Focus on the Positive

After reviewing my fieldnotes over the last two weeks, I noted that there were many negative responses. I began to wonder if anything positive at all was happening in my classroom. I made a decision to intentionally look for positive behaviors vs. negative ones and keep a tally record. Last Tuesday I recorded my observations. During the course of the small group, I noticed 10 positive responses vs. 3 negative responses. A sample of some of the positive responses consisted of the following behaviors:

While I am reading aloud:
1 - Student responds with a rhyming word
2 - Student predicts what word comes next
3 - Student shows understanding of a new word by demonstrating using hand motions
4 - Student is chorally reading with me
5 - Students corrects another student who misreads a word
6 - Student anticipates what the text will be on the next page

While we are playing a word game:
4 students were able to verbalize what strategy was used to read a word on the game board

The negative behaviors were limited in comparison and consisted of 3 examples of off task behavior. All of these behaviors occurred during teacher modeling time when the student was not actively engaged.

This information tells me a couple of things. First, the students enjoy being together as a group. During the read aloud time, all students were gathered closely around me and looking intently at the book. They liked the fact that they were allowed to participate and they felt confident about sharing their knowledge. It also tells me that responses are generally more positive when students are actively engaged. I also noted that most of the positive responses occurred when students were involved in a structured activity. Center time seems to be difficult for these students who are not naturally self-starters. I believe I need to restructure my group time somewhat to reduce the amount of time spent in independent work each day. Next week, I will try to reduce center time to five minutes.

Finally, it should be noted that one student was missing from group. This is the student who is generally the most disruptive and has a tendancy to cause others to feel insecure. It may be that this student is mismatched for the type of activities that are happening in my classroom. I need to consider if it is in this student's best interest to continue to be a part of this group.