domain 2: Classroom environment
First week of school activity - Todo Sobre Mí
First week of school activity ~ Dice Game: Get them talking & sharing
Recognizing Birthdays
I do my best to find out as much as I can about students' interests and to recognize them in small ways. The pennants provided me with some introductory information as well as decoration for my bulletin boards. The dice activity helped students get to know each other a little better. In addition, I recognize every student's birthday using a Flipchart, a birthday hat and by singing "Happy Birthday" in Spanish (if they wish). Checking whose birthday it is has become part of our daily routine.
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Class motto - Todo es posible en la clase de español
Classroom objectives/goals ~ Can Do Statements (posted in the classroom)
Rules/procedures ~ live site
I establish a Culture for Learning on the very first day of school. My motto is: Todo es posible (anything is possible). I also posted Can-Do Statements in the classroom. I have students look at them to see their progress and refer to them during lessons. When students ask if spelling counts, I ask them to look for spelling or perfection on the Can-Dos. This school year, I decided to use PicMonkey to create visuals of my expectations and procedures. Most students are visual learners, and I thought the visuals would be more motivating reminders than a laundry list of rules. These images are embedded on my website.
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System for establishing groups ~ Country Partners
Transition plans (activities) ~ Magic Hand Clap, "Hay un Cuento" song
Materials and supplies for students
I wouldn't consider myself to be the most organized classroom manager; however upon reflection, I realize how far I've come since I started teaching. I'm not a yeller so I established the hand clap as a way to quickly get students' attention; this works extremely well with large groups of students too. I like using Spanish-speaking countries to decide partners. This practices general geographic locations while giving students a choice of who they work with. Finally, I changed how I set up my student materials this year. I purchased dollar store baskets for each table. In each basket are commonly used materials. Then on each side of the classroom are paper, tissues, staplers, tape and clips. In theory, this should decrease the amount of wandering around the room. The biggest annoyance to me is the students' playing with the markers and with the baskets themselves. There are times when the baskets have to be removed for certain groups.
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Behavior management - Class Dojo
Device management - Tortugas
Students will become distracted with many things, but especially technology. The turtles came from a technology conference. The presenter used "Apples up" as his signal, but I resorted to turtles as I originally had many different types of devices in my classroom. I started using Class Dojo in two of my classes: A 6th grade class and a section of 8th grade Spanish 2. Both classes were talkative, inappropriately off-task, and I became frustrated. I asked for their input for both positive and negative behaviors. Many students said that the visual component of Class Dojo was motivating to them; they did not want to see any red or negative points.
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Pictures of Room Arrangement
There is a major challenge in my classroom. I share space with another teacher so there are two full-sized teacher desks in the room. Over time I have pared down my filing cabinets to one, but adequate space for students is still an issue. Pushing my desk into the back corner of the classroom has been somewhat helpful along with grouping the students' desks. Aside from having the other teacher desk removed from the room, I'm not sure how else to provide students with additional space.
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