classroom management

Classroom management
Jessie uses both reward and consequence systems for management of her kindergarten class. She does this because she wants the emphasis to be on the positives – both in her style and in her reinforcements. But, she also feels that kindergarten is a great time to start teaching kids to take responsibility for their actions. Her consequence system does not begin, though, until after the first few weeks of school. The reward system involves adding marbles to a jar when students exhibit desirable behavior and offering a class party or special treat time when the jar becomes full. A big, bad (kidding, dramatization) color-card board illustrates the status of student behavior. Each student’s card color can change as he/she makes less-desirable choices. Students receive specific warnings when the color changes a couple times, and then they pay a visit to the principal’s office upon reaching the final color.

Classroom arrangement
Jessie employs a blend of tables and floor seating for her classroom set-up. She assigns seats at her rainbow carpet and at tables. Whether activities are on the floor or at tables, the students are in groups, because kindergarten is a time to learn to work in a group setting and gain social skills. Jessie feels that having students do their written work at tables instead of individual desks promotes cooperative learning, behavior modeling and language development. And of course, there is a lot of movement in kindergarten as well.