Category Archives: classroom management

classroom management First days

First Day Ideas

Published by:

It is important to greet each student as they enter the classroom. Some teachers use passwords in order for students to enter the room. For password ideas use high frequency words and rejoinders. The social studies teacher next to me greets his students at the door with an either or choice each day, soccer or football, cats or dogs, cake or pie?

I assign seats from day one. Assigned seats reduce anxiety for students by taking away any concerns about where to sit or who to sit with. Assigned seats help establish your authority, show that you are prepared and save time. I usually just make a seating chart alphabetically for the first day but sometimes I use my 40 animal cognates as seat finders. I make two copies of the animals. I tape one animal to each seat and then hand out a matching animal at the door as they enter.

An entry task on the first day of school is to write your name on an index card and list 3 facts about yourself.  I collect these cards and put a rubber band around the class set and store them in a recipe file on my desk. I use these to randomly call on students, to form groups, to get to know the students, and to create classroom connections.

Each day I pick an interesting fact from someone’s card and read it to the class. For example it might say “I have been to Hawaii.”  I say anyone who has been to Hawaii stand up.  Everyone who has been to Hawaii stands up and we make connections around the room.  I can ask follow up questions like which island, with whom, what did you do?  I can say anyone who wants to go to Hawaii stand up.  Then have everyone sit down and pick another card.  I purposely look for things that I think a lot of people have in common, point out the connections, and look for opportunities for spontaneous interpersonal communication.   I do a few each day until I have used a statement from everyone at least once.

I then do the About me presentation from the Creative Language Classroom. This is a great activity to show how I am going to teach and how they are going to learn as well as how much they can already understand with supports. There are templates in French, Spanish, and German that you can use to create your own presentation about you.  There are also student information sheets in French, Spanish and German to get some information about the students using the target language. 

Name Games – I like to play name games standing in a circle.  I model “Me llamo Senora Johnston” “¿Cómo te llamas?” and then pass a ball to a student. That student says their name and tosses the ball to another student that has not been called on yet. They need to remember the order. Once everyone has been introduced, then add in a second ball. You can keep adding in more balls so that several are flying around. This can keep going as long as there is high interest. The key is to end on a high note and keep them wanting more. This activity can be built upon with many new get to know you phrases such as me gusta or soy de. For a variation establish a pattern and then introduce more items calling out the persons name you are throwing to.. se llama…

Hot potatoe is another name game played in a circle.  I pass the ball around the circle while chanting “¿Cómo te llamas, cómo te llamas, cómo te llamas- tu?” When I say tu the student with the potatoe has to say Me llamo and their name. I vary the speed of the chant and how many times I repeat it. Later in the year we can play hot potatoe with pictures of vocabulary words or questions. The person caught with the potatoe when the timer goes off has to answer a question or describe a picture.

Another way to make connections is the game I call Te presento a in Spanish and Je te présente in French.  Have the students make a name tag and stand in a circle.  I start in the middle.   I say Je te présente and say a student’s name.  The students on either side of the named child race to wave and say “Bonjour” to the other child.  The slowest of the two moves to the center of the circle and becomes the next caller.  This forces kids to listen for the names of the kids on either side of them.  After a few minutes have everyone find a new spot so they are next to different people and listening for other names.

The first week of school we play Heads up 7 Up to learn each other’s names. Select seven students to go up in front of the class. The rest of class sits at their desks and put their heads down and one thumb up.

The seven students walk around the room and each one touches the thumb of ONE person.  Then, when the seven are back in front of the room, the students who have been chosen have to guess which student chose them.  If they are right, they take that person’s place in the front of the room.  If they are wrong, the person in front stays there to play another round.  A variation for later would be to have the seven students have pictures of vocabulary words. Then the other students guess which vocabulary word chose them.

What do you do the first few days of school?

classroom management Comprehensible Input supporting student learning

The Power of Gestures

Published by:

Anything we learn has to enter the brain through one or more of the five senses. The more senses we can involve in the input process the more likely the words will be retained. In addition, information we see is stored in a different place in the brain than information we hear, touch, smell, or taste. When there are more senses involved, there are more places the information is stored in the brain.

This is why it is important to use gestures whenever possible when providing input. I use gestures to establish meaning, for classroom management, to calm and focus the class, and to check for comprehension. I start with weather gestures, action words, body parts and the super seven and sweet sixteen verbs.

The steps are:

Model the gesture. It is best if the kids help establish the gesture but I always have a back up ready in case they don’t come up with one. Plus, it helps to not have five different gestures for the same word if you have five classes. Model the gesture while pointing to the word in the target language with English translation while saying it in the target language.

Delay the gesture. Say the word or phrase again but wait before you do the gesture to see if they are getting it.

Make a Mistake. Say a phrase and pretend to do the wrong gesture and see if they notice…then do it correctly.

Remove the model. Say the phrase and see if they can do the gestures.

