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Responsive Teaching and Classroom Management Plan

Funanya Uchemefuna

California State University Dominguez Hills

Professor Inman

3 May 2018

Introduction
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The key to being a culturally responsive teacher that can effectively ensure every student

has the opportunity to learn is by establishing a classroom management plan. This sort of plan

advocates for diversity in the classroom in order to foster a caring community and promote

restorative justice. Every teacher and pre-service teacher needs to establish a classroom

management plan to guarantee that every student is accommodated, treated equitably, and

respectfully within the classroom setting.

As a pre-service teacher and Teacher’s Aid I had the opportunity to observe and engage

with a 6th grade classroom from the LAUSD school district. During my fieldwork I observed

Mrs. Torres 6th grade class at Russell Elementary School. The population of this class is as

follows: there were a total of 28 students in the classroom with 11 being English learners, 2 with

LEPs, 6 struggling behaviorally, and 9 English only students working at grade level. Out of this

population of students I interacted with a disabled student, a student struggling emotionally, and

an English language learner with an ELD level of 5. The student with special needs will be

referred to as student A, the student struggling emotionally will be referred to as student B, and

the English language learner will be referred to as student C. Student A is an 11 year old hispanic

boy who struggles with understanding the curriculum being taught. He actively participates in

class discussion, but purposefully strays off topic and is persistently off task during independent

work time. Concepts are explained to him independently multiple times, but understanding of the

material is lacking during assessments. Student B is a 12 year old hispanic boy who struggles

with behavioral issues due to personal losses at home. His grades lowered tremendously between

his first and second semester of his 6th grade year due to a family loss. He suffers from high

bursts of uncontrolled anger and excitement. Student C is an 11 year old hispanic girl who

speaks Spanish fluently to peers, does not know how to write in Spanish, uses conversational
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English when speaking and writing to adults, and struggles with academic English when writing

and presenting orally. Observing these students has helped me figure out the classroom

environment I should have in order to better accommodate the needs of all my students.

The foundation of my management plan will be led mostly by engagement focus and a

little by reward-and-routine focus on Laura E. Pinto’s (2013) classroom management spectrum.

This will ensure that every student in my class is constantly stimulated by meaningful and

relevant learning. The continuous stimulation allows students to be engaged and devoted to every

classroom activity. These restorative strategies that keep the students engaged assures

misbehavior will not occur. Rewards and routines are in place to correct the misbehavior that

may occur, but will be enacted in such a way that students are responsible for their own reward

success. This method allows students to take responsibility in their own achievement and

understand the difference between positive and negative behaviors. My plan will be culturally

responsive by accommodating all students’ needs whether it be learning pace, language barriers,

disabilities, emotional struggles, or cultural practices. The routines, expectations, instructional

time, and equitable learning space are set up to assist in the achievement of all students.

Routines and Procedure

I will have a morning routine that consists of a daily housekeeping list giving instruction

of what each student should be doing to prepare for the start of the school day. I will provide an

adequate amount of time for the students to complete this organizing exercise before I fully

engage with the students. The procedure will resemble these steps: step one (Students will have

all homework placed at the corner of their desks), step two (Breakfast monitors will call team

numbers to collect their breakfast), step three (Students will read brain teaser presented on the
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board and try to decipher it through collaboration with partner) and step four (Students will

independently complete warm up or Daily Oral Language packet [D.O.L.] problems that are

labeled for that day of the week). This routine will expose students to taking individual

responsibility for their learning by giving them the opportunity to put themselves on task and

grow their social emotional development through partner collaboration.

Students will also gain continuous productivity through having an established

transitioning signal, which Farr (2010) stated would maximize classroom efficiency. I will gain

my class’s attention by ringing a bell to gain their attention during any activity. This routine will

be implemented at the onset. Establishing this at the beginning will allow the students to

internalize hearing the bell and they will immediately stop the task they are working on, turn

their attention to me with one hand in air, quietly wait for instructions for the next task, mentally

refocus their energy on the new task given, and jump into action on new task once bell is rung

again. This procedure leads to productive transitions between lessons and activities, while

establishing respect for authority by immediately halting their movement and refocusing their

attention. The signal is a way for me to gather the entire class’ focus without needing to raise my

voice and wait for silence. This transitioning signal is also culturally sensitive because it removes

the tension of me raising my voice, which might upset or shut down some students depending on

their home culture norms.

