My Quality Classroom Goal: Creating A Quality Classroom

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My Quality Classroom Goal is to focus on the three conditions of quality work. I saw these three conditions as the common thread running through all of lessons of this course. The conditions were a great anchor for me throughout the course. I will remember these conditions for many years to come. The first condition of the quality classroom is creating a quality workplace. Creating a quality workplace begins with adopting a lead-management mindset. Boss-management is coercive, reactive, and punitive. The boss-manager tells the employee, “Do this or else!” Extrinsic motivation is the foundation of this management style. I have come to understand this style of management has no place in the classroom. A lead-manager strives to forge …show more content…

I can attest, as I’m sure most of us can, to the ineffectiveness of rote memory. Each year I share a story with my students about a class I took in college. It was called The Geography of Africa. I took this class my freshmen year. Typical of freshmen classes in college, it was a gigantic lecture hall filled with a few hundred students. I would go to every class. I would write down everything the professor said verbatim. To study for tests, I would re-write all of my notes word for word. Pages of them. I would then copy my notes onto a single piece of paper, omitting less important information. Finally I would copy all the information from that page onto a single notecard, again omitting less important information or information I had committed to memory. On the day of the test, when most students were frantically cramming for the test, I walked in to the lecture hall with nothing more than a #2 pencil. I got an A in that course. But that is not the moral of the story. If you asked me today, no matter how general, about the geography of Africa, I wouldn’t be able to answer. I remember nothing! The moral of this story is this: Use it or lose it. There was nothing experiential about the class. There was no occasion for my use of the knowledge; therefore, I forgot it. As stated in this course material, students will only retain that information which they feel will be of use to …show more content…

I have written a introduction letter that explains the purpose of portfolios as well as the requirements. I will send this letter home with my students the first week of class. I have designed pre and post-tests for reading and writing. We will use these assessments to measure student growth. These assessments will be part of the student portfolio. I also wrote a list of reading and writing activities for the students to choose from during independent work time. My plan is to reserve each Friday for independent work time. In the beginning of the year I will teach the students my expectations for behavior on Fridays. In the beginning of the year, I will use a teacher-managed approach with the intent of transitioning to student-managed time. On these days students will conduct reading and writing activities of their own choosing. They will self-evaluate their work and record in on a skills tracking form, the same form they used to record their pre-test scores. I will also conduct one-on-one conferences with students during independent work time. The first few weeks of school I will meet with each student to review their goals and their choice of activities. After that, I will let the students sigh up for conferences. As a part of their portfolio students will have to include evidence of self-reflection as well. At the end of the semester, I will sit down with each student and

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