4.2 Manage classroom activities
Demonstrate the capacity to organise classroom activities and provide clear directions.
4.3 Manage challenging behaviour
Demonstrate knowledge of practical approaches to manage challenging behaviour
As a pre-service teacher, I found it challenging to meet standards 4.2 and 4.3. I found that my students were disengaged so they were not listening to the instructions. When I taught a class of year 9 visual art students, I needed to have students writing down descriptive words for their ceramics. I started by announcing that they would be having a go on their own after I had demonstrated it on the board. Once I had demonstrated what I needed them to do, I wrote a list of check points to achieve my task. After I explained that they needed to write something down and I would be checking their books and giving them a stamp or a sticker when I saw they had completed the task. I noted that I would need to see something from everyone before they left for lunch. I had set these expectations with the hope that my students would easily follow them but I experienced interruptive behaviours which stopped my directions multiple times. After I had written the checklist on the board, my students were on task and completing the activity.
During this same class, I had a couple of students talking while I was. I had tried mostly least intrusive behaviour management techniques like parallel acknowledgement, tactical ignoring, proximity and others. These techniques had not be successful and I had asked a student if they would like to move tables, they were reluctant to answer and did not continue to disrupt the classroom afterwards.
I had found that what works for one student may be completely different to another, this made me realise that I needed to make sure I was being consistent with my behaviour management techniques even when something works for different students. I also needed to be conscious about the policy of the classroom and the school about disruptive behaviours, fortunately I did not need to remove students from the classroom. If that is a step that I need to follow, I need to make sure I am keeping everyone else safe in my classroom.
