The time: My third year of teaching. The place: My classroom. The point: Thirty-one desks in my classroom, thirty-one students coming through the door for a language arts class. The result: Awkward.
Keep in mind that I had, of course, seen my class lists, but the actual appearance of those thirty-one students in my classroom was a whole lot different than seeing thirty-one names on a list. The eager, smiling faces of thirty-one students seated in Mr. Savelle’s Carnival of Classroom Curiosity left me dazed, and the only sound was the humming of fluorescent bulbs overhead.
I can put on a good poker face even when the rabid badger of fear is gnawing at the inside of my chest. There was no way I was going to let my students see that their numbers appeared overwhelming, that this sort of thing would push the envelope on my classroom management skills. One thing was certain: I would need to shore up my portfolio review strategy because the phlegmatic town crier of alarm deep inside my head rang his bell and said, “It’s two a.m. and you’re still grading papers! Two a.m., still grading papers!”
Thirty-one students meant I’d be spending unprecedented time poring over portfolios, listening to endearingly endless hours of oral reports, and we’d have to form into substantial numbers of small groups. But what teacher doesn’t love a challenge?
By June, we’d made it. We’d gone beyond our mutual goals, but I had to wonder how much more we could have done with six or eight fewer classmates. It was a struggle all year long to find the right blend of supplemental teaching resources that would fit with my students’ individual learning styles. Had the skill builders been effective, or had I simply worked harder?
Have you ever faced a dauntingly large class? I know thirty-one won’t seem like a lot to some of you, but please share your tips for managing large class sizes with us.
I had thirty fifth grade students last year. Whenever we went somewhere I could not keep up with the front of the line. One idea that worked very well was the use of monitors especially in the hallway. I rotate the monitors so that everyone got a chance. Another idea is the use of a paper chain whenever they did well.
Class size can be daunting to your brain and to your nerves. The best way to handle any class is to hand out jobs. Let everyone become apart of the community not a select few. Create a community of people who love and care for one another and strive to achieve excellence. Providing that environment through lessons , in which each are valued and allowed to share their thoughts,will lead to this. The size of a class creates bigger challenges but through finding each students strengths and talents , you can invent jobs that they become respondsible for and thus learning goes more smoothly.