A Challenging Week

This week I really struggled with the behaviours in my class. I've put so much energy into making things fun, relevant, interesting etc that it really gets to me when my class won't listen, or boos at my activities. As I don't tolerate this sort of behaviour, I find I have to deal with all this rubbish before I can get to teaching and inspiring them. Of course, it's not the whole class, and generally, I don't think that they do it out of spite. There are just a number of children who don't think before they speak and can often appear quite rude and disrespectful.

Early in the week I had to call off a Circle Time because more than a quarter of the class were making a joke of it. Maybe I could understand it if the kids were 11 year olds, but these are 6 year olds! Feeling discouraged, I only did one more circle time that week and I included lollies and balloons in the lesson as an attempt to win over the kids who were starting to revolt! I also had them apologise to the class for having spoilt the previous circle time.

After explaining an art activity this week, one of my boys yelled out, "That's STUPID". I sent him to another class for the afternoon with a Maths worksheet instead. I hope he will think twice before insulting my lesson again! Later in the week a boy got frustrated with his wombat origami and yelled "This is so dumb!". Sticking to my new plan, he missed out on the rest of the activity, despite his repeated begs to join back in. Like I said earlier, I just have some very vocal students who let EVERYONE know if they don't like an activity.

On the positive side, most of my wombat lessons and activities were well-received by the class (see my previous blog for more details). They seem particularly excited about our new 'pet' wombat who they will get to take home for a night and write about his visit in his journal. The assessment tasks I set showed that most of them had learnt new facts about wombats during the week and could make the links between Jackie French's own experiences and the stories she wrote.

Next week I will be out of school for a couple of days, co-convening an Athletics Carnival, and on Friday we will have book week. Hopefully, that will give me a little time to recover from the tough week with my class, and renew my love for teaching them! Hopefully.