Finding focus

I've been watching a series that I've borrowed from the library called "The Effective Teacher", featuring a talk given by Dr. Harry Wong. He gives pointers on how to manage the classroom (which is the most important skill a teacher can learn, according to him) and encourages his audience to observe what works for other teachers and then steal their ideas. One tack he takes is to make sure the students have something to do right when they get into the classroom, such as a daily assignment that is written on the same part of the chalkboard every day. Giving children something to do the minute they get to class every morning forces them to organize their minds and their behaviour, reducing the amount of "rounding up" the teacher has to do in the morning. It also means that the teacher doesn't have to waste time by doing a roll call; he or she can see who's away almost right away, and doesn't have to disrupt the class or waste time.

I noticed this week that this procedure of giving students something to work on right away worked beautifully for a child in the class I'm working with who has ADHD. Mrs. P asked that I read with that child when he gets into class and while the morning rituals played themselves out because she noticed that giving him something to do first thing makes him calmer the rest of the day. The fact that he enjoys reading aloud increased the chance of success. So on Tuesday I did just that. He ended up reading 3 short books aloud to me, and the difference in his behaviour when he sat with the rest of the class afterwards was miraculous. I had witnessed an increase in aggression the week before from him, and Mrs. P said that his behaviour was certainly getting more challenging, and his mother was pretty eager to blame everyone else for not helping her child enough. Compared to last week, he had made a huge improvement in behaviour, and it's because he had something to first thing in the morning. It was such an interesting coincidence that I was involved with Mrs. P's idea for helping the ADHD kid focus and had heard about the same process on that video, and it worked! It's amazing the small steps one can take to make children co-operate. I don't feel as overwhelmed by the whole endeavour now as I did in the beginning, which is definitely encouraging.