Observation Two
Classroom Management
Brooke Burley
NHTI

Burley 1
I am very fortunate enough to observe a fabulous teacher with many years of experience, who seems to me to have mastered classroom management. I have had the opportunity to observe in many classrooms the past couple of years, ranging from the kindergarten through the third grade. The reason I feel that Mrs. Hobby, the teacher I’m observing has mastered classroom management is because she teachers kindergarten, yet it seems to be the most well managed classroom, I have ever observed. IN my opinion, she has well mastered the five behaviors related to effective classroom management. The first behavior that Mrs. Hobby has mastered is arranging the classroom to meet instructional goals. I feel that the community and environment of a classroom is key to learning. She has arranged her classroom in a way the best suits the needs of her students. She has her room set up almost into sections, the tables and desks, the morning/reading rug, and then the play area, all separated by the placement of book shelves, craft carts, teachers desks, etc. Separating the areas are so key, because it’s almost as if each of the areas have a different set of rules/expectations, for example; the students know that when their at their tables, it’s time for learning, raising hands, educational conversations, etc., but when they’re in the play area, they can play with toys, build with blocks, talk about lunch, recess, etc., and that on the rug it’s more of a group conversation, that they sit in on their rug squares, and that its okay to dance around, etc. All of those simple rules/expectations help keep the classroom managed well. Not only does the arrangement of the classroom help set rules/expectations but it helps build the relationships of the students and teachers, by having tables instead of individual desks, and having a morning

Burley 2 rug for gathering, helps build positive relationships and helps the students learn to cooperate and work well with others. Mrs. Hobby also has pre-established class room rules, and she sticks to her rules at all times. One way that Mrs. Hobby makes sure that all of the students are aware of the rules, is that on the first day of class, the entire classroom sat down, and created their own rules. Mrs. Hobby then wrote down each of the rules on a big poster, that all of the students signed, and the poster was then laminated and hung in the classroom. Another way of establishing her rules, and making sure that the students understand them is different riddles, that all of the students have memorized and that they sing when Mrs. Hobby sees a rule being broken or about to be broke, for example if a student wines about the color pencil they got, she will sing, “you get what you get,” and the students will sing, “and you don’t get upset.” A student isn’t sitting write on the rug, teacher, “criss cross,” student, “applesauce.” To go along with rule setting, Mrs. Hobby established a system of incentives of consequences to respond to appropriate and inappropriate behavior. She has individual and class incentives. The individual incentive is a chart in the front of the classroom, that has each student’s name on a pocket, and in that pocket is a green card, a yellow card, and a red card. First the student gets a warning for negative behavior, if they are spoken too again it goes to yellow, which is when means that if they are at the rug the student goes and sits at a table and thinks about their choices, if they continue to misbehave they change to red, where they then leave the classroom and see administration, it is very hard to work

Burley 3 your way back to green as Mrs. Hobby is a strict teacher, but it is possible, and if the card is green at the end of the day, then they receive a sticker, when the student reaches 5 stickers they get a prize out of the treasure chest. The class wide incentive, is a glass vase, that gets filled