When disciplining, aska student what rule they were breaking When the teacher had to discipline a student, then she would ask them, “What rule did you break? After theyd answered, she'd also ask,"Why is it important? This seems to be effective because it makes the student consider the rule for themselves, and not to just have the rules spouted at them. Asking them why the rule is important seers to reinforce them reasoning for the rule and helps to ensure the students understanding of the rules. The teacher — responds to questions with questions This one seems basic enough, but its surprisingly not. At first, when a student would ask me a question, | would tell them, not the answer, but something to put them on the right track. But by asking the students, “How does the word sound? or’Well how many‘ones is that? then it really helps them figure out the answers on their own, and to learn how to figure out other problems in the future, which is what theyre in school for. Multiple Perspectives Im reading the articles in the jigsaw activity, one of the things that jumped out most for me was the bit about multiple perspectives. The comparison was that dentists and doctors deal with their clients on a one-on-one basis, while teachers deal with theirs in batches, with all members of that having different perspectives. The most effective teachers need to be able to be able to break an idea down to its component parts and present them in ways that make sense to all the students under them, not just in the way that makes most sense to the teacher. (Addendum: | wonder how much more effective this is when taken into account with multiple instructors in a room?) Distraction Expanding on a previous entry: what students use as distractions. Previously, a student had her water bottle taken away from her because it was a distraction. Friends are another big one, but today one of the students wouldrit leave the ‘Smart Board along, so it was interesting to see how the object of their learning turned to a distraction. (Goal: Watch for what else can be a distraction.) Re-evaluating the next lesson In class, the children were taught a few different methods of helping them to ‘add numbers together. Ultimately the most basic and essential is the 100s chart, but most of the students elected to use other methods over it. (Maybe because base ten pieces were more familiar to them?) So the teacher had said that tomorrow we would use sheet using only the 100s chart, so that the students willbe forced to learn to associate the numbers with addition in a more fundamental way. Differences in reading The teacher has had me testing different students on their reading skills, and its interesting to see the differences and then to discuss with the teacher what they mean. One can read perfectly fluently and accurately, but then have difficulties in retelling the details of the story afterwards, so he could but not retain what it was that he was absorbing. Another couldrft answer any of the inference questions, and the teacher had pointed out to me that she will probably always be a person who has trouble understanding another persoris ideas. Visualize good behaviour ‘At the beginning of the day, as some of the students were coming into the school from playing before the first bell, the teacher had stopped one or two of them and said, Stand with me for a minute. Close your eyes, and visualize what you need to do when you get into the classroom” There may be a few reasons for this: getting the children to calm down and make the transition to inside behaviour, and possibly for getting them into a learning mindset for the rest of the day.