Maintaining contact with families

This is my response to a Randy Sprick video I viewed on maintaining contact with families. It was interesting and gave a lot of good advise.

Randy Sprick started the video by saying that some families are difficult, but the more effort we put in the better off we are going to be. He recommends doing the following things to initiate contact. Try to establish a relationship before the first day of school. Create an opportunity for face to face contact. If that is not possible make phone contacts as the second choice. You can find out from your colleagues who the toughest kids are and make contact with those families. Set up that the first contact as an introduction, so you are not making initial contact when there is a problem. Send out a letter that introduces you to the families. Another option is to send home a DVD that gives a walk through of your classroom and tell about yourself and your school and classroom goals and expectations. If you can’t make one for every student, make four copies, have students take them home to view them, then have them bring so you can send it out with other students.

You should create a plan for ongoing contact. Send home a letter that describes your management plan. Produce a newspaper or newsletter every other week. Use your class roster and rotate contacts. If it has been a couple months, contact the family to let them know how the student is going. Let the parents know that you are looking forward to have their child and working with them as a partner.

At the beginning of the school year of had a brief write up about myself with my email and phone number on it ready for the open house. There  I met many of the parents, got the best contact methods from them, and found out a little bit about their children. I also got more information about accommodations for that student, such as a student I have who has hearing aids needing to eat in the learning center rather than in the cafeteria. I also try to make phone calls home about students when they are doing well. In order to increase the amount of updates that parents get about their student’s progress, I also send home the child’s scores after their progress monitoring, so that the parents are able to see how they are doing.

Something that I would like to get better at in the my classroom is sending out a monthly or bi-monthly newsletter. This is a task that I could also engage my older students in helping me with. I feel like more positive feedback about their student would be helpful to the parents and help increase positive relationships with the school.

Shaping behavior

This is my response to a Randy Sprick video that I recently viewed on shaping behavior.

Randy Spick started the video by staying that you need to start with a firm belief that behavior of children can be changed. It is moldable and shapeable. A teacher needs to start with a sense of self-efficacy. They need to believe that they may not have found the tools yet, but will keep on trying to find the variables that can be changed to find something that will work with this group or individual student. Behavior management is the mechanism to get the students to responsible behavior, the mechanisms are the antecedent, behavior, and consequences. The antecedent is the condition for the behavior. The consequences are what happens after the behavior. Reinforcing stimulation as a consequence increases the behavior.

To manage behavior you need to manipulate the variables to have a positive impact on behavior. You should promote positive behavior rather than squash negative behavior. In order to have good classroom management you should have smooth transitions, model respectful interactions, have interesting tasks, teach expectations to a level of mastery, implement pleasant consequences (grades, notes, reward structures, parent approval, and correct misbehavior) eliminate unpleasant consequences (ridicule for answering questions, make them a target for laugher). You should know that misbehavior happens for a reason. There is a function to the misbehavior. They may not be aware of what they are doing or seeking attention. In conclusion he said that there is no management technique that is guaranteed to work. The more tools you have to work with, the better off you are going to be.

This year we have worked really hard in my room to implement good behavior management strategies. The student’s have been taught the expectations, have a high amount of structure, know the routine for transitions, and are have pleasant consequences in place for positive behavior. We often change up the pleasant consequences in order to keep the groups motivated to do their best. When there is misbehavior, it has usually been attention seeking, which has been taken care of by engaging the parent in the child’s learning and increasing the pleasant consequences of compliance.

Something that I need to work on is increasing the amount of tools for behavior management that I have. The more tools that I have to choose from, the better equipped I will be for when there is a high amount of misbehavior or when I have a difficult student. I can do this by reading more in the CHAMPS books about strategies or talking to my colleagues about what has been effective in their classrooms. As the student’s case worker, I also need to remind the teachers that I work with who have my behavior students in their classrooms that we all need to have a high amount of self-efficacy. We have never tried everything, and need to continue to try to find what will work for the more difficult students as the year goes on.