AboutPatricia Ireland-Williams Expertise I am a retired K-12 Public School Principal (8 years as a teacher and counselor) and 23 years as an administrator. I can help parents with questions about how the system works, provide ideas on how to solve school issues or assist teachers in coping with the plethera of stressors they face.
Experience I am currently an educational consultant and have served on the State of Arizona Solutions Team.
I'm in desperate need of help. This is essentially my first year, and I'm teaching English language to grades 3, 4, and 5 in France. All my classes started out well, but for the past 2.5 months I have had trouble with my 4th and 5th grades, possibly because we started out the year playing mostly games. With my fourth grade class, they no longer listen or quiet down when asked to. They goof around. They want games all the time and I say no. They are now driving me nuts, and I'm losing the will to teach them. The fifth grade class does not stop when asked to stop--they continue doing whatever they are doing. Some specifics: I have my classes 2x a week for 45 minutes. I enter their classroom. I have no projector nor do the students have any English books. Lately I've been reading on the importance of routines and procedures for classroom management and I've realized that I don't have any procedures. I've only recently added a Do Now. I have just 5 weeks of this program left, and I am wondering how to implement procedures this late in the program and gain some control over my classes.
Thanks for any help you may be able to offer!
Answer This is a tough one in that you are right.......classroom management starts the very first day and procedures and routines must start there.
I would suggest that you begin calling in parents as helpers and begin disciplining those students who are the ring leaders.........call their parents and refer them to the Principal for counseling. Also, send home evaluations or grades indicating needs improvement, etc. If needed, have parent student conferences.
I would use games as a reward.........tell them that they will be able to play a game they like at the end of a successful lesson.........teach, then let them play a game. Give praise to the students who do what you want them to do. Send home good news notes to those kid's parents. Eventually, the other kids will "get it" that they are not gaining anything by goofing off.
Also, ask their other teachers for help........do they act the way they act with you with others? If so, what do those teachers do? If not, why not?
Most of all, reevaluate your system of classroom management so that you will be better prepared next year.
