Being a successful teacher requires good problem solving skills. The fact of having 32 students in grade one drove me crazy. The mission starts where problems arise. Kids talking, misbehaving, moving around, etc. Only few wanted to learn and listen. Being a second-year Fellow, I believe in my abilities and my skills to manage a chaotic classroom. After setting the rules and discussing them with my students on daily basis, the class became much better. However, this wasn’t enough to maintain a peaceful classroom for the whole session. High achievers started to finish their tasks and telltale. Low achievers slept or chatted. Chaos was everywhere while some truly focused on the activities given. My creativity and productivity fell into hands.
I needed to find a way to solve my problem, so I invented what so called an “Activity basket” and “collector basket”. The procedure was the following: every time a student finishes his task, he checks whether the activity basket is free. If yes, the student move silently and choose either an activity-sheet or a white paper. Meanwhile, his peers complete their work. When he’s done with the activity-sheet, the student must place it in the collector basket. My role is to collect the sheets from this basket every Friday. Points will be given to those who followed the procedure without causing any mess in the classroom. At the end of the semester, a reward is granted to the students who deserve it depending on the number of points they obtained. This way, I was able to ensure quality time and a well-managed classroom within a given framework.
