Classroom Management and Motivation

1a. Describe 5 class rules you would enforce. Give reasons for your choice of each rule.
1b. What are the consequences for breaking these rules?

There are four categories of disciplinary behaviors identified by Stage and Quiroz, they are: (1) reinforcement, (2) punishment, (3) no immediate consequences, and (4) combined punishment and reinforcement.

Rules have to be clear and preferably with no room for misinterpretation.

The level of appropriateness for disciplinary action must be in conjunction with the behaviour. Therefore, it is significant to match the consequence to the seriousness of the infractions.

Rule: Keep your hands to yourself; no hitting and fighting with your classmates.
Reason: Students are not encouraged to be physical with their classmates as well as their inclination to use their hands to provoke or disturb their classmates as they move in or out of class. This is to reduce the possibility of incidences of fights breaking out from such silly actions. Most fights normally begin from innocent light pushes and slaps, which eventually turn into nasty and violent fights.
Consequences: Negative approach (punishment): students found to infringe this rule would be required to make use of their hands to do more productive activities, such as, picking up litter in the school compound and cleaning up the classroom for a week.

Rule: Respecting other people’s property; treat it as if it’s your own . Students are expected to respect other people’s belongings. This includes the properties of the school. They should not destroy the property of others.
Reason: Students must learn not to abuse other people’s property. Defacing and destroying is an unhealthy habit as well as outright disrespect for others and authority.
Consequences: Negative approach: Students who break this rule will have to volunteer to help the horticultural club with the gardening process as well as the Operations Manager with simple maintenance of the properties in the school for the month. They will also be enrolled in the corrective-work- order squad and assigned duties for a month.

Rule: Coming back to class immediately after Mother Tongue lesson. Students are expected to be back in their class for their subsequent lesson and seated with their books for that lesson no more than 5 minutes after the Mother Tongue lesson.
Reason: Students must learn to be responsible for their movement and take ownership of their role as dutiful students by moving for their next lesson in an efficient manner. The longer they take to get back to class for lesson, the lesser time they have for the subsequent lesson and they would be loitering and disturbing other classes’ lessons.
Consequences: Combine no immediate consequence, punishment and reinforcement: Students who are later than 5 minutes are given a verbal warning up to the third time. After which, the student would be required to attend detention (on the 3rd and 4th time being late) for 1 hour and, subsequently, 2 hours of detention for the 5th time late onwards. The student’s late coming is a distraction to the lesson. However, if any students who are ready and have their books out for the next lesson will be given early recess (on Friday) of 5 - 10 minutes if they are behaving in this consistently favourable manner for the whole week.

Rule: Moving off in an orderly fashion for CPA lesson at the computer lab. When students are getting ready to go to the computer lab, they have to first get up from their seats and push it in silently and slowly walk out of class and form a single line with no movement.
Reason: Students must learn to be responsible for their individual action and behaviour. They should also understand how their action can affect the other classes’ lessons. Their rowdiness and inability to follow instructions is a bad influence and should not be condoned.
Consequences: Punishment (corrective) followed by negative punishment: If these students push the chairs in loudly, dash out of class, unable to form a single line but one that is haphazard and rowdy. the teacher will require the students to return to class silently, be seated quietly, review their behaviour and then try the earlier procedure of lining up in a single file and quietly again. If the class persistently behave in the undesirable manner for the next 2 subsequent CPA lesson, then the students will have to practice this routine for 30 minutes after school hours according to the number of time they fail to move off in an orderly fashion to the computer lab.

Rule: Visiting inappropriate websites.
Reason: Students must learn to be responsible for their own action and learn the importance of behaving in an appropriate manner that encourages high level of moral and ethical values.
Incident: Students are in the computer lab during their regular CPA lesson. One of the students who is sitting at the far back is surfing an inappropriate website. Another student happens to pass by and saw the site the former was viewing and hollers out “Teacher, A is watching an XX site!”
Consequences: Negative consequence (removal): The student has violated one of school’s key values which breaches its mission of being morally upright. Therefore, the student will have his privilege of using the computer taken away from him. He will be assigned a partner who would work on the computer while he watches his partner work on the computer for the next three lessons. And, he will have to be placed in the front where the teacher can see his entire computer screen for at least one term.

How would you motivate your students in your class for effective learning to take place?

The Motivated Student

Motivation is crucial for effective learning and this develops from an understanding of the learning process. This process relates to the complete learning experience which includes: the learner’s preference, expectations placed on the learner, the task, the teaching process, learning strategies, the resources and the learning environment: opportunities for exploratory learning, and provision of a stimulating and supporting environment that embraces even failures. It is clear here that in order to cultivate motivated students, there are a series of processes that are needed to be taken into consideration to enable a student-centred learning environment.

Education advances have been focusing on curriculum and instruction, the what and how of teaching. Far less attention and focus has been paid to the who of teaching.

Therefore, equally, if not, more importantly the areas that should be developed include the intrinsic ways to create motivated students. Here are some ways:

a) Teach routines, rituals, procedures and structure to help students internalise and polish their repertoire of essential skill sets. b) Create realistic expectations – set goals that are challenging yet achievable. Break difficult subject matter into doable parts to make it achievable so that students see progressive in themselves. c) Teach students to consciously self-evaluate so as to encourage them to unlock their enthusiasm for learning. The students will be encouraged to evaluate the effectiveness of their actions, and can then plan accordingly with regards to their educational needs. d) Help students discover the power of their internal motivation so as to create a positive self-image and capability and boost their self-efficacy: the willingness and ability in themselves to achieve success. e) Teach the students about the components of behaviour: overt action, feelings, thoughts, and physiological. They need to understand that these components work in concert; therefore changing any one necessarily affects the others. As such, students should learn to control and manage these components of behaviour. f) Minimise use of coercion and accept failure to be a critical part of the learning process and as opportunities to breed subsequence successes.