Getting Control of a Very Difficult Class

Have you ever had a class that just tried your patience day after day? Have you felt like you could walk away from teaching forever tomorrow, and be fine with it? This year, I have one of the most challenging classes I have ever had. I am still working on training them to do what I want them to do, and I think that in the end, I will win! Meanwhile, we are spending a LOT of time on classroom management, modeling routines and procedures often. Here are some other techniques that I have used successfully.

One thing that seems to work well, is having your worst kid in class model the correct behavior. I usually start with a reliably good kid to model the behavior, and then switch to a naughtier one. Then you all know that he or she DOES understand. The Daily Five book has a wonderful explanation of this technique. If you don't have that book, I would get it and read at least the first chapter or two on training your class to read silently. The training method works for other activities as well as silent reading.

I would also talk to parents of the ringleaders, if you can identify them. When kids are naughty, I start talking to parents after a week or two. I wait until two weeks have passed if I can, but sometimes I can't wait. As soon as I have to put someone in time out, I grab my note pad and write it down so that I don't forget what the little darling did. I tell them that I am going to speak to their parents when they pick their child up. I have at times, taken certain children to the phone and had them listen while I called their parents and told them what their child was doing. Then I put the child on the phone and have that child explain. This is usually VERY effective, but you need to have a pretty good working relationship with the parent. If you think you might need to do this, you might want to let the parent know that if the need arises, you will be calling them during the day for help, and get permission to do this if necessary.
Something else I have done in the past is have the kids work in teams to get the most chips for good behavior. They each have a bowl and I add chips when kids in their row are listening, etc. I like to count them and weigh them in front of the kids with a balance scale, too! The kids like that. We used to put one chip in front of the child while they were working at the table. If the child got out of control at a center, I quietly came up and removed the chip. Then at the end of that rotation, whoever still has a chip gets to put it in their group's bowl.

Here’s another one. Get out a video camera and put it on a tripod. It doesn’t even have to be on, as long as they think it is on. Let them know that their parents will get to see it if necessary. Now that’s pretty tricky, and I wouldn’t do it unless I absolutely had to. I do, however, get a permission to photograph paper signed and take pictures of the inappropriate behavior, just to show the parents and principal. It can be destroyed after that. Sometimes, it is the only way to make a point.

Now my class this year is very difficult! But they are improving in baby steps. Every time someone blurts out something without raising a hand, I stop, and back up. I say, "Okay, we're going to try that again. I'm going to read that page again, and let's see if you can all be quiet. Don't say a word! Here we go, let's try it." Then I say it or read it again, etc., and see if they do better. The kids get so tired of my repeating that routine, that they pretty much give up on it after a while. It also means that I get to say "Good job!" rather than "Go to time out" more often. For the kid that keeps blurting after that, THEN I send him or her to time out. It helps us from spiraling down to the negative so much. And that's hard with a particularly difficult class. I need to remember that they need a lot of STRUCTURE. They cannot be left on the floor to play with unifix cubes in a group of five. They will go nuts! They do better in chairs. Whenever I give them boundries, they do better. Ex. I have a carpet with colored sections for each child to sit in. We have a seating chart. I may move children a couple of times a week if needed. Some groups need to sit in certain spots at the tables at group time. Certain kids can never sit together. I cannot give them a single inch, or they will take a mile. Hopefully, we will get them all trained and they will be perfect little angels by Thanksgiving, and then I will be able to relax with them a little bit. They do have their wonderfully sweet moments!

What should you do if you have a developmentally disabled student in a regular classroom?

Assuming this child has an aide, you could try some of these activities. If not, perhaps you can get some volunteers to help the child with some of these activities when they have a few spare minutes. When I had a child like this in my class, he mostly sat and listened and sang songs with us and did lessons with us, unless I had an extra volunteer that could work with him. When it was his turn to be called on, I would either change the question to an easier one, or have him try to repeat back the answer after me. When we did group work, I had alternate worksheets and alternate activities that he could do independently when possible while I worked with the rest of the children. Sometimes I just traced the correct answers on the worksheet everyone was doing, and had him try to go over it with a crayon. I also pulled him out of playtime and tried to work with him then. I accepted all offers of help, and whenever somebody new came into my classroom, I immediately would pull out a tub with activities and instructions in it that I had ready, and hand it to them. It also had a documentation sheet that asked volunteers to sign in when they helped, write the date, and what they worked on, which I have included here.

