Standards |
15 Sept
8F, Science 100 minutes lesson Today I introduced an adjustment to my classroom management after reflecting on my practice and theory of behaviourism. I decided that instead of punishing young people for inappropriate behaviour by keeping them in for lunch or recess, I gave young people who were behaving appropriately the opportunity to use an accumulated number of minutes up to 10 minutes as they please without disturbing the rest of the class. For example playing games on their computer, reading story books, or talking to their friends who have also earned the leisure time. I decided to make this changes because positive reinforcement from operant conditioning has been shown to have better effect in increasing desirable behaviour and decreasing undesirable behaviour than punishment. As usual I begin the class with a Kahoot to prime prior knowledge and assess the level of retention and understanding of content from the prior lesson. The lesson went as planned for the first 20 minutes before a question on energy transfer in different states of matter had young people arguing as they could not reach an unanimous answer. So adjusting to the situation, I decided the young people should have an impromptu experiment on in which state of matter does should travel the fastest. I instructed the young people to get even number groups and plan a method in which they would test this. Following that, they broke up into pairs and conducted the experiment. While most young people did follow the instructions, there were some reluctant learners who did not participate in the activity. I gave them individual attention as well as encouragement to get them working, however there was a couple who did not respond. So after completing the activity and concluding the activity with an explanation of why sound travels fastest in solid objects, I congratulated the young people on their achievement in following the instruction and using their scientific knowledge and enquiry skills. I told them that their reward was that those who did complete the activity, can now participant in an extra game of Kahoot to the delight of most young people. As this was the first time I was rewarding for good behaviour I wanted the reward to be immediately after the desired behaviour. I would probably have to repeat this a few more times slowly increasing the time between desired behaviour and reward. The couple of young people who did not participate in the activity were still required to answer the Kahoot questions but were not allowed to do it on their computers thus being unable to compete with their classmates (negative punishment). The class then continued with the planned contents of sound as a kinetic energy and soundwaves, I gave the young people another activity to categorize all the energies we had learned into either kinetic or potential energy. All young people participated in the activity including the couple who didn't participate in the first one. This could be due to the new management strategy or because that it was an individual work and I said that i wanted to check their work before they went for recess. I continued to give a reward of 5 minutes of leisure time after the activity as everyone completed their work( positive reinforcement). All in all it was a relatively good lesson. From the formative assessment it is clear that most of the class are keeping up with the lesson. I had to help a few young people understand the concept of waves and how they are linked to kinetic energy. I could have put those young people in a small group and explained in again or I could have get them to ask their peers who have a solid understanding of the concept. |
I had a funded student with disability in my class, his aid was Ray. The student has autism and can have out burst of attention seeking behaviour or hand flapping when he is upset or nervous. On the first day when I realized that the student had an aid, I took the effort to talk to her and figure out that I can do to help him learn better and keep him calm in class. We came up with a reduced load and more pair work rather than group work for him. He is also a slow and messy writer, so I made worksheets for him to fill the titles of the notes leaving him more time to pay attention to the lesson and activities. With these adjustments, the student did quite will in his topic test and PowerPoint presentation getting a 70% average.
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