Assignment

Check Your Progress

We are just past the midpoint of your first course in the program. Congratulations on your progress! Take a bit of time to reflect on the work that you have done thus far. Return to your Unit 2 assignment, in which you set goals for your learning in this course.

• What are the "big ideas" you have learned thus far? How does that learning move you toward your learning goals?
• What content is still "muddiest" to you thus far? What do you need to know in order to clear up your understanding of that content?
• Overall, are you on track to meet your learning goals?
• Finally, ask any questions of your instructor that would help move your learning forward in this course.

DISCUSSION 2

Instructional Strategies

In this unit, you learned about strategies for meeting the needs of diverse learners in your instructional setting. Select a recent lesson plan you have implemented or locate one online. Evaluate it to determine opportunities for using strategies you have learned are helpful for students from diverse backgrounds.

• Attach a copy of your lesson plan.
• In your discussion, describe practices you incorporated that are responsive to the diverse needs of students.
• Identify opportunities to include more culturally responsive strategies in your lesson.
• Explain how you can share your learning on strategies for meeting the needs of diverse students with your work colleagues.

DISCUSSION 3

Mini-Intervention 1: Classroom Culture Change Plan

Overview

Most teachers have been trained to manage student behavior through rigid rules and consequences, flipping cards, notes and phone calls home, time-outs, taking away recess, and other types of stimulus-response techniques. In the first two units of this course, you have been asked to consider a completely different paradigm in regards to classroom management-a culture of responsibility and freedom, success and recognition, loyalty and caring.

You will need to spend some field experience time in your classroom, implementing your change and documenting the impact of your intervention. Suggested time: 2 hours over the course of the next couple of weeks.

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competency and assessment criteria:

• Competency 1: Analyze strengths and weaknesses of behavior management theory and practice.

o Identify one of the classroom management practices above that you would like to increase or decrease and describe what effect you hope to see from this change.

• Competency 2: Analyze strengths and weaknesses of behavior management theory and practice.

o Create a detailed description of your current classroom management.

• Competency 3: Integrate research-based classroom management practices into the learning environment.

o Propose an immediate implementation plan, describing specifically how you will make changes in your own management behavior.
o Describe how you will measure the change that you see in the classroom climate, based on the change that you make.
o Develop a short script (1 page) in which you describe how you would introduce and approach this change with your students

Instructions

In this assignment, you will complete a small piece of research-on your own classroom behaviors. You will identify a management behavior that you use and determine how you want to change it-whether you want to increase or decrease the behavior. All good researchers determine "up front" how they will measure the impact of the intervention, and you will also do that. Then, you will implement your action plan for changing the behavior and you will document the impact that it has on your classroom's climate using the Mini-Intervention 1 template in Resources.

You should include:

1. A detailed description of your current classroom management techniques. Give examples of how you have used the following practices. You may choose to focus only on the three or four that you most commonly use.

1. Purposeful action (including consistency and follow-through).
2. Positive recognition.
3. Clarifying statements, directions, and mantras.
4. Expectation cues.
5. Debriefing.
6. Written expectations.
7. Personal recognition or praise.
8. Warnings.
9. Requests.
10. Negative recognitions.
11. Irrational or negative actions.
12. Threats and put-downs.
13. Assessing behavior.

2. Reflect on one of the classroom management practices above that you would like to increase or decrease. Describe what effect you hope to see from this change.

3. Propose an immediate implementation plan. Specifically, describe how you will make this change in your own management behavior.

4. Describe how you will measure the change that you see in the classroom climate, based on the change that you make. In other words, how will you know that your change is having an effect? What data will you collect?

5. Develop a short script (1 page) in which you tell how you would introduce and approach this change with your students. How will you explain what you are trying to change?