Another routine the students will follow to gain productive management will also develop

team cohesiveness by enhancing their teamwork, leadership and self-management skills. The

procedure for this movement routine will allow students the opportunity to gain team points

through managing time effectively, maintaining cleanliness in work space area, and efficiently

collaborating with all team members. Team leaders will be assigned per week to collect and pass
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out team papers, facilitate random desk checks, and overall make sure their team members

maintain clean areas. Points will be given to the teams that show growth in these aspects and at

the end of the week, the team with the most points will be rewarded with 15 minutes of

educational free time on Fridays. If computers/tablets are not assessable students will get to play

math board games, math card games, or teacher created trivia games for the 15 minutes time

period.

Expectations and Rules

Students will be given the opportunity to collaboratively come up with rules that reflect

respectful and caring behaviors. Students tend to follow rules when they have a voice in making

them. Teachers can build a bond with their students when the students feel that they are trusted.

In the beginning of the school year a form of retroactive rules will be introduced and a system

will be set up to establish more rules throughout the year (Pinto, 2013). Students will be given 5

general rules on the first day called L.E.A.R.N, which stand for Listen and follow instructions,

Enter and exit prepared, Always try your best, Respect yourself and others, and No excuses.

Students will follow these general expectations and progressively add on more rules that

personally fit the needs of the classroom setting. This method of rules gives students the basic

foundation for human decency, but allows them to interpret these rules how they feel is needed.

Rules that are not followed will be discussed with the class on how to improve it. Students will

be responsible for their learning by setting up their own atmosphere. The mistakes and

discoveries that will occur throughout this process will advance their critical thinking skills and

better adapt to real-life situations.


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Student Autonomy

I plan to build the student’s autonomy through establishing classroom jobs and “Readers

Challenge” goals. These strategies will give students the opportunity to exercise their

responsibility in decision making for their own learning and decipher the difference between

independent responsibilities and responsibilities that affect them as well as their community.

I will have a chart in place with a list of classroom jobs and allow the students I call from

a stack of cards to choose which job they would like to be in charge of. Students names will be

rotated out and not be allowed to pick the same job the next week to avoid student conflict

between favorable jobs and unfavorable jobs. This tactic will also alleviate the conflict of certain

students always being able to have first pick. Students will understand that each job no matter

how big, small, desirable, or undesirable plays a contribution in fostering a caring community.

These jobs will allow each student to participate and increase their voice within their classroom

community every week. Students will gain social emotional growth from being able to

experience the responsibility each job holds throughout the year and understand that community

collaboration and involvement is what fosters a caring and productive environment. The lesson

of this strategy is for students to realize that a community must work together in order to be

successful.

My second way of building students autonomy will have a readers challenge set up for

every month. These reading challenge will be a set goal of books each individual student should

have read before the month ends. These monthly goals will allow the students to take

responsibility for their learning by motivating themselves to keep up with their readings through

setting up personal mini goals that mark their progress or any strategy that the student feels will

help them reach the required goal. Readers Challenge will not a have a discipline system to keep
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them on track, but will have a reward system to encourage their motivation to learn. Each student

will be allowed to choose any book that is appropriate and pertains to their reading level. Each

book read will be followed up by a mini quiz to determine the students completion of the book.

The students who have reached or exceeded the goal requirement by the end of the month will

get to participate in an extracurricular activity of my choosing. Students who do not complete the

Readers Challenge goal by the end of the month will continue working on unfinished work or

review worksheets during the extracurricular activity time.

