Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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Seating Change
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10 thoughts on “Seating Change”
Meg another option is challenging to do, but I love it. Just enjoy yourself and ignore them. You could do a NT story or regular targeted one or SL but the main thing is to act like you’re talking to your Mini Me. It’s written up in detail somewhere.
Another option is to use the jobs. When an artist is grooving on making a drawing and your other jobs are cranking, they can’t act like nothing is interesting. And use that VIDEOGRAPHER to train the camera on their bored and sulking selves in class. They will object but this film is for you only, to “work on your teaching skills” and to “keep track of kids for grading them later.” The jobs serve in so many ways against quiet, energy sucking, oppositional kids.
As much as we feed on the energy of the students, I think you’ll come to realize over some time with teaching that students don’t always put on their best faces for us. To say the least. If I were you, I would take advantage of this time where students are protesting in silence to tell stories, or to create your own OWI. Maybe you’ll get one student to give a nice response when you ask for a detail. Just one student that day. And the next, maybe a couple of students. Wouldn’t that be nice. Perhaps their protesting will help you turn upside down their habits of being disruptive.
You might be feeling like, well, if someone were to observe my class and no student is speaking, their going to think that something is awfully wrong and no one is learning. I understand. Let that feeling go. Take advantage of this time to re-norm the class. Let the students see that you enjoy talking to them. That you don’t need their cute details, necessarily.
You could also run a dictation. Dictations for me can easily last 30 minutes.
Sean,
Yours is a great response to the problem and question posed here! One of the greatest skills in teaching is the ability to stop / turn on a dime. I have switched gears several times when a particular day sees a class become like a stubborn donkey who has already decided to stop and stay in its tracks. Dictations, quizzes, finishing the story on my own, etc. have been among my first go-to ideas.
Meg,
Typically for me, when there’s been a problem, classes have just naturally zoned out for one or a couple of days. I understand that. I sometimes feel a little “off” and can’t muster the enthusiasm to meet the day with a bounce in my step and a beaming smile on my face. It happens and sometimes it happens to several influential people on the same day. That’s usually not the teacher’s fault. Remember, you’re not responsible for the circumstances, only for your response to those circumstances. It’s in these instances that I go to the simple substitutions above.
However, one of my classes did the long-term shutout bit this school year and I finally resorted to textbook and worksheets until we’re all blue in the face. I hate it and they do too (they say), but it’s the only way they’ll cooperate. I think there were many problematic dynamics in that particular class section: 1. We had 30 students. 2. Many of them have spent way too much time together at home and in the locker room and know each other’s strengths and weaknesses way too well. 3. As in the post above, “The vibration in the room is just too high for them.” They can’t keep hands off each other, can’t resist making nasty jokes, etc. 4. The strongest players in the group definitely fall under the category of “kids who are not yet human” and embrace the ability to continue to behave as such.
That whole semester of being immovable for weeks and weeks and weeks on the textbook has shown that they were trying to call my bluff and it turned out there was no bluff. The mix of students and sheer number of students have changed significantly this semester as a result. I’m hopeful that this change will bring a new wave in class behavior and it has already resulted in the remaining students being more cooperative. I’m planning to ease them back into CI as long as they continue to show signs of emphasis on being “not YET human” rather than emphasis on the “NOT”.
In short, I’d say use a good measure of grace for yourself and your students, but a firmness of hand if they don’t budge.
Thank you Angela this is so well put. I feel just fine in working from the book for months if necessary. If I give them even five minutes of building an OWI or something at the end of class, it is my gift to them. If they don’t want it, I am good with giving them more rocks/worksheets. The worst is when they sense we want something. Even one kid can turn them all against us, overpowering the kids who would welcome the CI gift. It’s too bad for those kids who want to learn, but I give the class the rocks anyway. Eventually it rights itself.
Your point here is so well taken: “That whole semester of being immovable for weeks and weeks and weeks on the textbook has shown that they were trying to call my bluff and it turned out there was no bluff.”
Yesterday was the first time that I really showed my sixth graders by doing and not by admonishing them hat I meant business: I was going to do SL and while I was writing the heading of the story on the board there was blurting again and silly remarks and loud chatting. Some were rather restless that day and although I had managed to bring them back to silent attention again and again, they just wouldn’t stop. So I noticed, I didn’t feel like telling the story in this kind of atmosphere and I erased the eading and calmly told them to get out their pens for a dictation – boy, oh boy, did that change their behavior.
I wouldn’t have dared doing this before joining the PLC, thinking I had to ‘teach’ whatever the cost to my personal well-being.
I believe this PLC is the best teacher training I ever got and probably will get in Germany!!!
Udo said:
..the first time that I really showed my sixth graders by doing and not by admonishing….
I have been thinking that the time for admonishing is just over in our field. It’s just over. It’s old, done. Du vieux jeu. No more admonishing bc we don’t have to. I like that! Instead, we just change the activity. Getting them writing is so powerful. Done! Thanks for this report, Udo.
Udo, I did the same thing in December with a group of 7th graders. I was doing an activity about St. Nicholas Day and some of the kids kept blurting and interrupting me. I stopped it and made them do a quick write. The other kids were so mad at them!
Yes, it’ so important for those kids to experience adults who know what and why they want to do sth and won’t bow to their kind of manipulating and struggling against it with words.
By now I truly believe they need us to experience feeling safe and supported but we can only achieve this if we ourselves are not giving in to nonsensical behavior by which I mean behaving like grown-up people should and not those who are only grown up with regard to their age but not their inner being.
what would I do without you guys?! The textbook suggestion is a great one. I don’t have any in my classroom—any suggestions? I think maybe even using Martina Bex’s Grammar in context, might be a good option. I also need to do dictée, ashamed to say I haven’t even tried it!
Yeah Meg – “Instant Dictee” is a powerful way to immediately take the right to doing a listening activity/story/whatever away from the class. The entire class has to do the dictee even if only one kid is acting out. It is very powerful. In these pages over all the years there are so many options described. Tina and I tried to keep it simple in the Bite Size Book of Classroom Management, and we couldn’t find all of them anyway among the 7000 posts and 53,000 comments. Oh well.