Sunday, April 17, 2011

Discipline part 2 (Structure)

Hello,

                Wintermute here and this is Dumbr. Yesterday we started our new segment Discipline. We will continue today with more tips on how to keep your class in check.

Point Cards: Back to structure and repetition, in my class I set up these point cards, good students received a card, bad students lost cards, the kid with the most cards at the end of month got a prize. This worked wonders, all I had to do was threaten losing a card and a child would start bawling and begging for forgiveness. I won’t lie the power  is a little overwhelming, and with great power comes great responsibility, you have to understand that these cards mean the world to these kids, so don’t pass them out lightly, and don’t take them away for every offense. But have a system in place, (if you do A, you lose 1 card), stick with it, they will learn.

Line up: Koreans love to have every student go at the same time for everything (line up, getting bags/coats, washing hands); they seem to think it’s faster. They couldn’t be further from the truth. What happens when 20 little kids try to bum rush a line up, they start to push, hit, cut in line, etc etc. Instead, make a line leader for the day, and then call each student out one at a time to line up behind the other, no fights, no fuss, and no mess. Plus it allows you to make sure each student cleaned up their area, and pushed in their chair.

Teams: Embrace the power of teams.  I was lucky, our desk were color coded, I had two desk for each color, I put those desk next to each other, students sitting at those desk became a member of the subsequent team color. You may not have that option, but form teams somehow. This is amazing and you won’t understand until you see it in action. Kids will try so hard to do well for their team, and it will make them more competitive. Just keep a simple tally on the board of points for whose doing best, the team with the most points at the end of the day gets cards, easy. They really will pay more attention in class and try much harder, and you can use it in other ways. Say something like the team that cleans up first and sits down gets points. The best team in gym will get points. So on and so forth.

Thank you for being here and for your continued support. Be sure to come back tomorrow for more tips on how to keep your students in check.

Your Teacher,
Wintermute


25 comments:

  1. Hm. Sounds interesting. Thanks for sharing.

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  2. Im not a teacher but both my folks are and a number of my friends are as well. This sounds like a great hint that I'll pass off to them. Thanks!

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  3. I have to show my girlfriend this, she's going to become a teacher.

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  4. Great piece of info, keep up the good work.

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  5. very interesting! food for thaught ;D

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  6. another great post on how to manipulate childern!hehe, I love it

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  7. i wonder how you come up with all these, they are very creative!

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  8. Great informations, keep it up!

    Great blog btw, following (:

    http://livintrip.blogspot.com/

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  9. The point cards are a great way of teaching. I think it gives a reason to the student to achieve higher and higher to possibilities that they could never imagine :)

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  10. Teamwork is the way to go when it comes to learning.

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  11. I remember doing line up in elementary school and I definitely agree with your advice on teams.

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  12. Yeah I agree Teamwork is the best for learning.

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  13. These are some great tips. Haha, I remember being in elementary school and fighting to get to the front of the line as well.

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  14. haha I've read something like this in a psicology book

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  15. i like competition - turns boringness to fun

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  16. And I thought I was the only one that believed that this "everyone go at the same time" mentality just doesn't work. Since I'll be teaching pretty soon, this blog definitely has some good information.

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  17. My elementary teacher used teams, I agree it did make things more interesting.

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  18. Makes me think back to my childhood, put it all in retrospect.

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  19. My elementary teacher used beating us with a cane till we shut up.
    So did my high school teachers..
    Such is growing up in Singapore I guess.

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  20. Sounds like Koreans are pretty competitive. can't say the same about my previous class, where we had a few who were interested and the rest just didn't care.

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  21. A very worthy conclusion to the original post. a3

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