Three weeks in. Things have been going well so far, but today was a mixed bag. The techniques I use to keep order in the classroom are starting to not be as effective. My advanced classes are not as focused as I would like them to be. We have some momentum going in my classroom, but we're starting to lose it. I'm starting to lose my temper and be less effective as a teacher. So I'm trying to find new strategies to get the focus back.
1. Warm-Ups: I think when I was doing warm-ups of some sort at the start of class, the kids were more focused. I get so focused on getting things done that I miss the process. I think I need to get back to doing a quick warm-up or activity to focus them on to drama. That means I need to do some research, because I don't have a great warm-up arsenal.
2. Reinforce correct behavior: I've done this a few times, but I need to get better at it. I've asked students to wait for quiet, but don't always have them start over if they don't. I need to enforce the quit I'm looking for and not let whispering creep in, especially when people are performing.
3. Changing how I count down: I count down from 5 to get attention and quiet. It works generally, but I find myself counting down a lot during a class period. I've started keeping track of how many times I count down in a period and having students compete against their own score. Today instead of verbally counting down I just held up fingers. That seemed to work fairly well too.
I need to do some research to look for some other strategies, but I'll try these three for now.
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