Prompt number three focuses on the fact that students must feel that they are in a safe environment in order to have a good class discussion and to get all students to participate and what kinds of school support is there to back up this policy. My CT and I have not used much classroom talk as described by the book, it is mostly the teacher asking a question and calling on a student and then moving on to the next question. The students have not had to really respond to other classmates responses or had to revoice them or build on them. In general they talk to the teacher and the students are not really talking to each other when it comes to academic topics.
As a class we have established our classroom norms and being with first graders we are constantly repeating rules for discussion such as when one person is talking the rest of us listen, raising your hand and just being respectful. These concepts will take a while for the students to really remember and understand and I feel that later in the year after more practice and experience we will be able to move towards discussions where the students can talk to each other more and hopefully really listen and think about classmates responses. As a school there is a big focus on all of us being one community, at our summer staff meetings there was emphasis on every kid in the school being all our kids. Many classrooms also are centered on cooperative learning and groups and sharing. They are trying to instill ideas of respect, being good listeners, trying to do your best and being good learners from the pledge they recite every morning as a school and I think this does help and there have not been too many instances where we have had issues of disrespectful behavior in the sense of saying rude or disrespectful comments. Our disrespectful behavior is more centered around not listening, talking when one person is trying to share and minor things that I will get better as they get used to school and the set up if class discussions.
It has been very hard for my class to understand the idea of respecting each other as well. A good way that I have tried to demonstrate it (although some people may not like this approach) is that if a student is being disrespectful to the point that it is excessive, call that student out in front of their peers. Also if there are two students talking I have heard my teacher tell them that she will wait because she doesn't want to interrupt their conversation for the sake of the rest of the class. This is a somewhat drastic approach but it seems to be working slowly. I think there will always be those students that talk out of turn or don't raise their hands or interrupt but if you can try to teach them that it is rude one student at a time hopefully it will catch on with the other students.
ReplyDeleteI also have this problem in my classroom. I think it is a natural thing in a first grade classroom. However I have done some of the same things as well as slightly ignoring some children when they blurt or say something not on the topic at group. This seems mean but they are just looking for the attention and your response. Usually later at an appropriate time I walk over and ask the child about what he or she was saying.
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