Chapter 13

After reading this chapter I now see why teachers document everything. My cooperating teacher fills out a discpline report everytime a student pulls two or more cards. At first, I thought this was rediculoios. Why fill out this report for a student that disrupts your class twice in one day? However, I now see that she is just making sure her butt is covered. A second thing I learned was to have the students invovled in the discipinary process. I seen this work at South Range. When we had a sub, the students came up with the idea that behavior penelties be double. Because the syudents came up with the rule their was no compliants when they had to serve double time.

Chapter 12

The beginning of this chapter discussed styles of teaching. The science teacher I'm working with is a "helicopter" teacher. His style is to spoon feed the students. The math teacher I'm working with has a "drill sergeant" style. Both of these style are very different from my style. I believe students should come up with their own ideas, and being a drill sergeant is not in my personality.
One idea I liked in this chapter was the point value for grades. I feel that if a student is trying their hardest they should get a decent grade. I have one student in math who tries hard, but struggles with several concepts. I don't feel it is right to give the student a failing grade, or hold them in for every recess to have them redo assignments. Also, it is important to give students choices when it comes to learning.

Chapter 11

I like how this chapter started by saying that,"Teachers use massive amounts of energy doing much of the thinking that kids could do for themselves." Often times I feel as though we as teachers do all the thinking for the kids. When the students are taking notes, we summaries the info for them. When we want students to answer a question, we echo the question for them. When we pose a question, the answer is given word for word in the text. Often times I feel like teachers spoon feed the students to much. If kids are given adequate time, they can make a lot of these connections on their own. Some teachers do all the thinking for the students. As a result, the teacher goes home exhausted and the student goes home full of energy.

Chapter 10

One quote that stands out for me from this chapter was,"kids will respond positively to a penalty when they see a logical connection between their behavior and what happens to them as a result of that behavior." This past Friday all the teachers were going to a funeral. On Thursday, my teacher told her class that they better behave for the subs.One of the students (who is usally terrible when there is a sub) suggested that any cards pulled should be double time at recess. The class agreed, and when they got their cards pulled that day were more then willing to serve the extra time. By letting the students come up with the consequences they took ownership of their behavior.

Chapter 9

I loved the example were the math teacher gave the students the option of doing the even or the odds, by assigning twice as many problems.Then when she wanted them to do the whole page she gave them the option of writing their answers on the front or back.
Another valid point this chapter made, was if you give students choices they will be more excepting when they don't have a choice. I seen this when one of my teacher's I'm working with had a substitute teacher. The regular teacher never gives her student's a choices. As a result, when the sub came in the students made the choice that they were not going to be controlled today like they had been all year. There was more noise coming out of that room in one day then I had heard all year combined.

Chapter 8

This chapter makes me think of an interesting situation I observed this week. One of my student's got an A on their math test.Usually this student fails their math test. When the student recieves the failing grade he announces it proudly to the class. This week when I handed the test back, he went to his sit and had a big smile on his face. However, he didn't announce his grade to anyone. For some reason, he didn't want the class to know he had done well, even though his facial expressions showed he was very proud.

Chapter 7

When this chapter talked about the school with 324 rules I thought it was South Range Elementary. One of the hardest things for me to this point, has been trying to learn all the rules and the consequences that go with them. Sometimes it feels like no matter what the kids are doing their breaking one of the rules. I loved the one rule idea."You can do anything you want in this class,provided it doesn't cause a problem for someone else. I think most students would see this as fair and reasonable.