4.1 Support student participation 

4.2 Manage classroom activities 

4.3 Manage challenging behaviour 

4.4 Maintain student safety 

In my classroom I have a class set of paddle pop sticks with student’s names on them. Using paddle pop sticks (Artefact 6) ensures that all students remain engaged as they could be called upon to answer a question (APST 4.1). I always ensure to ask the question before saying a student’s name because if this is done in the reverse order then students whose name I have not called will automatically zone out as they feel they are ‘off the hook’. Lemov (2021) lists Cold Calling as an effective teaching strategy. I believe it is not only an effective teaching tool but also an inclusive one as all students are required to participate. The alternative to this is asking for ‘hands up’ which I believe creates a divide between the students who are more confident and always have their hand up and other students who are less confident. Cold Calling means all students are required to listen and engage and are provided ‘think time’ before needing to respond. The result is that students always feel involved; because they cannot opt out from the learning. This routine level of accountability helps students focus their attention and fosters a sense that they belong; are included; and their participation matters. Sherrington (2021) supports this by stating ‘accountability and inclusion go hand in hand’.  

We also play a teacher vs student game (Artefact 7) which encourages effort and appropriate behaviour. Students are awarded points for showing effort, demonstrating growth or improvement, teacher makes a mistake, being respectful learners etc while the teacher receives a point when students are not being respectful or following the rules. The objective of the game is for students to beat the teachers and therefore I need to be catching students doing the right thing and encouraging this positive behaviour. If students beat me by ten or more points, they are awarded a token which contributes to a class tally and once sixty tokens are collected within a timed period, students are awarded with a reward of their choice. The teacher-student game supports student participation (APST 4.1) and as a result helps manage challenging behaviour (APST 4.3) by encouraging students to stay engaged which in turn maintains student safety (APST 4.4).