More on behaviour managment

Commuters were offered an alternative assignment to do in lue of missing the Practicum meeting on Wed the 21st. The assignment was to find 2 more articles on behaviour management and offer a review on them. So here you have em'.

http://www.honorlevel.com/x46.xml
This article listed some techniques that Don't work, and was very hilarious to read. Most of them were pretty obvious things like :

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  using degrading, humiliating, insulting, and embarrassing put-downs


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  using physical force

Those just made me laugh, but there were some that seem equally obvious but are maybe harder to avoid. It is really important never to be sarcastic. We are so used to interacting with each other, as adults, that way that it is hard to break away from it. Kids really don't get it though. Another one that I am embarrassed to admit to finding helpful is don't hold a grudge. I have had students really make me mad and it isn't easy to just move past it immediately. However, it is imperative to let a student know that yeah they were in trouble a few minutes ago, but now its over and they can trust you to treat them with joy and compassion again. Without that ability to reincorporate a student back into the classroom activities after a behaviour incident you doom them cycle of issues that can go on longer than either of you would like.

The second source I used was a book by Lavay, French, and Henderson called Behaviour Management in Physical Activity Settings.

This book was written for PE teachers, and folks like us who work in community organizations. Though I obviously didn't read the whole book, I did read the introduction. The gist of the story was that physical activity in and of itself is crucial for learning of any kind. If you have your kids outside in a distracting setting try not to fight it anymore than necessary. Let them run and explore. This is especially pertinent for us. The whole reason that we are here doing what we are doing is to get kids excited about exploring nature. So then, if you take them into the animal barn and they want to run all over and see and touch everything then by all means let them! That's great. One really helpful tip that this book offered was to give students safety information BEFORE taking them into a distracting or exciting setting, so that you don't have to try to contain their excitement to bark rules at them when they are ready to explore.