Use of Time

Students will gain rewards through collectively working as a class using Pinto’s (2013)

Celebrating Jar strategy. The students will take responsibility for the entire class’s behavior,

instead of individually. This strategy places responsibility on the students to correct each other’s

poor behavior and maintain class productivity. Students will play a significant role in managing

their classroom climate in order to build an efficient and caring community. This strategy will be

discussed in the beginning of the year for the students to understand that they are accepting

responsibility for their classroom community as a unit. When the entire class has gained all

marbles into the “reward” jar they will be able to collectively think of a reasonable reward to

either have or participate in. This strategy allows students to keep track of their own behavior,

stay on task and develop positive communication skills. Pinto (2013) believes that when students

are behaving appropriately they tend to use their time wisely, which I feel will result in

maximized learning time and reduced time wasted on correcting poor behavior. My students will

learn to correct their own behavior because they will learn that their actions do not only affect

themselves.
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My students will not be the only ones with responsibility for the classrooms time

management. I will prepare my lessons a week prior to me teaching it to maximize efficient

learning. The lesson will be planned out in regards to materials needed, number of copies

needed, and time span permitted. The materials and copies will already be made available for the

students before the start of the lesson. Julia G. Thompson’s (2002) strategy into developing

efficient time management of the lesson will consist of sequencing the lesson to accommodate to

the difference level of pace of 3 types of students. The lessons will be designed to accommodate

the students that finish quickly, finish in the time allotted, and those who take a longer amount of

time to understand the current concept (Thompson, 2002, p. 329). An example of sequencing a

lesson would be placing independent practice time at the end of the lesson and offering

enrichment activities that are pre-planned for the fast pace students, while the slower paced

students receive help from me on the current lesson. Another example of how I will manage the

lessons are by providing checklists for long lessons to allow students to see what needs to be

completed (Thompson, 2002, p.329). This type of lesson preparation will prevent student

misbehavior for not being continuously stimulated and increase optimal learning throughout the

school day.

Since my pre-planned lessons will consist of time blocks permitted for each instruction I

will set a time block specifically for transitioning, so as to not have my schedule too tightly

condensed, which will later lead to stress on having to rush through the lessons. The transitional

time between each lesson or activity will consist of review discussion on concepts we have

recently gone over. For instance, I would call out old vocabulary words and have the class

respond with the definition or vice versa. Another example would be stating a simple math

problem or times table problem and have them solve it in their head. This discussion will take
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place as the students are getting prepared for the next lesson. This time management method

allows for me to transition to the next topic with ease, while the students stay productive and

stimulated.

Accommodations

My targeted group of students will be seen in small groups based on academic needs,

English language levels, and learning disabilities. After I have concluded my Language Arts

lesson, all students will be instructed to work independently on grammar review worksheets or

the current writing assignment. The targeted group of students will be selected to gather in the

back of the classroom in a small group setting. Twice a week I will call a select few of EL

learners, students struggling academically, and students with an IEP to review and assess

understanding of past Language Arts concepts. The other two days of the week will be

designated for select EL learners to focus on vocabulary using “Relia” and sentence

structure/subject verb agreement. If students need extra support in any other subjects I will keep

fridays open to reinforce the concepts that were discussed during the week. Each small group

meeting will last 30 minutes during the Language Arts independent time block.

Individual instruction time for students with IEPs will consist of weekly interventions

through Multi Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) to monitor and assess the progress the child is

going through and check in on their mental and behavioral well-being. These population of

students will be seated closer to my desk at all times throughout the academic year. The

population of students struggling emotionally will also have weekly interventions through MTSS

to check behavioral progress and set goals for further progress. These students will be given

access to “cool off island” where stress toys will be laid out. The island will act as a safe space
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for these students to collect their thoughts or work independently until they feel they are ready to

join back into the classroom community. English language learners and students struggling

academically will be given the same MTSS weekly interventions. These students will also have

worksheets with picture visuals and lower reading level text to raise better concept

understanding.

Peer Interaction

Student expansion in peer relationships will provide an extra resource for them to better

understand concepts after I have used physical visuals (Ex: skittles being used to explain

measures of center on a data set) (Mrs. Torres, Personal Communication, 2018), oral

representations (Ex: using projector/board/poster to write down responses of concept being

taught as they take notes on worksheet), and audio representations (Ex: catchy song or video to

help students remember the concept being taught) to accommodate to an audience of diverse

learners.