You might try doing some classification types of activities, like putting pictures of clothes together, toys together, etc. A simple puzzle, like putting the number one piece into the number one cut-out might work. If you have any pegboards, it might be good practice just to put the pegs into the slots. I have some peg boards that have numbers on them; the kids are supposed to put three pegs into the one with number three, etc. I had a child once that was working on just putting chips into a slot that I had cut out of the lid of a margarine tub. That particular child was better off counting things and putting them into the slot, because that meant that he could not stop to play with them after he counted them. It didn't stop him from playing with the chips before he counted them, though!

Another good thing to do is to find some plastic letters and pull out the ones for that child’s name. Write his name on a large piece of tag board, and have him match the letters to form his name. Matching any other letters or numbers together is always a good thing too, since it develops visual perception.

Sorting activities might be too hard for a developmentally disabled kid, but most kids can sort by color. In any case, he can practice identifying the colors at least. Another thing that the child might be able to work on is tracing his name with colored markers. My kiddo that did that a few years back needed his name printed very large- it took up the whole sheet of paper. I also drew some curvy and straight lines on a piece of paper with a thick black marker. I xeroxed the paper several times before I gave it to him, and I had him try it every day for a while. Again, he too the marker and tried to trace the lines. He was way off, but got better as the year progressed. You could also have such a child try to cut on these lines. Unfortunately, he began to hate the tub with his name sheets and tracing sheets, and would start to cry as soon as he saw it, poor thing!

My developmentally disabled student basically stayed with my class and did everything that the others did, but he scribbled on everything. The kids got used to it eventually, but I had to explain the situation to them at a time when he was not around, and I tried to persuade them not to tattle when he was not completing assignments correctly. They also tried to avoid him by refusing to sit by him, etc. That made me angry, but I had to again explain to them that what he had was not contagious, and that their behavior was hurtful.


If you can get your hands on some baby board books with just vocabulary pictures in them, then the child can try to read and name the pictures. For example, the book might be called "Farm Friends" and have just a picture of a goat with the word "Goat" underneath it, etc. You might also try to have the child string some fat beads on a thick string. I have some shoe laces tied to some thick pieces of cardboard. The cardboard pieces have numbers and dots on them. So the piece with a number 5 on it has five sticker dots. The children are supposed to lace 5 beads on the shoe lace, etc.

Another thing that is good to do is to draw numbers on paper plates with a thick marker, and have the child put that many objects on the plate. Now with a VERY low child, I would see if he could put just ONE thing on each plate with a number one on it. If he can do that, then maybe two things on a plate with number two on them. I usually scatter the plates around the table and have them put the correct amount of blocks on each one. They may have to put two blocks on a plate 5-10 times.


These activities worked because he was a very compliant child who didn’t really know that he was “different” from the others. Working with a less compliant child is a much different story, and I am trying to get that figured out this year! If I ever get it “down,” I’ll be sure to make a post on how I did it!

Why Your Child Should Read for 20 Minutes Every Day

This is a wonderful explanation of why it is important for your child to read every day. A great teacher at my school passed this information on to me, and I thought it was important to post here in the hope that more people can pass this around to those that matter most in children’s lives: their parents!


Why Your Child Should Read for 20 Minutes Every Day

"Why can't I skip my 20 minutes of reading tonight?"
Let's figure it out ---MATHEMATICALLY!

Student A reads 20 minutes five nights of every week;
Student B reads only 4 minutes a night...or not at all!

Step 1: Multiply minutes a night x 5 times each week.
Student A reads 20 min. x 5 times a week = 100 mins./week
Student B reads 4 minutes x 5 times a week = 20 minutes

Step 2: Multiply minutes a week x 4 weeks each month.
Student A reads 400 minutes a month.
Student B reads 80 minutes a month.

Step 3: Multiply minutes a month x 9 months/school year
Student A reads 3600 min. in a school year.
Student B reads 720 min. in a school year.

Student A practices reading the equivalent of ten whole school days a year.
Student B gets the equivalent of only two school days of reading practice.

By the end of 6th grade if Student A and Student B maintain these same reading habits,
Student A will have read the equivalent of 60 whole school days
Student B will have read the equivalent of only 12 school days.
One would expect the gap of information retained will have widened considerably and so, undoubtedly, will school performance. How do you think Student B will feel about him/herself as a student?


Some questions to ponder:
Which student would you expect to read better?
Which student would you expect to know more?
Which student would you expect to write better?
Which student would you expect to have a better vocabulary?
Which student would you expect to be more successful in school....and in life?


WHY READ 30 MINUTES A DAY?

*If daily reading begins in infancy, by the time the child is five years old, he or she has been fed roughly 900 hours of brain food!

