As educators, it is necessary to address students’ needs, the knowledge of such needs helps the teacher create sound relationships with the students which make them motivated learners and ultimately ensure good classroom management and productive learning takes place.
Articles have been written with respect to the needs of the learners and satisfying these needs.
William Glasser lays a lot of emphasis on internal motivation, he developed a choice theory which addresses the five basic needs that constitute the source of internal motivation and guide all human behavior. These are; survival, love and belonging, power, freedom and fun.
Robert and Jana Marzano have given the key to classroom management as effective teacher – student relationships. This can be achieved by specific teacher behaviours like; exhibiting appropriate levels of dominance, exhibiting appropriate levels of cooperation and being aware of high needs students, these students are; the passive students, aggressive students, attention problem students, perfectionist students and socially inept students.
Ruth Sidney Charney’s logical consequences are meant to reduce students’ misbehavior and enable them make constructive choices with regards future behavior. The three kinds of logical consequences are; you break it – you fix it, loss of privilege and time – out or take a break. Behavior contract is also an effective way of implementing logical consequences.
John B. Murphy elementary school implemented the responsive classroom approach through; morning meetings, rules and logical consequences, guided discovery, classroom organization, academic choice and assessment and reporting to parents. This started as a workshop for the staff and it was later adopted as a school wide implementation plan.
When children make rules they take more responsibility for their actions, this is a feature of constructivist classrooms. The teachers in such classrooms are expected to establish norms like; safety and health norms, moral norms and discretionary norms. The teachers discuss the problems in the class with the students and guide them to make the rules.
APPLICATION FOR THE TEACHER
In the class situation, the teacher has to make sure students have access to water, food and fresh air, establish routines and procedures and encourage children to make rules that will support safety and respect; there should be logical consequences for non compliance and use of behavior contracts. They should be free from physical and emotional discomfort and monotony in class activities.
The teacher should take a personal interest in students; he must learn each child’s name, talk to them informally about their interests, complement them on important achievements and meet them at the door as they come into class. He should let the students know him personally; his interests, hobbies, background and family life, meet and greet activities are very useful in this respect.
He should have regular class meetings especially morning meetings where they will have a rundown of the activities for the day and teach the students how to work cooperatively. Students can be given choices in their seating, team members, assignments and to some extent academic activities.
The teacher should teach to a variety of learning styles, vary teaching methods and give students second and third chances to demonstrate learning. The teacher should introduce lessons in a variety of ways, use different instructional strategies and research based best practices and take students on field trips. The lessons can be made fun by playing review games, drama games, adventure based learning games and engage students in brain teasers.
Classroom materials should be introduced to students through practical demonstrations. The teacher needs to be aware of the different high – needs students and devise techniques to meet their needs. Finally, the teacher should establish ongoing communication with parents through scheduled parent visits to morning meetings, weekly newsletters and daily communication folders.