Creating Productive Learning Enviornemnts

Topic: What are the procedures the teacher uses to make everything run smoothly in the class?

During my field work, I was able to observe countless little procedures that had to be met in order to make a regular classroom function, let alone a contained classroom.  Although "Mrs. Kay" only had 11 students in her class they needed more rules and expectations than a classroom full of 30 students.  The most important procedure that "Mrs. Kay" used to run her class was numbers, when I say this I talking about the number of teachers present in the classroom and with the students at all times.  In this particular classroom things worked out best when there were 3 or more teachers in class; one at the reading table, one at the math table and at least one at workshops.  When I first went to "Mrs. Kay's" class I thought, wow this is a lot of teachers, but in certain situations more than one person is needed to monitor the students and more importantly, it boosts their learning.

The second most important procedure "Mrs. Kay" used in her class was the color system.  At the beginning of the year each student was given a color to represent them in class.  The student's colors were then put all over the room, they were on their name tags, in their cubbies, on their folders, crayons, math books, the chore list and most importantly on the floor to line up and leave class.  The reason I say most important is because if there was one thing the teachers fought more than anything it was the line. It was always a race to be first in line, the student would cut in front of each other, push each other and yell when they didn't get their way.  There were certain things the teachers would do to help the students behave in line such as only taking the students who were quiet to recess first until the rest of the class could quiet down.  The teachers would also take the whole class back to the room and start over when everyone was quiet.

Overall "Mrs. Kay's" classroom ran pretty smoothly.