*Reduce that experience to just 30 minutes a week, and the child's hungry mind lose 770 hours of nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and stories.

*A kindergarten student who has not been read aloud to could enter school with less than 60 hours of literacy nutrition. No teacher, no matter how talented, can make up for those lost hours of mental nourishment.

*Therefore...30 minutes daily = 900 hours
30 minutes weekly = 130 hours
Less than 30 minutes weekly = 60 hours
Guess you now understand why reading daily is so very important. Why not have family night reading? It is great to just shut off the television for 20-30 minutes and read... and share.


Source: U.S. Department of Education, America Reads Challenge (1999) "Start Early, Finish Strong: How to Help Every Child Become a Reader." Washington D.C.

Tips for Doing Reader's Theater in Kindergarten

A couple of years ago, I was challenged by a conference planner at SDE to do a presentation on using Reader’s Theater in Kindergarten. The only problem was that I had NO idea how to approach this task in a meaningful and appropriate way. After a lot of experimentation, I came up with a method that worked for me. Below you will find the details of how I did it.

1. Choose a book the children love to read over and over again. The repetitive ones that the kids can “chime in” with and recite with you are best. My class loved to do this with the book Mrs. Wishy-Washy by Joy Cowly.

2. Write the words on sentence strips and practice reading them whole group.

3. Gather whatever props are needed, and tell the kids that you are going to act out the story while they read the words.

4. Choose children to play the parts, and let them hold the sentences in their hands as they say the words. The rest of the class gets to be the narrators, and they read along with the words on the sentence strips on a pocket chart as the teacher points.

5. Management of this activity is crucial! Until I had a good system down, they drove me nuts! It worked best for me to give the “actors” a spot to wait in (like a chair) when it is not their turn to speak. (This is very important!!!) It imposed a bit of structure on an extremely exciting activity! This helped keep the kids calmer than they were otherwise.

6. Plan on repeating this activity several times over so that everyone gets a turn. It took us a few days to rotate the whole class through the acting parts.

Big Books are a great way to introduce a story to the whole group for Reader's Theater or anything else- but they can be hard to hang onto. You might be able to avoid writing up the whole thing on sentence strips and putting the strips on a pocket chart if you have a good way to hold the book so that everyone can see. The “Big Book Tree” is a nice and easy way to hold a big book when you read. The Big Book Tree looks like a big broom stick with no broom attached, and it was about 20 dollars. It has some “eyelets” that are attached near the top and the middle of the stick, and there is a giant rubber band that runs through the eyelets. The book cover slips through the rubber band, and the weight of the book rests on the bottom eyelet. If you rest the stick between your legs, you can lean it and easily hold the whole book and turn the pages with no problem. This product is sold by Starting Blocks Plus. To order, you have to email them at: startingblocksplus@aol.com. (Two years ago when I got mine, they did not have a web site, but would fill requests for their product via email and snail mail. This may have changed these days!)


The Wright Group publishes a wealth of great simple stories that could be acted out, but my favorite is Mrs. Wishy Washy. If anyone knows of another great story for kindergarteners to act out, please let me know!

My class has successfully acted out the following stories:

Mrs. Wishy Washy by Joy Cowly

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams and Megan Lloyd

Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins

The Mitten by Jan Brett

The Mitten Primary Play by Heidi Butkus

The Gingerbread Man Primary Play by Heidi Butkus

What is the best way to model the correct letter formation when singing the alphabet songs?

This year, I have been figuring out the best way to introduce the alphabet songs as I go along. Here are some things that are working well for me! I would love to hear from anyone that has another successful method to share!

When we sing the songs in a whole group situation, I have the letters typed up very large and hold up a letter card in my hand while we sing. So they look at the letter while drawing it in the air and doing the motions for the songs. I have found it easiest to manage those cards by laminating them and binding them into a book. That way, they are always in order, and I never have trouble finding the correct letter quickly. The capital letter is on the front of the card and the lower case letter is on the back. I bound them with rings, punching some nice big holes for the rings so that I can turn the pages quickly while we sing.

Now that my kids know the songs for A-F, we know enough letter songs to work on them in small groups. So today, we got out the Handwriting Without Tears sticks and curves, and we built each letter out of sticks. Then we traced the letters as we sang the songs for each one. They loved it! (Actually, with HWT, you are supposed to take a rag and "polish" the letter in the order that you would draw it. I think that this is because without the rag in your hand, you would probably get a splinter in your finger from dragging it along the wood. So we used rags to trace our wooden letters.)

