AKA The solution to all my classroom problems.
I have 21 classes per week. More specifically, I have 21 different classes per week. That’s 696 students total, though with absences I average about 530 students a week.
Between the number of students and how this school runs (and how they want me to operate), I was facing the following problems:
- Discipline. These aren’t super academic students. I’m definitely not saying they are dumb, but in general, they don’t seem very interested in learning. They talk, they paint their nails, they’re on their phones, they do some kind of weaving thing that looks cool but comeonguyswe’reinclass. After the initial excitement of New White Girl Teacher, I was having a lot of trouble getting them to pay any attention.
- Attendance. I’m bad with faces. I was worried about remembering my students names and faces if I had a class of 30 students, much less 21 classes of 30 students. So taking attendance was a problem. I didn’t really want to spend the first few minutes of class reading from a list either, because I don’t know how to pronounce their names, and that sounds boring for them and for me.
- Grading. The English department wants me to give each student a speaking grade, from 1-7, by the midterm date (Dec. 27) and again for the final (Feb. 27). How the hell do I give an individual speaking grade to 700 students who I barely have a chance to get to know?
- Lesson planning. You might recall, every single lesson I teach this semester is related to numbers. Good lord that’s a lot of teaching numbers. I need ways to keep this interesting and bring in more (captivating) information than just numbers.
I tried a few different methods for attendance. The first week, this was taken care of easily because I asked them each to answer some questions about themselves and hand in their papers. The second week, I tried having them write their names out for me on a sheet of paper – took WAY too long. I tried having them come up and check off their own names on a list – total chaos. And none of this helped with discipline, grading, or the lessons themselves.
Enter the Best Idea Ever.
First thing in class, I ask them to tell me each of their numbers (they each have a number 1 to n, n being the total number of students in the class). Then, if they speak well, I write +1 next to their number (or +2 if they do awesome). If they talk, sleep, use their phones, or otherwise do things besides pay attention in class, they get a -1. Their points can stack, so I end up with something like this at the end up class:
Then I just take a picture of that when the period is over, and transfer the information to the class spreadsheet on my computer.
I’m so freaking pleased with this system! Here’s why it’s awesome:
- I have a consistent record of what happened for each student each day, via the pictures on my phone. (I save the pictures to a Photo Stream album with a comment for the class name, so they’re all in one place.)
- It plays right into the competitiveness of the students. They like getting points a lot! I even had one class get excited and start telling me things like “Teacher is beautiful!” or “I love teacher!” just to get more points 😀
- Attendance is taken care of by which numbers are on the board. Missing number = absent.
- Grading is taken care of by how many points the student has. It’s not a perfect system, and the final grades will have to be kind of relative to their classmates, but over weeks a pretty clear picture should develop of the students who participated well and the students who didn’t do much.
- Discipline is basically solved. Not to say that it’s not a problem, but when there are issues, I don’t have to do anything except ask a student’s number and write -1. If they are just bad students, that’s what they get and it’ll show over the weeks. If they just messed up but don’t want to have the -1, then have plenty of chances to redeem themselves with +1.
- It actually incorporates this crazy numbers-obsessed syllabus! We do a lot with pronunciation, so each class, they have a chance to say their number more accurately. So far I’ve been pretty flexible with this, but in the next couple weeks, I’ll give them a point immediately for improved pronuncation when they say their number.
Seriously, I should build a shrine to this idea with my next paycheck. (But not actually seriously because my paycheck barely includes rent-money and food-money, much less shrine-money.)