will be called on to answer.
>
> TN
 

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