Classroom management

Over the past few weeks, I feel as if I have improved on my classroom management skills. My 8th period is the class I have struggled with the most, but I talked to my host teacher and she gave me some insight as to how to have better control of the classroom. When the students are being disrespectful, they are given an "ABC." If a student gets too many of these, they are not able to attend a reward activity at the end of the term. She encouraged me to give one out, showing the students that I will not tolerate their talking and disrespect. After I gave out my very first one, the students began to quiet down and pay more attention in class. They have been so good lately and I feel as if they see me as more of an authority figure now. I was starting to get discouraged, but my host teacher reassured me that I can effectively manage the classroom and be successful. Over the next few weeks, I want to have my host teacher to make close observations of my classroom management skills, especially with 8th period so I can improve even more!

Inquiry

My action research project has been going very well lately! I have collected most of my data and I am beginning to organize everything. I have given 2 of my three problem solving assessments and I have seen that my students problem solving skills are improving! It's great to see how implementing more problem solving and vocabulary is helping them learn and understand basic mathematics concepts well. The assessments they were given had 10 word problems and they had to highlight different words and phrases that they didn't understand. By doing this, my host teacher and I are able to implement the vocabulary they struggled with into problems during Problem Solving Friday. I hope the strategies I'm implementing are really helping the students learn how to problem solve so they will be successful in the rest of their future math classes.