Teacher Created Tips

Date: 14 April 2009
Description: Finds helpful teaching resources, tips for classroom management, teaching techniques, lesson plan ideas, and more.
Topic: Need Your Students Quiet and On-Task?
Discussion: The post discussed a strategy for teachers to assign secret students who will monitor who is on-task.

I thought the idea was a great one, but considering the level of management I have in the classroom it would not be ideal. Sadly, I deal with taking the reigns from a more experienced teacher who specifically asked for the type of students I have. Also, many of them do not care for each other, they would be deeply upset if a particular student wrote his or her name down, and some of them cannot keep a secret. Thus, once again, the idea is beautiful and would be great if I could have implemented it from the very beginning. However, I believe it is far too late for me to even begin a task such as this one. I have tried it, and there was little succes. Additionally, some of the students, particularly the ones this is geared to, are not responsive to things like this. They prefer to continue doing what they have done.
Fortunately, this is an idea that I can use next year in my classroom with students that I will start the school year with from the very beginning.