To add variations, divide the class into groups and assign each group a different country, city, or region of the target language. (I first learned this from the incomparable Jason Fritz.) Then give commands by country name. I teach gestures for weather the first week of school so I would break the class into three or four groups and say in the target language: in France, it is raining, in Canada, it is snowing, in Tahiti, it is sunny, and then mix up the weather and countries with several repetitions.

Give chain commands. Give three commands in a row and then say go. See if they can do the three gestures in that order while repeating the words again.

Have one half of the class demonstrate the gestures to the other half of the class. This is powerful because they can see it works. They can also see how quickly we can tell who knows the words and who does not.

Another reason to use gestures is to relax and calm. I use massage with body parts and breathing to begin class, especially when we need to calm our minds and bodies. For example: Massage your temples, your ears, your shoulders. Roll your head, then your shoulders. Breath in, breath out. I like the 5 finger breathing technique.

Use gestures to teach classroom commands and for classroom management. I start out each class period with the words and gestures for “Put your phone in your backpack. Take your air pods out of your ears. I need your eyes and your ears. I also teach gestures for look, listen, read, write, open your book, close your computer. You can also use gestures and unique movement opportunities for turning in papers or returning books. Some examples: Jump to the turn in trays. Walk backwards to your partner. Walk like a robot to the garbage can. Dance to the door. Swim to the pencil sharpener.

Use gestures to show comprehension. We naturally use gestures like raising our hand to ask a question, giving the ok sign, or showing thumbs up or down if you agree or disagree. We can teach them to signal when we are going to fast or they don’t understand. I have students shake their heads yes or no to show me they are paying attention. They need to stand up or sit down for either or choices. Even for true or false questions, I have them move to one part of the room or the other. And for a comprehension check, on a scale of 1-10 hold up your fingers how well did you understand?

The bottom line is if we don’t have their attention, no information is going into the brain. I tell the students that I can’t just open up their head and put French in their brains. I have to go in through one or more of their five senses. Gestures and movement aid in retention and they are just fun!

classroom management Environment

Free Seat Friday

Published by:

While teachers are reflecting on their routines, I wanted to share one of my favorite tips, Free Seat Friday.

In my opinion, one of the most important classroom management techniques is assigned seating, beginning on the first day of school. A seating chart helps to make students feel safe and included. It breaks up cliques, alleviates power struggles, and puts students at ease. Without a seating chart, valuable time is wasted as kids come in and try to decide where to sit, usually waiting to see where their friends sit, some even ask other kids to move so their friend can sit there. I think this undermines the atmosphere I am trying to establish. Assigned seating sets the precedent that I am prepared and in charge of my classroom.  In addition, it allows me to grant my favorite reward: Free Seat Friday.

I want students to get to know everyone in the class and work well with whoever is next to them. So I ALWAYS have a seating chart that I change every two or three weeks. I also change the arrangement of the desks every few weeks. The first day of school I usually just make a seating chart alphabetically by their last names. I use that for the first few week until I figure out who works best where and I learn their names.

However if you would like to make it more random, and introduce some animal cognates, you can use these free seat finders in French and Spanish. I have used these animal cognates to assign seats to students on the first day of school. I printed two sets of cards: one that I hand out at the door, and one that is taped to the student desks. Students are handed a card at the door, and they must sit at the seat that has the identical card taped to it.

After the first day, you can use these cards to form groups for any activity. You can make multiple copies and have students get in to animal groups, or you can use two sets and ask students to find the other person with their exact match. I laminate my set of cards so that I can re-use them each year and throughout the year.

But here is the best part, if we have a good week, which means staying in the target language at least 90% of the time, then on Fridays they can sit where they want. We call this Free Seat Friday and they love it! They come in excited every Friday asking “Is it free seat Friday? Can we sit where we want?” It is the best reward and it costs me nothing.

I make a seating chart for each class and keep the charts on a clipboard. I use this clipboard to document everything. I take attendance on it, I document behaviors like cell phones out, I record TALK scores on it and generally write anything I want to remember on the seating charts. During class, if I pick up my clipboard they seem to pay more attention because they think I am documenting something. I call this the clipboard stroll. When they are working with a partner or in a group, I grab my clipboard and stroll around the room. Most of the time I’m not really writing anything, I’m just walking around with it, but they are very aware of where that clipboard is at all times.

I use a lot of movement activities in my lessons so students are never really seated too long anyway. I also mix them up in pairs and groups frequently, intentionally, so we form connections. If a kid tells me they don’t like where they are sitting I just say “don’t worry, you won’t be there for long.”

Even as an adult I prefer a seating chart. When I was getting my master’s degree, I was in a cohort of students much younger than me. The professors never made seating charts, and it was always “pick your partner or group” so after two years of meeting for the entire weekend, once a month, the class never really got to know each other and it was frustrating. I even like seating charts for faculty meetings. Teachers tend to stick to their departments or friends and I think we all benefit when we get to know and work with someone new, that’s how relationships are formed, and isn’t that what it’s really all about?