Chapter 5: The Cirriculum

                In chapter five, it talks a lot about planning and the reasons of its significance.  The main reasons behind planning is to ensure curriculum coherence, assure that the curriculum is impactful and appropriate to the students, maximize classroom control by capitalizing on instructional time, and to ensure program continuation. 

                Planning requires attention to many factors.  The biggest factor that must be planned around are the standards of your discipline.  From the standards, you build the rest of your curriculum and unit.  Within the units are lesson plan that include objectives.  These objectives are what will be addressing the standards that must be met.  Then you have to start to think about how the lesson plan are going to focus on the objectives and, eventually, assess the objectives. 

                By having a detailed curriculum, the understanding of what you must do to maximize the efficiency of your classroom.  This is where the aspects of classroom control, the flow of activites, and an increase of instructional time will occur.

                Prior to reading this part of the chapter, I understood certain aspects of planning curriculum and creating lesson plans, but after the reading, my ideas and understandings were reaffirmed.  Having control of your classroom involves having a great grasp on what activities you are going to be doing and when, this all comes from efficient planning. This is also the key to the success of your students’ learning. 

Chapter 4c: The Learning Environment: Planning and Managing the Classroom

               Toward the end of chapter four, it includes real-life examples of teaching behaviors to be cautious from.  This reminded of a not-to-do list for teachers.  To be honest, some of these case studies were kind of entertaining because of how unbelievable they were to me.  With some of them, I could relate to what was being said because teachers I had growing up would act in the same manner. 

                With these case studies, it would be great for a group of teachers to go around and discuss about each of them individually by looking at what the teacher is doing wrong, what the teacher could have done different, and in what manner is the best way to bring about this difference.  These discussions would bring about a lot of insight to the teachers on how to handle themselves in the classroom.

                What you might also find during these discussions is that not all teachers are going to have the same viewpoint when it comes to how to model effective behavior in the classroom.  For example, in the portion of text that talks about lowered marks, I believe an argument could be made for this process accurately reflecting the students’ abilities.  This would be an interesting conversation to be a part of as I believe the definition of academic abilities and progress can be a loose term.

                These case studies would be something I wouldn’t mind keeping in my future classroom as a personal reference to myself.  This way I can also review what I am doing and compare it to situations of what I am not supposed to be doing. 

Chapter 4: The Learning Environment: Planning and Managing the Classroom

        In chapter four, it emphasizes getting to know your students as people.  I completely agree with this.  I think the most effective way for a teacher to connect with their students is by simply getting to know them.  From this connection, a great working relationship can develop between the teacher and their students.  I believe this occurs because when the teacher attempts to get to know the students, the students feel like they are less of just someone sitting in a desk and more of a person.  The individual attention that the teacher gives when trying to get to know the students also shows that they care by taking interest. 

        The book advises a few ways to accomplish this. 

1.       Quickly learn and use student names

2.       Classroom sharing during the first week

3.       One-on-one conferences with students

These are just a few ways that the book suggests to make your students feel more comfortable and begin to develop a strong relationship with.  I really like the first one because right away the students will feel as if their own identity is starting to be established in the classroom.  The second piece of advice is great because not only will the teacher get to know the student more in depth, but the other students will also get to know their peers.  One-on-one conferences with students really top it off because here the student and teacher can create a deeper connection, and the teacher can simply focus all of their attention on one student, instead of multiple. 

Overall, if you want to create a communal feeling within your classroom where people know and can work well with anyone else, these are some steps to take to create this environment.