Students will engage in activities that involve pairing with other students. This strategy

will enhance collaborative learning by ensuring each student is focused, better understands the

concept being taught, and quickly solves minor issues to reduce unmanageable problems

(Thompson, 2002, p. 208). I will select student pairs to dismiss unproductive partners and

increase optimal working partnerships. My selection process will consist of observing each

student’s weaknesses and strengths to find a partner that will balance and better suit their needs.

The students will be seated together and engage in a pre-planned structured activity. Students

will switch partners when the pair originally selected no longer provides a positive and

productive peer partnership (Thompson, 2002).


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Another way to ensure students have fully understood the concept is through student

teaching. During my lessons I will give students the opportunity to teach the class. Homework

from last class will be reviewed and students will have the chance to explain a problem of their

choosing to the class whether they understood it or not (Mrs. Torres, Personal Communication,

2018). This will allow students to correct each other’s errors when a mistake has been made and

see other ways of solving the same problem for further understanding of the concept. Students

will gain confidence in their learning and presenting skills from this method and I will be able to

assess the student’s understanding of the concept.

As student teaching helped the individual child, a rotation will help them work

collaboratively. Students will be placed in groups of 5 or 6 according to their reading level. Each

group will participate in a different activity that either teaches grammar skills through game

worksheets, the current week’s vocabulary through definition worksheets and a dictionary, peer-

editing of current writing assignment, reading comprehension and note taking, or reading

comprehension with teacher to go over syntax, context clues, vocabulary, and comprehension.

This will allow students to collaboratively work together in completing the worksheets given and

help each other in sounding out words, reading smoothly and promote a better understanding of

the material currently being worked on. The rotation also allows me to access my students

reading comprehension without disrupting other student’s productivity.

Fairness, Equity, and Respect

In my classroom I will promote fairness by making sure every student has participated at

least once throughout the week through use of talking sticks. Each popsicle stick will have a

student’s name on it and when a stick is pulled randomly and placed to the side that student will
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have to participate in the current discussion. Each student has the opportunity to pass once and

respond with no explanation once during the academic year, but once a student has used their

passes they must fully participate in the discussion the next time their stick is pulled. The sticks

will ensure that every students voice has been heard. Fairness is a concept similar to equity that

benefits all parties involved through accommodating to the needs of each individual.

Students should be given the resources they need to be successful. As a pre-service

teacher I believe that every student should be treated equitably in every way in order to increase

academic achievement regardless of a student’s cultural background, funds of knowledge, or

disability. I firmly believe that Elizabeth Bondy, Dorene D. Ross, Caitlin Gallingane and Elyse

Hambacher’s (2007) statement, “viewing a behavior as a manifestation of difference in culture

suggests one should teach alternative behaviors” (p. 328) is key in promoting a student-teacher

relationship that will benefit a students social, emotional, and academic well-being. I will ensure

equity is facilitated in my classroom by explaining the concept of equity to them and creating an

activity called “Character Counts”, so that they can understand the concept though experience.

The lesson will demonstrate equitable success through physical activity. Students will be placed

into groups of 4 and try to figure out how to reach a string that I have tied to two poles with the

help of stepping blocks. Students will have to figure out a way for their entire team to reach

success; by reaching the string at the same time. This activity will get students to think critically

and visually see that not everyone can reach success in the same manner. Students will gain

respect for their peers differences and understand everyone has their own struggles they must

overcome whether that be physically, mentally or academically. The lesson will conclude with

restorative justice practices of students respectively discussing how the activity equates to equity

by using key sentences and words from a discussion frame that implement respect for each
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other’s thoughts and opinions and appropriately display how to thoughtfully disagree. The

discussion frame will be used throughout the year to implement tolerance and cultural

competence. Pictures of the activity will be taken and placed in the classroom with the caption

“We Think Equitably!” next to the discussion frame poster labeled, “Accountable Talk”.

