Comment on Nick's Post

Yo Nick - thanks for your comments. I'm glad you chose not to go over the already-charted territory of the eight comprehension strategies.

My CT also struggles with classroom management. I'd say that her biggest tool is a discipline board that has students' names on sticks. She moves the sticks up from green pouches on the bottom, to yellow ones, to orange, and finally to red. There are a couple problems with this being the focus of her classroom management. First, it is a punishment-focused system. Kids act well not to seek after rewards, but to avoid disciplinary actions. Second, it is inconsistent. Sometimes students can move down if the CT notices them behaving well, while other times their punishment is forgotten about. So, I'm not surprised that your CT's successful strategies both involve positive rewards.

I also really like the special buddy system - how clever! They understand that they could be picked with anyone else in the class; so, rather than competing with others, and having an incentive for them to do poorly, they want to see their classmates stay on task. I want to teach middle school, so as you hinted at, I'll need to modify that. But it's a great idea and something that could be beneficial in other grades as well.

Thanks for your ideas! - Dave