Welcome to my classroom management portfolio section of this website. This section is dedicated to my philosophies on classroom management. These philosophies will be described throughout projects from Education 305: Strategies for Classroom management. This course provides Maryville College students with knowledge and skills to make instructional modifications and management strategies. This class teaches the strategies necessary for maintaining a safe learning environment for all. The following projects were required in this course and are described below. Each project will take you to a new page, but you can easily navigate back to this page by clicking the links at the top and bottom of each page. I have tried to upload most of the documents directly to this site. If those are difficult to read the documents can also be downloaded. Thank you for visiting this section of my educational portfolio.
Project 1: Management Theorist Report This page is designed to showcase the classroom management work of the great theorist Jacob Kounin. This is a report on one management theorist that was assigned to me for a class project and presentation. My peers also presented information on different theorists which allowed me to learn an overview of several educational theorists in a short amount of time. Jacob Kounin believed that if lessons were planned well with activities that involved all students there would not be time for behavior to occur. Please use the link below to learn more about Jacob Kounin.
Project 2: Grade-level curriculum plan This project was a team effort that reflected the real-life scenario of having to collaborate with a team of teachers to pan for the year. This plan required us to lay our the standards that would be covered, plan for a thematic week, and identify assessment strategies. My team and I were assigned 6th grade and we each focused on one subject. Please follow the link below to see my team's plan and my math lesson plans for our thematic unit on Technology.
Project 3: Classroom diagram & rationale This assignment allowed me to explore how I would want my future classroom to be set up and the reasons for that. I completed this assignment while working on project 2, so I continued with a 6th grade classroom for my design. I focused on have tables instead of individual desks to promote a community type environment that allows the students to work together to achieve a common goal. You will find a diagram and an explanation for it by clicking the link below.
Project 4: Management Philosophy This project allowed me to continue exploring my beliefs about my classroom management philosophy that I began to uncover by completing project 3. I do believe in working together as a community and encouraging exploration of new ideas. This is the beginning of my management philosophy, but I am sure that it will continue to morph and change as I continue to learn and grow as a teacher.
Project 5: Rules/expectations/procedures This project allowed me to plan out some specifics on my management philosophy. I do believe in the importance of having positive expectations to work towards. This matches my classroom diagram and believes about management philosophy. This was a short assignment, but it did allow me to think more directly about the rules, expectations, and procedures that I will more than likely be implementing in my future classroom.
Project 6: Sponge Activity The final assignment in this class was to create or find a sponge activity. A sponge activity is a short academic activity that can be used to 'soak up' extra time like a sponge. These activities would be used in times when there are a couple of extra minutes throughout the day that do not allow for materials to be pulled out to begin a whole entire lesson. Times to use sponge activities would be waiting for a scheduled fire drill, waiting on a guest speaker to arrive, or any other moments were there is time to kill. This is definitely a management strategy because without it a class can become loud and out of control very quickly. The page below describes the activity that I used.