"From Chaos to Confidence" webinar

I did an online webinar called "From Chaos to Confidence" on a site I subscribe to - it was about effective classroom organisation.  It was run by Cassie Tabrizi, a former teacher in the US.

The main idea of the webinar was: "How the classroom environment is organised influences the behaviour in it." (Stronge, Tucker and Hindman, 2004).

It had great ideas about organising a classroom library (breaking books down into genres and having a simple coding system so children could shelve their own books), having a folder on the wall for each child for assessments and a turn in box for handing in work.

A great idea I got about behaviour management was to make a 10x10 grid and whenever a child does something outstanding, get them to write their name on one of the squares.  When the grid is full, draw out chips labelled with the coordinates of those squares and they will win prizes.  This has the feature of teaching graphing skills, too.

Another was to use whole-brain teaching.  I have been reading the whole-brain teaching book and would like to implement some of the strategies from this such as the 'Class?  Yes?' call and response.

Cassie pointed out that it is useful to have a scoreboard for smooth transitions etc but that it is important to keep the difference  in the positive and negative points within 3.

She had good advice for rewards that don't cost money - these were brain breaks, the chance to sit in the front of the class all day, a desk swap, a lunch date with the teacher and getting to use scented marker pens.

Takeaway:  I thought this seminar gave me some good ideas for positive rewards and I liked the central idea that the environment influences behaviour.