Teacher Inquiry

My main focus for this term has been on establishing good classroom management and routines, as well as building good relationships with my students.

This has been particularly important, especially during COVID times. Students are slowly coming back to school, some for their first time in a school environment, and some students have found this change challenging.

In order to reinforce classroom management, Room 6 created a classroom treaty at the beginning of the year, created visual posters for classroom routines and used role playing. In my classroom I use the phrase “hands on top” where each student is expected to stop what they are doing and reply “that means stop” and put their hands on their heads. This was something that I picked up from my second year placement. I have found that the students have been responsive to it. I have found it especially great when teaching on ipads as the students need to put their hands on their head before stopping.  This means that they are unable to play on the ipads when I am giving them my instructions. However, while the students are responsive to this, I have learnt that it doesn’t work when giving longer instructions. My mentor teacher introduced to me “one two fold away” which tends to work better when giving longer instructions and the students are really responsive to this phrase.



















A behaviour management strategy I use in my classroom is  “high five” and the students are expected to put their hands up and stop and look at me before all of my fingers are down. I use it as a point system, whereby  all my fingers are down before the students stop to listen then it is a point to me. However, if the students manage to beat me then the class receives a point. This is going well inside my classroom. I have found that the students are motivated and engaged with this as they know that if they have more points than me at the end of term then they get a class reward. This system has also taught them how to be part of a team. A way that I engage students with their learning is having sticker charts as a way of using positive reinforcement. Once students have filled their sticker chart then they can get to choose one thing from the reward box.


This term we have been working on friendship, respect, teamwork and kindness. As a class we have had discussion on what these words mean, what it sounds like and looks like both inside and outside the classroom. This has also been put into practice inside the classroom as part of the learning through play in the afternoons and also during Flying Fives.







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