For this reflective journal I would like to more broadly discuss the situation that occurred

in my Tuesday ELA lesson, particularly my handling of those two disruptive students. During

the morning meeting Tuesday there were two students who seemed to be obviously in a bit of a

mood already based on how they came into the classroom and their attitude so far. During our

morning meeting question they were acting somewhat disruptively and talking while others were

trying to answer our morning meeting question and so I moved one of them away from the other

and that seemed to largely deal with the issue for that morning meeting.

Afterward however one of them was heard using inappropriate language and so I

considered that as strike 2 for that day. Eventually after writing agenda messages there was again

another incident with them that led to me splitting them up and moving one to another table. I

don’t think I can say with any degree of certainty why the disruptive behaviour on the students'

part happened but I believe that I can definitely explain my reaction to the behaviour. To start,

when they were obviously being disruptive during the morning meeting circle I moved one away

from the other with the intention that moving one would stop the behaviour if they were

essentially reinforcing the behaviour of one other, I considered that as strike one for them. Strike

two was the inappropriate language which my TA heard and briefly spoke to them about. I came

around after and asked what was said by them as I had not heard it from where I was standing.

Striked three was the incident of one student grabbing something from the other and the

other student coming to tell me. I was unsure whether or not to believe the accusation of the

student who came to tell me as they have a history of lying so I opted to remind them both of the
rules and not place any blame on a particular student. I also recall my TA mentioning that she

heard that student say something to the effect “I’m going tell on you” to the other student. All of

this together I considered the third strike and moved the one student to another table across the

room. Towards the end of the lesson there was one last incident when I was instructing students

to clean up where one of the same students from earlier said “No” to me after telling them to

clean up. I gave them a brief talk after finishing my instructions which seemed to deal with the

problem, they said the reason they had said no was that they were not finished and I told them

they still needed to follow the instructions a teacher gives you and that there will be more time

later. The implications that I took away from the incident is that it can often be as simple as

moving two students apart in order to stop disruptive behavior. Going forward I like employing a

three strike policy in regards to student behaviour before I take any moderately serious action

against it, I feel it gives students a chance to reflect on how they are behaving and change it,

especially for students for whom it is just an isolated incident.