4.1 Support student participation
Identify strategies to support inclusive student participation and engagement in classroom activities.
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.
On a two-week preservice teacher placement at a low socioeconomic primary school, I was with a year 5 class of 19 students. This class had seven students diagnosed with ADHD, and three with an additional diagnosis of Autism. Many students were reluctant to engage in mathematics as they found it too hard, intimidating or lacked confidence. The school implemented a whole-school approach to behaviour with weekly SEL lessons using the Zones of Regulation framework to encourage students to be responsible for their emotions and actions, and a PBL framework that supported students to engage in activities through intrinsic motivation and whole-school support. I taught a series of mathematics lessons focusing on recognising and representing fractions as diagrams and on number lines.
I chose to teach explicitly with a whole class, GRR method as that was familiar to the students. I used PowerPoint for clear visuals to engage students and help them make concept connections using visual representation (4.1) (Larkin, 2016). My slides always began with clear classroom expectations as a reminder to students and to encourage me to hold boundaries and follow through with consequences (Artefact 6) (4.2 and 4.3). The use of the IWB also allowed me to establish a position in the classroom to easily see who was tracking me and give frequent praise to reinforce positive behaviour (Marzano, 2003) (4.2). I regularly used SHELL as an attention grabber throughout the lesson when students required redirection (Lemov, 2010) (4.1, 4.2 and 4.3). Learning intentions, success criteria, and fist-to-five were always displayed at the beginning of the lesson and reflected upon throughout and upon conclusion to ensure learning was on track and gauge student understanding (Lemov, 2010) (4.1, 4.2 and 4.3) (Artefact 6). Regular check-ins held students accountable for their learning and ensured they were engaged, participating, and supported which managed behaviour as students felt safe and supported working in the zone of proximal development (Artefact 7) (Stronge, 2018). This informal formative assessment enabled learning to be differentiated as some students were assigned more or less difficult problems to provide an appropriate level of challenge to all students (William, 2011). When there were instances of students not engaging in the work, I considered the cause or the function behind the behaviour by asking myself if the student was trying to access or avoid attention, a tangible object, or a sensory need (Crone et al., 2015) (4.1, 4.2 and 4.3). This ensured that I was not taking the behaviour personally, and I was calm and able to help the student overcome their challenge. Sometimes this meant the work was too difficult and they needed support, or they needed a movement break or calm down time to self-regulate.
The result of these classroom and behaviour management strategies ensured a calm and positive learning environment for all students to successfully engage and participate in learning.
References:
Crone, D., Hawken, L., & Horner, R. (2015). Building positive behaviour support systems in schools: functional behavioural assessment (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Larkin, K. (2016). Mathematics education and manipulatives: which, when, how. Australian Primary Mathematics, 21(1), 12-17.
Lemov, D. (2010). Teach like a champion: 49 techniques that put students on the path to college (1st ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Marzano, R. (2003). What works in schools: translating research into action. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.
Stronge, J. (2018). Qualities of effective teachers (3rd ed.). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.
William, D. (2011). Embedded formative assessment. Solution Tree Press.
