Classroom Management: Procedures

There are some specific norms I would insist on. Students should be prepared by the time the bell rings, though in an ideal world the school wouldn't have bells at all. To that end, I would start class with a warm-up exercise related to the previous day's material or a brainteaser, and have the day's agenda easily visible on the board, with a copy of the year's agendas-so-far kept in a binder in the room. The day's lesson would begin with a question of the day or week to guide student inquiry, using the essential/unit/entry-point framework suggested by Wiggins & McTighe (2000).

I would also like to have a prearranged signal that lets students know that "the teacher has something to say, listen up!" such as a rainstick or an "attention spot" where I (or someone else) could stand. My current method of "whistling" through my hands (it works on the same principle as an ocarina), then counting to 10 silently on my fingers as I hold up my hands, has worked so far but I don't consider it ideal. Some method would be necessary to facilitate the flow of the class on those occasions when I need to interrupt an activity to bring the class back together or make a clarification.

The whiteboard would be available to all students for working out problems, offering explanations, and engaging in mathematical dialogues with each other, since mathematical notation is notoriously difficult to speak well, and a diagram can indicate in seconds what minutes of speech cannot. Students would not even need especial permission to go to the board and explain something, and I would encourage them to do so on a regular basis.

As I have never been a fan of excessive homework--I have unhappy memories of slogging through 30 integrals late at night--I am considering giving one homework assignment a week designed to take 15-20 minutes a day over the entire week. Having been a student, I suspect many would tend to procrastinate. Discussing certain aspects of a few homework problems and checking for progress every class period might help mitigate that tendency while leaving responsibility in the students' hands. Homework would receive "two" grades: completion or evidence of an attempt would count for half, and correctness woudl count for the other half. I have seen students give up on problems they are not sure how to do. I prefer to see evidence of an attempt, which is where learning happens, and to give credit for it.

At the end of class, we would review the key concepts and how they tie in to the overarching "essential" or "unit" questions (Wiggins & McTighe, 2000) as well as what the homework assignments are and their due dates. My fencing master in college said that, as a student, you should always spend a couple minutes thinking about what you learned at the end of class, or you have wasted your time and the instructor's. I have never forgotten his words, though I am less than consistent myself at putting them into practice, and I would like to help students get into that habit. Finally, the bell is a signal to the teacher, not to the students; I expect students to work until the end-of-class summary, and only to leave when dismissed.

I prefer to offer students some choice in their assignments where possible, which might be as simple as a "jigsaw" of different problems or opportunities for writing, artwork, or other nontraditional means of expressing mathematical understanding, especially for unit projects. Pretests would give me an indication of prior exposure to topics and allow me to tailor instruction toward the class' strengths and weaknesses. I also hope to create materials on slightly unusual topics for students who perform strongly on the pretest, though they would also spend a significant amount of time joining in the rest of the class' explorations. Students would work toward end-of-semester portfolios to showcase their learning over the course of the class.

Grading is an issue that still worries me. I prefer to give comments rather than grades, but it is unlikely that I will be able to jettison grades entirely. As a starting-point, I might have homework/quizzes count for 40%, projects (mostly in groups) count for 30%, and tests (mostly individual) count for 30%. Rubrics for grading will probably have to wait until I have a better idea of the range of possible responses in the particular topics that I teach, as I've found that students wander into misconceptions I couldn't have conceived myself. My feelings are ambiguous about "fudge factors" or "participation points": on one hand, it is good to have them explicitly stated so their premises can be examined, but on the other, differing cultural norms or communicative styles may render "participation" a matter of interpretation.

Copyright © 2002 Yoon Ha Lee <requiescat@cityofveils.com>
Last updated on 20 May 2002