6th-8th – Page 18 – Classroom Management Toolbox

Life Skills – Kovalik

November 28, 2018 by Nollmeyer, Gustave

Kovalik’s lifelong guidelines and life skills include anything and everything that one can use over the course of their lives to help form the foundation for positive, valued relationships. The particular skills your class focuses on can be exactly what’s listed, or can be created collaboratively by your classroom according to the skills that they find most important. These life skills also help shape the culture of the classroom along with a creating a pathway to good classroom leadership and encourage reflective thinking.

Refrigerator Wall

November 27, 2018 by Nollmeyer, Gustave

The Refrigerator Wall is a technique used to display the student’s work and/or achievement. This is helpful because it gives the students a sense of pride and belonging to see their work displayed to the class.

Acknowledgements

November 27, 2018 by Nollmeyer, Gustave

Acknowledgements are a supportive phase tool that allows students to recognize other students that use Life Skills. Through peers recognizing the good things other peers are doing, a sense of community is established and strengthened.

Positive Phrasing

November 27, 2018 by Nollmeyer, Gustave

Positive phrasing is praising students who are demonstrating pro social skills. It is helpful when some students are having a hard time staying on task so they can see what they should be doing.

Teacher Voice

November 27, 2018 by Nollmeyer, Gustave

Although it is often easy to get frustrated when attempting to redirect students that have gotten off task, it is important to remember that raising one’s voice or losing one’s composure is unlikely to help make the corrective process a positive experience. By staying calm and using a quiet tone of voice, redirection can be accomplished in a more constructive manner.

Positive Teacher Language

November 27, 2018 by Nollmeyer, Gustave

Using positive teacher language is when the teacher focuses on the good outcome of when a student does something right instead of focusing on what happens when the student does something wrong. The tool is useful to encourage students and the teacher gets to model treating others well through this tool.

Target Talk

November 27, 2018 by Nollmeyer, Gustave

Target talk is encouraging students to behave by acknowledging the pro-social skills they use. This is helpful because it makes students aware of when they are using these skills and encourages them to continue to use them.

Decision Dice

November 27, 2018 by Nollmeyer, Gustave

The Dice Decision Making tool gives students an opportunity to make decisions in a short amount of time. It eliminates the conflict of group decision making if an answer or idea is unable to be agreed upon.

Inappropriate/Appropriate Behavior

November 27, 2018 by Nollmeyer, Gustave

When misbehaving occurs, explaining to a student the difference between inappropriate and appropriate behavior will help a student rethink their actions. Offering different solutions to the issue will offer an alternative look on how the student could have behaved differently. By using this tool, student can then change how they behave in future situations.

Activity Interference

November 27, 2018 by Nollmeyer, Gustave

Activity interference is a tool that teachers can use when students start to become disengaged and distracted by moving along to the next activity. This in short just means if a teacher sees students starting to get off task because of “dead time,” the teacher just needs to reevaluate if the lesson is moving along and engaging. This is helpful for teachers and students to keep everyone focused and engaged.