C4T Assignment #3

Struggles

In Mrs. Becky Goerend's blog, Live the Conversation, she shares experiences that she had in her fifth grade classroom near the end of the school year. They were moving on to middle school and were having difficulty staying focused. Her students were more interested in socializing rather than learning. In her blog post, Struggles, she explains how each teacher has different ways with dealing with this problem. She is searching for a way to have her students monitor themselves instead of her being a broken record. She started an experiment with her students in an attempt to turn the responsibility over to them. She states that students at this age are aware of what appropriate behaviors are expected in a classroom and should be able to self monitor themselves.

Mrs. Goerend,
I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I like how you plan to make your students responsible for their actions. Fifth graders are old enough to understand what is expected of them in the classroom. It was hard for me to focus when I was a younger student when everyone around me was socializing. I enjoyed reading your success in your "Turning it over to them - Success in the making!" post. I hope that you continue to find new ways to make learning more successful in your classroom.

Turning it over to them - Success in the making!

In her post, Turning it over to them - Success in the making!, Mrs. Goerend discusses the steps she has taken to try to fix the problems she is having in her classroom. After 2 weeks of hard work, her class is already on the road to improvement. Finding the main problems in her classroom helped her create a plan. Her students were having trouble with staying on task, voice level and treating each other with care and respect. After she identified the problems, she made a rubric, located below, for her class to follow.

Then she identified the times of the day when these problems were the worst. Two students were chosen each day to monitor the class during those times. After the class, the students would decide on a score they would give the class. For the first four days, she averaged the data and showed the class how their behavior was below fifty percent. Their level after the next four days had increased by four percent. Success was starting to show for Mrs. Goerend's fifth grade class.

Hey Ms. Becky Goerend,

My name is Haley Torries and I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. All of the struggles that occurred in your classroom happens in most classrooms. The initiative you took to fix the problems in your classroom is amazing. This project turned out to be very effective for your class. I enjoyed learning from your progress in this post.