The tally marks have proven to be the best way to keep track of my student’s behavior.  It was so much easier than trying to keep anecdotal notes.  Through this process and talking to my CT, I have come up with a system to use with “Steven” to help him stay on task and in his seat.  It seems that he is most off task when he first enters the classroom.  He walks around talking to other students or dancing and singing in aisle.  I have decided to create a checklist that has a list of all the morning activities (routines) that need to be completed when he first walks in.  I will put it on a clip board and stick it in his desk every morning.  After he completes an activity, it is to be checked it off his list.  Once they are all checked off, he will be allowed to have two minutes out of his seat to help me with specific activities I need him to do (ex. straightening up the classroom library, taking something to the office).  After two weeks, I will add more items to the list until every activity during his arrival and literacy times are on it.  Hopefully, this will make a significant difference in the two behaviors he is displaying.

           After talking with my CT, we decided that my student, “Steven”, has a hard time with staying in his seat and being on task during independent working times (mainly literacy).  We believe that “Steven’s” lack of confidence in his reading skills and ADHD may play a significant role in this behavior.  We also wondered if his past emotional experiences had anything to do with the behaviors as well (maybe trying to find something he can control).  Based on this conversation, I am going to start using the tally sheets to get an idea of how many times “Steven” is out of his seat and off task.  I chose to use the tally marks because I’m looking at two specific behaviors and it seems to be a lot faster than trying to write anecdotal records.

I chose to read Developing Behavioral Intervention Plans because I felt like I needed more information and support in creating my own for my student.  I really want to do my student justice in order to get his needs met and I felt like reading this would build my confidence to do that.  I was right!  The list of questions they give to ask under the functional behavioral assessment and the section about the behavior being related to a student’s disabilities were helpful.  For my project, the questions in the relation between behaviors and disabilities section really helped me.  I was able to find that my child’s behaviors, even though they may be tied to his disability, are tied more to the loss of his mother (which makes a lot of sense).  It was also helpful to see an example of a functional behavioral assessment and a BIP.  I believe this is an article I’ll refer back to a lot in my first and second year of teaching.

          I thought this chapter provided a lot of information that was useful.  As I read it, I found myself making notes about the behaviors I was reading about and associating them with my students.  I feel like many of my students fit into the disruptive behaviors category.  The biggest issues I seem to have is off-task talking and making noises during class time.  It was reassuring to read that positive reinforcement (a system that I believe in whole heartedly) is a great way of dealing with those issues.  It does work most of the time in my classroom, but there are a few times that I have to use punishing consequences to deal with those issues.  

         The information on noncompliance was also very helpful.  I have a student who has some big social issues and is often noncompliant when given an explicit direction.  While reading about the interventions that may work for her, I was easily able to identify that the teachers and principal use “the enhanced positives and negatives” intervention with her.  It was helpful to read about other possible interventions to use with future students if this method proves to be a bad fit for them.

         This chapter of information gave me a great starting point of ideas to use in my classroom for better classroom management.

This chapter provided with me with lots of information that I will use for my project.  There were a few things that I noticed my CT and I already use with one of our students.  With this particular student, we began using interval recording during a thirty minute period.  For every five minutes (during independent reading), he receives a check in the “on task” box if he is reading or a check in the “off task” box if he is not.  This has proven to  be beneficial for him because the check sheet is in front of him and helps keep him on task.  There were several other things that I do in the classroom with this student that were listed in the chapter (like self-monitoring) and it’s nice to know I’m on the right track in helping this child.

     Even though there were techniques that I already use in the classroom, there were some new ones that I’m going to try and use with all of my students from now on.  For example, I would like to try to conduct an interview with my focus child about his interpretations of his own behavior.  I think this would be very beneficial for both of us in order to obtain the desired behavior in the classroom.

