Hello! Welcome to my blog! I’m new to this sort of thing, so bear with me. If you just so happened to stumble upon my blog because you like reading about research to practice AND Millersville University students, you came to the right place. If you’re here because you’re Dr. Powers or Prof. Tatiana, hello! I promise this won’t bore you and it won’t be as pointless as the narratives before a recipe on a cooking blog can be. Get ready and buckle up, because my first two days in the field have already been a ride.
Now, I have to tell you, it hasn’t been bad. I feel like what I said before might have implied that things have been bad. They aren’t. I’ve loved getting to know the students and seeing how diverse the classroom is. Both times I have been in the classrooms I have laughed so much because 4 and 5-year-olds are hilarious. They don’t realize it, but they are and it warms my heart.
Right off the bat, I started observing the first child that walked through the door. I figured I would have the most time with them and I would be able to write down a lot of observations and if I felt like I needed to switch students, I would. It turns out that I didn’t need to switch students because the one I have been observing has given me a lot of information. The first day I was in the classroom, I just wrote down everything this child did. I wrote down how she would “pick up an orange marker with her right hand” to “she did not eat all of her food, but still complained that she was hungry”. I just decided that writing down everything she did was going to give me a ton of vital information. Now, do I feel like I should have written down EVERYTHING? Looking back at things? No. I think I could have observed the way the classroom was set up a bit more, but then I reminded myself that I’m going to be in this classroom until the end of the semester! No sweat. I do think I learned about the child I’m observing A LOT, though. I learned some of her mannerisms and that she is, in fact, right-handed. She also LOVES animals and thinks they are all “SO cute”. She is also a girl after my own heart in the fact that she has a bit of an attitude. She knows what she wants and when she wants it (which is cute now, hopefully, she can grow and not take advantage of it when she is older). All in all, she is great to observe because she is very advanced. She has been in the program longer than anyone else and knows the rules (and how to bend them).
The second day in the field I noticed more of how the classroom itself works. This was a two-hour delay, so things were shortened, but the routine seems to be about the same. The children come in, sign their name and hang it up, answer the question of the day, and then decided the hardest decision of their life: which center they want to start off at. I mean, it determines your mood of the whole day. Are there any spots left? Is this center going to make me happy? Are my friends at any centers? It’s vital information they take in as soon as they step in the door.
With noticing how the routine of the classroom is, I also started developing some questions; some about the class itself, some about teaching methods, and some about the child I’ve been observing. I wrote down a lot in 5 minutes, just off the top of my head that related even in the slightest to what I’ve been taking in, but here are my best ones: What are classroom management skills? How can you help a child instead of yelling at them? How do you redirect your children so they are on task? How can you give a child more cognitively demanding tasks during centers? How can you keep preschoolers organized? How can you make lunchtime less chaotic? How can you convince children you have eyes on the back of your head? That last one was just a joke, but I’m pretty sure all children think adults have eyes on the back of their head. I guess I could word it to be, “How can you keep track of all of your students when you have to focus on one child alone or feeding children at lunchtime?”
From these questions, I decided to research more on, “What are classroom management skills?” Some parts of the day seemed well organized while other parts of the day seemed really overwhelming and chaotic for the children. I noticed some classroom management skills in place, like singing along to the 5-minute-warning cleanup song, but when I looked at the children, they were mindlessly singing along while playing in their centers (the correct thing to do would be “stop, look, and listen”).
The first step of my research was to break it down into search terms. It seemed like I was just throwing search terms around like it was pasta, but nothing was sticking to the wall. Then, I broke down this question into three terms: classroom management, strategies, preschool. Bingo. Bango. Bongo. Now we’re cooking with gas. Anyway, these were the golden terms. They lead me to the article, “Blending Effective Behavior Management and Literacy Strategies for Preschoolers Exhibiting Negative Behavior”.
This article was about how early childhood educators can use behavior management strategies with their kids that know how to push buttons, even the buttons you didn’t know you had on your shirt. It also talked about the importance of blending those behavior management strategies with literacy skills (which I hadn’t even thought of) because sometimes children come in with predetermined behaviors that they have observed from the people who they are surrounded by. Teaching behavior skills that will benefit them is important because they can use those skills as they grow older and know how to correctly express how they are feeling, rather than bottling it in and exploding at an inappropriate time. The article mentioned that if their negative behavior is impeding upon their academic learning, the teacher, “needs to purposefully design opportunities and activities to guide the students’ development of appropriate social behavior while finding ways to creatively infuse literacy into them to maximize students’ learning of emergent literacy skills” (Smith, 2009). The teacher is the one who is modeling correct behavior and teaching them academic and social skills, so if there are behavior issues, instead of yelling at their children, they should take the time to integrate how to redirect and learn how to behave in a classroom setting. To do this, it gave different strategies teachers can use, like using literacy as a reinforcement. One example they gave was that a child liked to go to the library center, but if another child had a book they wanted, they would get violent. The teacher then decided to use literacy as a reward and if this child kept their hands to their self and used kind words, they were allowed to “choose a book that will be read to the entire class after lunch” (Smith, 2009). This shows the child that when they’re nice to their peers, good outcomes can come of it. Another example given was for anger management strategies. The teacher would show students a piece of art and then would tell a story based on that piece of art. This story could contain coping mechanisms or how to deal with certain issues that may be a pressing matter within the classroom. This not only integrates literacy, but it is an exciting way for the children to learn how to deal with their emotions in a healthy way.
Overall, this article was very insightful and gave tips that I will keep in my teacher toolbox. I think that it is important to realize that kids have feelings and can get excited or angry, but not know how to express that in the proper way. Sometimes, we can mistake a child hitting another person for being angry, when they may have just gotten really excited and needed to tell another person but didn’t know how to. I think that if we can teach children at an early start about how to express their emotions instead of bottling them up, they will become better members of society.
Cheers,
Hannah Kateusz
Smith, J. (2009). Blending Effective Behavior Management and Literacy Strategies for Preschoolers Exhibiting Negative Behavior. Early Childhood Education Journal, pp.147-151.
