Day 5-Classroom management-Motivation

Must have classroom arrangement and meaning business first! You can not rely on motivation if you have no control over your class to begin with. You have to have control and then use motivation to encourage responsibility

Build cooperation
· Teachers need cooperation from students

Rules that work:
o Show up on time
o Walk as they enter the classroom
o Bring materials
o Be in their seats when the bell rings
o Be working when the bell rings

· Cooperation is voluntary-Why should I?
Creating motivation
· Incentive system must accomplish multiple objectives simultaneously, be cheap, represent a reduction of the teacher’s workload

Time allowance
· Students tend to waste time
· Students can’t learn to manage time until they have time to manage
· We have no intention of losing learning time as the price of supplying the students with incentives
· We are supplying time as an incentive in order to increase instructional time

Regaining time loss through PAT:
· An allowance of time (say 3 minutes per day)
· Teacher is giver of PAT (time, structure, bonus) and timekeeper
· Student choice (as a class) is to squander, be selfish or save and share
Nuts and bolts:
· Basic allowance (3 minutes a day per day so the week equals 15 minutes for a standard week)
· Bonus PAT:
o Automatic (if every kid is meeting your expectations-be in seat when bell rings, be quiet first 5 minutes of class, have materials, they get an extra minute for each for an opportunity for another 3 minutes per day)
o Hurry-up (for transitions-I expect that this should take 2 minutes, if you take less time than that, I will give you the extra time as PAT)
o Helping (for erasing board, picking up trash
o PAT contest (how can we get as many minutes as 1st hour??) set-up a goal (keep class all in French for 20 minutes and you’ll get an extra minute of PAT)
o Layering (kids can “earn” parts of your curriculum like movies)
o Time loss (when students take longer than allotted for an activity, if they are still talking when you reach zero on your hand gesture, when a student wants to tell a story. Kids don’t lose PAT time, they use PAT time)
· Spending PAT: Do activities you would do anyway (games, videos, reading time)
o Bingo
o Basketball
o Double diamond baseball-baseball with both teams playing at the same time
o Hollywood squares
o Concentration
o Cut throat-4 different boards, put up a picture that represents a story (1000 for first done, 900 for second, 800 for third…etc. Every mistake costs them 50 points and the students point out the mistakes)
o Around the world
o Musical chairs
o Give them candy or stickers for winning the game, not for good behavior

· Need a stopwatch

· Ways to destroy your system
o Take time off randomly for various offenses
o Change the rules to your advantage
o Use time to manage a behavior that you could have managed with your body
o Use PAT for something like a quiz: announce a quiz a week in advance and then “run out of time” for the quiz on Friday because it’s PAT time. This idea is something that proves to the kids that they are truly in charge of their PAT and that you will not mess with the time that they have earned.
o Only use PAT when stopping behavior doesn’t work
o Neglect to make PAT a priority
o Start with a certain amount of time and deduct for each offense-this is a punishment instead of a reward
o Fail to structure enjoyable PAT activities
· Beware of PAT abuse:
o When time loss becomes excessive, students become resentful and cooperation ceases.
o Give time in minutes and take off in seconds

My question is: how do you manage crazy behaviors during PAT? Do the kids automatically behave because it has become the norm in the classroom?