Time Travel Tuesday Vol 1
It has been a while since I have done a blog post celebrating the things I have done in and outside of school. I have just completed my final placement, due to my dedication to the school and ensuring I did my very best I focused solely on school work. Therefore, I am going to be blogging every Tuesday and Thursday to share some of the things I have done throughout placement.
Today will be the first-time travel Tuesday where I talk about something I did on placement that I enjoyed, found useful or learnt from. My first topic of choice is behaviour management, and I will be focusing it during carpet time whole class input.
A little background to my placement, it was in a small village school where the children are taught in mixed year group classes. I was in Year 1/2, due to Year 2 being a small year group they sat on chairs around the carpet and Year 1 being a bigger year group sat on the carpet.
Behaviour management throughout all my placements has been one of my strongest areas of teaching. However, as my teaching timetable increased I noticed that I was spending most of my time during inputs talking to children about behaviour on the carpet. I used the school’s behaviour management techniques and a lot of strategies I learnt from a behaviour management course I went on. But still I was spending more time than I wanted addressing misbehaviour on the carpet.
The children did not have carpet places which meant that they would sit next to children that might distract them or they would be facing the wrong way. They would even all fit very close to their feet then push each other out of the way to see or hear. I then looked back at what I had seen other teachers do, such as having carpet places using a rug or sitting spots. So, I decided to introduce sitting spots that could be moved but the majority of the time they remained in the same place.
The first day the spots were introduced the children were excited and it took them a while to settle down, but as soon as they did I noticed there was less wriggling, unwanted talking and complaining they couldn’t see. The spots also had advantages that I didn’t first suspect, It meant the children could easily talk in partners and when it came to transitions and checking everyone was ready I was able to say which line is showing me they are ready and the children would check their line was sitting nicely and ready to learn. I liked using this as the children were able to check on others behaviour and less time spent on me addressing it. It meant I could spend more time teaching and ensuring the children progressed.
Overall, I am very glad I introduced the sitting spots and I have learnt how to use them effectively and can’t wait till I can use a similar thing within my own classroom in September.
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