Classroom Management Plan
I. Context
I adhere to my own policies as well as the overarching policies put in place by the school and the district. This classroom management plan was originally created for a school whose rules include: no hazing, intimidation, harassment or slander; no profanity, lewd or vulgar behavior (including clothing); dress appropriately for school; no fighting, assaults or weapons will be tolerated; no drugs, alcohol or cigarettes; students must comply with the legal and reasonable requests of adults at school; students must stay on campus except during lunch; good attendance is required for academic success; no cheating or plagiarism will be tolerated; respect members of the school community and their property[i].
II. Core Beliefs
I emphasize respect as the most important norm in my classroom. This encompasses respect for fellow students, teachers, property, personal space, race, religion and gender. I want each student to know that their opinions are valued but that we must not do or say things that will make others feel less than safe or less than valued in this classroom, or outside it.
I strive to make my classroom a place where students feel safe. I want all students in my class to know that I will not tolerate racism, sexism, slurs, or vulgar or lewd language from anyone. I hope that my classroom will be a place where student feel comfortable making mistakes. I will begin the year by spending part of each day during the first week focusing on the norms and how we will achieve them as a class. I want each student to realize how important the norms are and why we have them.
My classroom is student-centered. I want students to know that I will keep their interests and goals in mind when creating my lessons. It is my responsibility as a teacher to ensure that everyone learns and strive for each student to enjoy the class while learning.
I will emphasize the importance of learning a world language and why we are doing it. I want my students to believe that there is more to taking a Spanish class than just fulfilling a requirement for graduation or getting into college. I will bring in as many real-life, authentic uses of Spanish as possible to achieve this goal.
III. Community Building Activities
My Spanish classroom is about building community and getting to know the other members of the class, as well as learning a new language. In a Spanish classroom, students spend a lot of time talking about themselves so it has to be a safe environment to share personal information. I plan to start out the year by teaching students what to do when they meet someone for the first time. They will learn the appropriate ways to introduce themselves to a stranger in a Spanish speaking country. This will achieve two goals: breaking the ice and speaking the target language right away. The second day of class we can review how to greet someone you have just met and then learn how to greet a friend you have not seen for some time.
I personally believe in conducting class in the target language one hundred percent of the time. Depending on the level of the students, it can be difficult to get to know a lot about them right away, because they simply do not have the language skills to tell much about themselves. In Fires in the Bathroom Cushman (2003) suggests asking students to fill out a survey. I plan to give each of my students a questionnaire to fill out at home and give back to me on the second day of class. This questionnaire would be done in English and include approximately twenty questions that delve more deeply into students’ backgrounds and interests. I will use the information on these questionnaires to discover more about my students likes and dislikes, learning styles, family backgrounds, etc…and incorporate this knowledge into my lesson planning.
Group work is essential to my Spanish classes. For students to practice communicating, they need someone with whom to communicate! I use a seating chart throughout the school year. This helps me learn the students’ names and give the students a partner to work with on group work. The seating chart will change after every unit so that students are not always working with the same person. For group work with more than one person I either choose the groups ahead of time, keeping in mind students’ skills and strengths or during class, using cards with their names on them. I anticipate letting students pick their own groups but I will scaffold how I want this done. I have found that students take a lot of class time to get in groups if they are not taught how to do it. I have found that having students find someone that has something in common with them that day, such as the same color shoes, is a fast and effective way to choose groups, and gives the students some leeway when picking a partner,
I will monitor the group roles for in class work by circulating and asking them questions about the activity. I ask groups who are finished to help others.
IV. Norm Setting and Classroom Rules and Consequences
The general norms for my class are:
1. Respect.
2. Encourage each other.
3. Try everyday.
These norms are quite broad and open-ended but that is why I chose them. They are all-encompassing of the basic norms of conduct in schools and in society. They are also succinct and can be easily taught in Spanish. The classroom rules I want to enforce are extensions of the norms. They are:
1. Respect yourself, your teacher and your classmates.
2. Be on time for class.
3. Come prepared.
4. Make mistakes.
Each student and parent will receive a copy of the norms and rules and be expected to sign and return it. The rules and norms will also be posted in the classroom. To further review the norms I want to do a classroom activity with them. The activity would vary depending on the language level of the students. My Spanish I students would probably create a skit that demonstrated the norms in a non-verbal way. This would give them a chance to practice acting skills that they will use through out the course of the year. My Spanish III or IV students, on the other hand, have the language skills to do a skit that incorporates more language and practices their skills while reviewing the norms.
Consequences for norm violations will depend on which norm is violated and to what degree. When students are speaking English in class or talking out of turn, I have found that moving to their area of the classroom and acknowledging that I hear them is effective. If this continues, or the talk is inappropriate in any way I ask the student to leave the room and I talk to them outside of class. I think that it is almost always best to speak to the student one on one about a continuing problem in your class before involving others, such as the vice principal or parents. If a student posed an immediate physical threat to him or herself or others I would send the student out and immediately involve the administration or campus police who are better equipped to handle such situations.