The equity activity will progress into students participating in Bonnie M. Davis’s (2012)

“Friday Final Five” activity, which allows them to acknowledge each other’s differences and

similarities. Students will have the opportunity to utilize their funds of knowledge and express

their cultural differences with this activity. Every friday a topic like music, sports, art, etc. will

be assigned and students will get to sign up to speak on that day and express their expertise on

said topic with props from home. This activity will take place the last 5 minutes of every friday

class.

Parent Communication and Involvement

Students will be sent home with a classroom newsletter each month for the parents to be

notified of their child’s school and classroom activities. The letter will consist of tips on active

roles parents can play in their children’s education, birthday wishes for student’s birthdays of the

current month, what their student will be learning for the month, the “Readers Challenge” for the

month, future events for the month that will need parent volunteers, and a tear off contact

information section. The information within the newsletter will be provided in English and native

language from the student’s home-life. This method of communication with the parents will

allow them to be aware of what their child is involved in during school hours.

The newsletters will consist of events like family day for the parents to be involved in.

Students will create a formal invitation to one of their family members to participate in Family
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day as a way to reach out to the student’s community (Davis, 2012). The event will consist of

family members coming to the classroom during a specific time during the day and telling stories

to the class, then reading to their child. This method of parent involvement will develop the

students reading skills and allows students to gain perspective and pride through exposure to

their own and other cultural backgrounds. Family Day can be set up more than once during the

school year to encourage parents to get involved and share their culture with the students.

Another event to gain parent involvement with their children’s school life is through

Career day events. Students will get to see their parents and other student’s parents speak about

their job position. This event will give students motivation to succeed in school and strive for a

higher education because of the role models they will be exposed to. Students will feel confident

that they can achieve greatness because they can relate to the parents that will be speaking about

their careers. These parents will most likely resemble the students culture whether it be

community wise, socio-economic wise, or racially. The students cultural connection with the

parents will allow them to see that they can be anything they set their minds too.

In order to stay connected to the students home life I will get in contact with every

student’s parent to introduce myself either in person or verbally through phone call. I will try to

schedule a phone call meeting or a meeting in person for a future date if they would like for a

progress check. The meeting will consist of praising their child’s best attributes, letting the

parent know where the child stands academically and behaviorally, and asking the parent for

advice in getting their child more engaged in class. This method will show parents that I care for

their child more than just academically and understand that their knowledge about their child is

deemed important. I will encourage working as a team with the parents/guardian to enhance their

child’s success.
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Another way for parents to get involved in their child’s school life is through requiring

my students to write down the agenda; homework and objective for the day. Parents will be able

to see what students have learned that day and know what they need to accomplish at home. A

parent or guardian signature will be required and checked daily to ensure parents are aware of

what their child is learning in class and homework is completed. This will ensure students stay

motivated to complete their school work to the best of their ability.

Conclusion

Overall, I believe that my classroom management plan will be focused on student

engagement. Students will have the opportunity to develop the classroom setting they feel they

need to be academically successful. Reward systems will be set in place as incentive for students

to take responsibility for their own learning. Students will participate in an equitable setting that

adheres to all cultural backgrounds and prepares them for the outside world. My classroom will

provide an environment for students to feel respected, trusted, safe, heard, and represented.

References

Bondy, E., Ross, D. D., Gallingane, C., & Hambacher, E. (2007). Creating Environments of

Success and Resilience: Culturally Responsive Classroom Management and More. Urban

Education, 42(4), 326-348. Retrieved from

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0042085907303406

Davis, B. M. (2012) How to teach students who don’t look like you: Culturally responsive

teaching
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strategies (2nded.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin

Farr, S. (2010). Maximizing the efficiency and structure of your classroom. In Teaching as

leadership: The highly effective teacher's guide to closing the achievement gap (pp. 31-

41). Retrieved from http://teachingasleadership.org/sites/default/files/Related-

Readings/CMC_Ch3_2011.pdf

Pinto, L. E. (2013). From Discipline to Culturally Responsive Engagement. Thousand Oaks, CA:

Corwin

Thompson, J. G. (2002). First-Year Teacher's Survival Kit: Ready-to-Use Strategies, Tools &

Activit. John Wiley & Sons.

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