I have also had the kids take the magnadoodles that I have and write the letters as we sing. White boards work too, as well as Gelboards. We have also made letters out of playdough and sang the songs as well. I am going to try it with salt boxes, too. We'll be working with chalkboards and wet sponges eventually, too. The children in the group each get a little chalkboard, a piece of chalk, and a damp sponge. The children first draw the letter, and then trace over it with a small square of damp sponge. Then they get to watch the letter disappear! As long as the sponges aren't too wet, you can continue to use the chalkboard over and over.

We have also been singing with the DVD. It has the letter on the screen, which draws itself over and over in the correct order. So that's another way for them to see the correct letter formation modeled. If anyone thinks of other ways to use the letter songs, I would love to know!

Homework Binders

I started using organizational binders about two years ago in my classroom. The purpose of the binders is to help the children keep their homework and other papers organized, and to help parents stay organized, too!

Our binders have:

* A name page slipped into the front pocket. I use FileMaker Pro and make seasonal pages with each child's name on them, and they enjoy coloring them in. My clip art is mostly from www.djinkers.com.


* A page protector with their monthly Read Aloud Chart.


* A page protector with their Rainbow Words on them, so that the parents would know what words to work on at home. (I didn’t add this until after the first trimester.)


* During the last trimester, I added a chart in a page protector to practice sounding out words on their "Zip Strip." The parents were supposed to write the date that they practiced with their child, hopefully practicing each night (Well, some of them did it!.) The Zip Strips can be found at Wendy's Book Works.com. I left the actual Zip Strip in it and added a new group of words to work on periodically. I think that the kids whose parents really didn't know how to work with them really benefited from this the most- if they actually did it!


* A plastic binder divider page with a pocket for their most important papers. I print a sticker that says, "Overnight Express" and the parents are told at the beginning of the year that anything that comes home in that pocket should be signed and returned the next day in that pocket.


* A plastic binder divider of a different color with a sticker on it that says, "Homework: Return at the end of the week." The homework is supposed to stay in the binder all week, and they are NOT supposed to do the whole thing in one night. Occasionally, the kids turned in their homework early, not realizing that it wasn't time. That was the only problem that we had with that. Of course, this happens with any homework situation.


* A regular folder (three ring punched) with a sticker that says, "Leave these things at home." They are supposed to take all of these things out daily and leave them at home. Last year, I referred to it as the "Puppy Dog Folder" since all of them had puppies on them. I try to get everybody the same kind. One year, I got them all plastic folders rather than cardboard. They held up better, but don't seem to hold as much and are usually shorter than the paper ones, so they don't hold construction paper projects as well. The plastic ones are usually not as stiff, and are therefore harder to stuff with papers.


I bought my binders in 6 packs at Sam's Club, and they held up for the great majority of the kids the whole year. I usually have to ask a parent to replace maybe one a year, usually because the child has been too rough on it and the rings got too bent to close. I only had one child lose her binder last year. When it didn’t show up after about a wek and a half, I called. It eventually was returned, having been left in a non-custodial parents’ car.

I had the kids turn in their binders every day to me, into designated bus tubs. It was easiest for me to manage this way, rather than have them turn it in somedays but not others. I like to have a routine! Some people give their kids a zippered pocket for lunch money, and maybe another one for school supplies like crayons, etc. I may give one with supplies to some of my kids next year that never seem to have crayons, scissors, or glue at home to do their homework. Although, in the past, I know that I have given some of these things to children, only to have their parents remove them and take them for themselves! One little boy told me that his dad needed the scissors at work so he took them. :(

I had my aide stuff the binders each day that they needed to have something go home, because I didn't want to bother teaching the kids to stuff them. That was probably a "Lazy Heidi" mistake- they should learn to do it themselves- but I just didn't want to take the time. But, the best thing about the binders is that there is very little "I lost my homwork" or "I lost my Reading Chart" going around! It stays in the binder, and as soon as it is lost, I know and can ask about it. The parents that use that excuse gave up on "I lost it" quite soon after the school year started, since it didn't work. It is also easy to tell who is not completing the Read Aloud Chart early on. I can call and remind them that it is important long before the month is out! I also tell parents at the beginning of the year that the homework on the report card is really the parents' grade, since the kids can't possibly do it alone (particularly the reading chart). :) The only excuse they have is the truth- that they just didn't feel like doing it, or couldn't make time. Last year, just about everyone in my class did all of the Read Aloud Charts every time!

I am really glad that I gave these binders a try! I think it was worth it in terms of time and money. It was also far less frustrating trying to get permission slips and other important papers signed and returned. Yeah!