List of Questions
What Matters: Big Questions
- What is your classroom philosophy in 3-5 sentences? Do your students know that? If so, how?
- What are the major values you want upheld in your classroom?
- What are the essential skills you want students to come away with?
- What habits of mind are important in your students?
- What traits are going to be most important characteristics for my students to have?
- What important messages about learning do you want students to leave your class with?
- What important messages about math do you want students to leave your class with?
- What important messages about your specific class do you want students to leave with?
How Things Are: Physical Spaces
- How are desks arranged? Are there different desk arrangements?
- Do you use a seating chart? How do you decide how students are arranged?
- What supplies do you need, where do you keep them, and how do students get them?
- What are important classroom decorations and/or things to put on your walls?
- How should students organize themselves/their papers? What different types of physical things do students need (notebooks, binders, strips of scratch paper, etc.)?
- Where do students look for important daily information (agenda, objectives, homework, etc.)?
- What is the purpose of ‘the board’ in your classroom? Who uses it?
The Way Things Go: In-Class Structures
- How do you/students keep track of assignments and/or papers?
- How do you collect & return papers? (Including late assignments)
- How do you start class? If you use warm-ups, how are they done? How do you end class?
- How do you review homework and/or deal with material from the previous day?
- What are every-day systems and structures (like reading the agenda, systematic or regular parts of class)?
- How do students know when to move from one mode of learning to another?
- How do you call on students (how do students call on each other)?
- How do you get students’ attention during an activity? What if that takes “too long”?
- What is important to keep track of at the end of a day? Where/how do you keep this record? (Examples: where each class ended, individual student conversations for the next day, formative assessment data, habitual student behaviors)
- How do you record and share grades with students?
- What is the tardy policy? How do you keep track of tardies?
- What needs to be done for students to make up absences? When does this occur? What is the policy for students who are out making up work/coming for help? Do students need to complete all assignments? Classifying assignments as makeupable or not?
- What participation structures are important to your class? (Examples: individual practice time, lecture time, presentation time, group-activities, whole-Class, attacking a new problem, note-taking, etc.)
- How do you differentiate activities for different levels of understanding?
- How do you keep track of time? How do students keep track of time?
All Things Graded: Assessment & Grading System
- What is your grading system? Points? (Weighted) averages? SBG? Random number generators?
- How will you know what students know?
- How will you check in with students?
- What activities/parts of the day are graded?
- How is late work treated?
- Do you give extra credit? What is it used for? Points, tardies, homework passes, etc.?
- What is the purpose of homework?
- What do grades mean? (Content mastery? Improvement? Positive Behaviors? Etc.)
- How do you differentiate practice vs. mastery?
People in the Room: Norms & Classroom Conduct
- What are your norms for behaving/learning (behavior)?
- What are your norms for socializing/working in groups (social)?
- What are your norms for doing math (sociomathematical)?
- What are the norms for students dealing with something they’ve never seen before?
- Are there special norms for specific participation structures you have (tests, students at the board, hand-raising, etc.)?
- How do you teach norms/how are they discussed at the beginning of the year? How does your teaching change throughout the year with respect to norms?
- What are your non-negotiables?
- What is the series of consequences for an action? How are these reinforced? How do students know the consequences for their actions?
- What behaviors do you explicitly try to praise? How do you do that?
When Things Fall Apart: The What-If List
- …a student becomes ill during class?
- ….you see fishy behavior in the halls?
- …someone makes a mistake?
- …someone makes fun of someone else?
- …someone makes a non-classroom appropriate comment (racial/sexual/derogatory of any kind)?
- …the noise level is too high?
- …a student doesn’t have a pencil?
- …someone is a blurter?
- …someone has a tendency to sleep in class?
- …you suspect a student of being drunk/high?
- …someone refuses to do the work/assignment?
As a first-year teacher as well, I’m incredibly excited by the list of questions I see on this site – they mirror my own thoughts about the nitty-gritty details of a classroom that aren’t necessarily covered in a teacher preparation program and don’t necessarily have an end-all, be-all right answer.
I was hoping to expand on the questions in the ‘All Things Graded’ section. In my own observations and experiences, I’ve noticed that the way in which assignments are weighted and graded tends to reflect a philosophy (or lack thereof) about grades and how they reflect the mastery of material versus the necessary practice and inevitable mistakes that students will make. Which assignments are used for students to practice their skills (homework? formative in-class assessments?) and how are these graded (completeness? correctness? how much feedback do we give?). Do you have a philosophy about the types of assignments students should complete as they master material, versus the types of assignments students should complete to demonstrate mastery? Does that philosophy dictate your policy on late work? Does that philosophy dictate when you let students use notes (if at all)? Do you provide any detailed feedback on assignments – and, if so, how do you guarantee students will look at it and take it seriously? How does your class go over tests – do you allow corrections? Is it used as a further learning opportunity? What do you do if the majority of the class fails a test unexpectedly? Do you have some sort of structure at the end of the semester to allow students to improve earlier tests scores, demonstrating mastery even if at a much later date?
I’m especially interested in the role of homework within a classroom. In talking to other teachers, there seem to be two philosophies: homework is a place for students to practice and make mistakes – as such, it is graded for completeness, collected sporadically, and weighted relatively low in comparison to quizzes and tests. Or, homework is a place for mastery – as such, it is graded for correctness with feedback given, it may be turned in late with a reduced penalty or the assignment may be corrected and turned in at a later date (in other words, continuing to try and master the material is acceptable and built into the system), and is weighted closer to (although probably still less) than quizzes. If you prescribe to the latter philosophy, when do you allow your students to make mistakes? If you prescribe to the former, how do you make sure students will take the homework seriously and continue to practice at home?
Anyway – these are thoughts I’ve had and surveys I’ve been taking of teachers I respect. Have you thought about assignments and grading scales in terms of practice versus mastery? Have you thought about the repercussions of your grading system on your students or on the amount of time you will spend out of class grading these assignments? I’ve seen classes where a lack of attention to these questions led to the complete dismantling of moral and management in the classroom (a class that doesn’t care about grades doesn’t care about content), so I’m curious if others have thought of or battled with these issues…
Sorry for the long post…