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Three and Done 1
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10 thoughts on “Three and Done 1”
In order, for me:
1. Use of English
2. Visiting with a neighbor during class
3. Excessive bathroom trips
4. tardies
5.cell phones
6. absences
7. a non-issue for me as I teach in a suburban district – earphones
Number one, I”m guilty of the most
I think that what makes the use of English thing so challenging for us is that it depends on the kid and the nature of their use of English. Some know exactly – to the word – how many words they can slip by us, bc they know how hard we are working. It is their nature to challenge us in this way, thinking it a bit of a game to see what they can get away with. But, to me, it is not a game at all, but a kind of struggle for my professional survival, and no less than that, bc the method cannot even work if they use English! That is why I worded it as “three or more” times will get the referral. One kid might need the referral after three, another after ten or more. It depends on the kid. But if I don’t actively enforce that in week 2 next week (week 1 doesn’t count) then I’m a chump.
Let’s keep each other posted on this Chris. Think of each other in our classrooms every time they try to sneak some English by you. I will stop and put it in the computer – it only takes ten seconds – and you do the same. We’ll compare notes on Friday.
And another thing, Chris, if you use English your argument falls flat. I have spent years telling them that I get to have some English bc I am the teacher but they can’t. But it never worked – such a statement is, to them, a gross unfairness, against all the principles of what is right and good. They can’t see it, and they are right – we are hypocrites if we use English and they can’t. I’m not talking about the few isolated uses of English that we must use, they can accept that. It’s when we are more than 2% of the class in English that they start playing the unfair card, and rightly so.
Thank you for sharing this post. I’m still trying to understand this method. As you stated, if students don’t do their part, including being engaged and using only the target language, this method doesn’t work too well. By referral, do you mean you write them up to see the vice principal? We are discouraged from referring discipline problems to the office, unless they are beyond our control (out of control student, unsafe behavior, non-compliant when reminded of the rules, etc.) Is there something about a “referral” that I am failing to understand? Thank you.
I have never used referrals (in our building they go to different people depending on what the offense was). But our administration has requested that we refer kids after the third offense and a parent contact. It is THEIR request.
So once I have documented three unexcused tardies, absences, cell phone uses, etc. as described in Three and Done, then the people I work for WANT that referral.
For me so far, two weeks in (fingers crossed), I haven’t had even the slightest bit of a problem. Well, there was one kid who didn’t put away a pair of surgical gloves he had during a DPS pretest and after I asked him a second time to do so without compliance I just took them across the hall where three of my WL colleagues were on their planning periods. Haven’t heard a peep out of him since.
Words don’t work. Action does. So if your administration doesn’t want to help you, that’s unfortunate. You said:
…we are discouraged from referring discipline problems to the office, unless they are beyond our control….
In my opinion this is a disaster in the making. You are supposed to successfully manage cell phones, excessive bathroom strolls, talking, tardies and absences without anyone’s help in the building? I’d rather live under a bridge.
The clerical aspect of Three and Done has come into better focus for me. It’s not practical to make a note in the computer if a kid has a cell phone out, or starts talking to a neighbor, bc it takes too much time. But it does work if I print off off a class roster from Infinite Campus, which has a series of boxes to the right of the kids’ names. I just divide the box into two to make two little triangles in there, and, using these symbols:
1. ENG – Use of English
2. UT – Unexcused tardies
3. UA – Unexcused absences
4. N – Visiting with a neighbor during class
5. C – Cell phones
6. EPH -Buds/earphones in ears
7. BR – Excessive bathroom trips
I just put one of them in each triangle when a kid breaks one of the rules. Then, during planning, I just write up any of them into the conference atom.
This sounds laborious, it sounds absolutely crazy, but it is working for me. What is more laborious is to have constantly annyoying classroom issues all year while I am trying to teach French to a bunch of adolescents? I have tried everything and found nothing that works over 35 years like this, so I’m doing it, and I like what I see so far a lot.
Yes, I have used English for the first two weeks. I’ve had to give the DPS pre-test and talk about the rigor posters, all of them, in most lively fashion. This week I will do it. I am totally determined. I’m going to Party City to get a variety of noisemakers for that kid (what is the name of that job?), and I already have the special notebook for the L2 Timer, and now I just have to make it work for so that the method can work. What are my options? Failure in honoring the potential of the method.
Do you have this spreadsheet at your desk or hanging on the wall? What constitutes excessive trips to BR? I feel like this might be too late in the year for me to start but I like it.
Spreadsheet is right next to me on my computer cart when I teach. BR can be however many. It’s for the kid who goes each day at the same time, with impunity. After about six of those, and after about four or five blurts, it’s a referral. Three is for the unexcused tardy and the cell phone. Obviously not three for a bathroom kid. Four feels right for a blurter. It really supports jGR, as I said.
Yes, I have those BR kids that go EVERY day. I would love to inform them that if they cannot figure it out that they will be getting a referral but I am afraid my administration will not support that. They are all about us handling things in our own room. But this has me thinking. If i start counting BR trips then after a certain amount they will have to serve a work detail in my room. If they do not show for that then they will be given a referral. I think I can get admin back up for that. I used to use passes but I have found that it never worked. The kids would look at me with their sad little teenage eyes and I was a pushover. Now that I view my work place like a bad sitcom and I am an actress in that sitcom, it is much easier not to get to worried about being stern and being demanding of scholarly -for lack of other words-behavior in my class. I really don’t think that kids are expected to act like they are an active part of the class in other classes they have so it is new to them to have to listen, sit up and have clear eyes. I am starting to get my system down and I’ll dust off the podium and have a spreadsheet and a pen ready to go. This stuff is gold!
Karen I know this is an old thread… I give kids bathroom passes at the beginning of the semester (four) and say they are extra credit if I get them back at the end- the only extra credit I offer. I trump up the extra credit, and remind students over and over that they don’t want to stay a half hour after school because they used all three bathroom passes in the first two weeks and then had an emergency.
well, today was the end of Week 2. Yesterday I hit it out of the ballpark with embedded reading and dictee!!! (and it was my first time ever doing either one!!! — didn’t know how to do it last year! THANK you Laurie Clarq and Ben Slavic and “Jen with the GREAT RUBRIC”!!!!) The kids even LOVED it! told me that they LOVE learning that way, that they liked it bc it helped them to spell. they were also psyched bc they were able to READ something and COMPREHEND it in just the 2nd week of school!!!
BUT……the cell phone honeymoon is over! they started to appear today!!! THREE in my classes!! and I had to take another one in the hall on my way to lunch duty!!! (at the end of the day, as I was logging in the Block 4 cell phone, I saw that out of six cell phones that were taken today – yes, in the WHOLE school! – I had taken FOUR!!!), then all of a sudden the FOUR kids whose phones I took were the only ones in the office picking them up! I had to leave! hahaha……
I don’t ask “why” (do they try it?) anymore….I know they are just kids trying to get away with so much…..but it IS kinda funny when upper clansmen tell the underclassmen “do NOT have your cell phone out around Mrs. T. she has radar, and she WILL take it!!!” but they do it anyway — they’re just testing me, and I don’t want to fail them! 🙂
Thankfully – my Admin is appreciative of this….it helps when ALL teachers keep up with it. It *IS* a pain in the first few weeks — here I am trying to relax at home, and I just had to send home emails about the phones bc I didn’t have time to call home today about them!!! But….it is SO worth it these first few weeks of hard work, as we get further down the road and just want to have FUN with CI in the classroom! 🙂