     In our classroom, we use our own PBS system.  It is based on earning tickets.  The entire fifth grade team distributes tickets to students who are on task, do something above and beyond what they are supposed to, or setting a good example for others.  When the students are given the ticket, they write their name on the back and put in a bucket.  This bucket follows them between classrooms and they continue to earn the tickets throughout the day (we are on a team teaching system).  At the end of the week, all of the teachers draw three to five tickets (depends on how many tickets are in the bucket) and the students are able to pick a prize. 

     This system has been beneficial in the room, but sometimes we have to go beyond it and give consequences to our students’ poor choices.  Usually these consequences are walking laps around the soccer field or silent lunch.  Only in the most extreme cases do we have to write students up or send them to the principal.

     This article got me thinking about the different PBS systems I have seen within the last several years and how I feel about them as a whole.  I am a firm believer in PBS systems, especially since I have seen how they help build a school community.  The school I am located in uses a school wide PBS system that involves children moving their “falcons” from one color to the next.  The children begin on two green falcons, move to one green falcon as a warning, then to red and have to write a not to their guardians about their negative behavior, if they get spoken to again after this, they are then sent to the office to talk with the principal.  If they are seen doing something above and beyond what they are supposed to, students move to a purple falcon and once they collect a certain amount of purple falcons, they then get a blue falcon and are invited to participate in a special breakfast.  

     My CT not only follows this system, but the entire fifth grade has a PBS system of their own; they use tickets.  Throughout the day students collect tickets for the positive behavior they display and place them in a classroom box.  At the end of the week, the CT picks five tickets and those children visit the treasure box and are able to select a prize.  The CT also counts all of the tickets for each child and for every ten tickets s/he receives, s/he gets a purple falcon.  It is amazing to see how students react when they receive a ticket from one of us or when someone else around them does and they do not.  Typically, the children who do not get the tickets correct their behavior and get back on task immediately.  I really enjoy having the ticket system in my CT’s classroom and will probably use that system within my own, even if there is already a school-wide system in place.

     PBS is not only a beneficial way for students to build a positive community within the school, but helps children learn how to take responsibility for themselves.

I really enjoued this chapter.  It provided me with some wonderful ideas on getting students to read non-fiction texts.  My CT has a great collection of non-fiction texts in her classroom library, but I have only seen one or two students take an interest in them.  It’s nice to have some good starting points on how to get my entire class interested in them (i.e. creating “Twin Texts” and providing time to read in other content areas). 

I liked learning more about the Inquiry-Based Curriculum as well because it is something I would like to try in my future classroom to see how it works.  I truly believe that if you allow students take control of their education and make connections to things that are important to them, they will find great success.  I also liked how the text said (within this section) that language processes should be used as a tool to investigate curriculum texts instead of being a curriculum focus.

I learned about a lot of new resources I’ve never used before and enjoyed hearing about them.  I think my favorite tools are the iTouch and flip camera.  I love the idea of using these tools in the classroom.  They will keep kids engaged in the curriculum and activities that accompany them.  I can’t wait to try all of these resources and tools!

     This chapter raised a lot of “A-ha” moments for me through making connections in my placement and questions that were raised.  While reading about the code-breaking component of the four-resource model, I thought about one of my students in my fifth grade classroom.  This particular student is highly intelligent and knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects and very well read, but his spelling is atrocious.  I have read a few of his writing assignments from this year and have always wondered what has not worked for him as far as decoding words.    Does anybody have any ideas on what can be done for him when we are moving so quickly to keep up with the assigned curriculum, other than telling him to sound it out?

     I also began to question some of the things I see with Reading Street.  Reading Street says that it integrates social studies into their reading curriculum, but while I was reading the passage about the book Freedom Summer and the students’ questions, I wondered where the opportunity for students to investigate further into the subject through other texts are.  According to the book, when the child’s ability to generate questions about concepts and ideas are limited, we can inhibit the extension of their reading practices and ability to use reading as a tool (this is an opinion I formed based on the reading).   I know we’ve beaten this horse to death, but it just saddens me to know that we are doing more harm than good with these types of curriculums.  These scripted curriculums are teaching our children to be robots and not individual, inquisitive thinkers in my opinion.