V. Classroom Organization and Teaching of Procedural Routines
I start each class with some kind of warm up or introduction that briefly reviews the content from the day before. This warm up is usually verbal; though I sometimes have students write a few sentences. As I mentioned before, each student will be sitting with a partner. The students can discuss these warm up questions with their partner or in a group of four with the pair behind them. I will use this time to take attendance and help any students that may have been absent. I will use the remaining time, if any, to circulate and check that students understand the work. The students will have a minute or two to hear each other’s answers and ask questions of myself or their peers about the previous day’s material. In my Spanish IV and AP classes, I would love to find a way for students to get more involved in the warm up. I would like to ask them to bring in a short article in Spanish and tell about it, or tell a joke or interesting fact about the Spanish speaking world.
During the first week of school I will tell the students about my late work, absence and make up policies. I plan to have any handouts and homework assignments in a folder organized by day so that students who missed class can easily access them. I will write the week’s agenda on the board so that student’s are aware of upcoming tests, quizzes, homework and other events during the coming weeks. They can then budget their time accordingly. High school students are very busy and I do not think it is particularly fair to students to give them a huge homework assignment without warning. I hope to prevent this by clearly stating the workload at the beginning of each week. I will have a designated box for each class period to hand in their assignments and will show each class where to turn in their work each day. I will also remind students to write down their homework at the beginning of each class period so that there is no confusion about what is due.
I will also tell my students the appropriate ways to participate in class. World language classrooms are notoriously noisy and can be very chaotic if norms for speaking are not put in place from the beginning. Students can participate by raising their hands or by being called on. Students will also be expected to present information in skits or reports to the class several times a week. This is usually done in groups or pairs and all group members will be expected to speak. Participation will be a large part of the class grade, something that will be emphasized from the beginning of the year. Students will earn points for speaking whether their answer is correct or not. The objective is for students to become comfortable speaking in the target language.
Students will be allowed to leave the classroom to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water if it is an emergency and they are not disruptive. The school requires that they have a hall pass when leaving the room, a rule that I will enforce. The hall pass hangs near the door and students should be able to leave and return quietly. If a student is leaving several times a week I will talk to them about the importance of staying in class and ask them to figure out other times of the day that they could take care of these matters. I will make these procedures clear at the beginning of the year so that students do not have to interrupt class to ask to go to the bathroom. Students will be required to sign and out of class. This record is important for security reasons, as well as a resource for me to know who is leaving class and for how long.
Most days I will end class with an exit slip. Students will write a few sentences that demonstrate their learning for the day. The most difficult thing about exit slips is budgeting enough time for students to do them in a way that actually exhibits their knowledge.
VI. Addressing Persistent Misbehavior
I want to encourage students to demonstrate good behaviors as much as possible. I feel that I can start by being an example of the behavior I expect from students by demonstrating it myself. I want to make sure that I am not violating the norms set for the class.
When students are consistently engaging in negative or inappropriate behavior I want to start by trying to find out the root of the issue. I will meet with the student and telling them what I have noticed. The student will be asked to explain their behavior. I will state my expectations for their conduct and ask if they have any ideas about how we might work together to change the behavior. Hopefully, over time, the positive behavior will become consistent. If this does not work, their parents will be involved so that we can all discuss the matter together.
Most schools have well-defined policies to address persistent tardiness or absence, academic dishonesty, and inappropriate behaviors. I will adhere to these policies.
VII. Communication with Parents and Other Community Members
As a new teacher, I think that getting off on the right foot with parents is key to a successful year. I will send a letter to each family at the beginning of the school year to introduce myself and my goals for the year. Many parents and students are apprehensive about having a new teacher they know nothing about and hopefully this will alleviate some of this uncertainty. As per the school’s requirements, the parents will also receive a copy of the norms and rules to sign. I will ask each parent to inform me of the best mode and time to reach them if I need to. I will maintain a website that is accessible to students and parents. I will encourage parents to look at it frequently to see what we are currently working on in class.
I will encourage parents to contact me if they have questions about their student’s progress or the course content. I will try to email parents when students do something particularly well in the class, to ensure that parents are not just hearing from me when a situation is negative.
I want my Spanish class to have as much contact with the Spanish-speaking community as possible. One of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages “5 Cs”[ii] is use of the language beyond the school setting. I want to give my students the opportunity to practice their language skills in real life settings, and with native speakers.
[i]See Bellevue School District website http://www.bsd405.org for the complete handbook.
[ii]See the ACTFL website site http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3392 for a detailed explanation of the 5 Cs.
