JM

Posted on 10/22/09

Hi all,

I am a first-year high-school science teacher teaching 9th
grade Physics First. This is my second career after
working as an engineer in industry. I just started
teaching September.

Anyway, I love teaching, and I love my kids. Of course,
classroom management in general has been my biggest
challenge this year, but I'm getting the hang of it - with
the exception of labs.

One of my classes (I have three, 85-minute block classes)
is just a bad combination of loud, boisterous kids. I can
keep a lid on them when we are doing seatwork and
lecture/class discussions. But when I run a lab, they just
get REALLY loud. MOST of the talk is on-task, but the
volume level makes it difficult for me to know for sure.
I've tried switching lab groups around, but this is just
one of those classes where, no matter how I group them,
it's a bad combination!

I've tried incentives ("The quietest group will get 3 merit
points EACH!"), but overall I am not satisfied with that
approach, because there ARE quiet kids, and they
would "win" every time, which kind of leads the other kids
to give up on trying to be the quietest. And my goal is to
motivate the problem-kids, not reward those already working
well!

I've also toyed with the idea of just giving them ALL
detentions for the day, but that seems unfair to the
handful that ARE good....

When I discussed the issue with my Principal (a former
teacher), the way I put the problem is,"When they work
individually, they're OK. But when I let them work
together they get LOUD" His response to me was to say
that, for now, I should make classroom management the
priority, and that I shouldn't let them work together until
they "earn" that privilege (even if it isn't "best
practice" it's OK with him for now).

Problem: You CAN'T do Physics without labs/activities, and
I CAN'T do labs as individual work!

Any suggestions from you veterans out there?

- JM

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