Comments on: El Niño Dificil

By: Kate

Kate — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 17:17:29 +0000

I passed along your thanks. Mom said it was “a lifetime of experimenting in a few sentences.” She also had another tip that works very well with that age group: Give Choices. If children feel they are making a choice in the matter (even if you set up the parameters), they are more likely to comply. Her example: She had asked the entire class to do something, but one little girl refused. So, before the whole class decided to join in, she said, ‘Well, you can do it now or you can do it at recess.’ The girl said, ‘Well I won’t do it now’ so Mom said ‘OK then, you can do it at recess’ and lo and behold, she did!!! She says, “It really gave giving choices credibility to me!”

By: Jessica

Jessica — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 18:23:28 +0000

Thanks so much! I might not be able to use all of these due the logistics of being an enrichment teacher with 60 kids cycling in and out. But I plan to use A LOT of them. As many as I can. Also, tell your mom that before I read this I used the special job for the difficult strategy, the putting difficult kids next to me strategy, and the emotion coaching when someone is mean strategy based on last night’s hurried research and they all worked well.

And our next unit, which will have precious little to do with Spanish, is called “Lo Siento.” If the kids remember the Spanish, that will be gravy. My primary goal is to spend some time on empathy.

By: tlalbaugh

tlalbaugh — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:28:12 +0000

Please thank your mother for me! I copied this helpful list to use myself (I am now dealing with bigger groups of young kids as a volunteer at our local school)…

By: Kate

Kate — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 04:11:54 +0000

Hi again! I asked my Mom, who taught kindergarten and first grade for decades and is a master of classroom management, what tips she might have. She sent me a list of strategies she’s used with difficult children. Here goes: “The skills I can recommend are: * Put the problem kids together in a group or sitting close to each other. That prevents them from annoying people who actually want to learn. * Stand close to those children and look right at them as much as possible. * Put your hand on the shoulder of a misbehaving child without saying anything. * Set a system of rewards for those who are doing what they should (the old will work for skittles technique). * Design fun activities for those who are doing what they should. The reward system should include rewards for helping others and saying kind things to others etc. In other words, not so much punishment of the non compliant as missing out on the rewards for the compliant. * Have group circles where the children discuss how they feel about any bullying behavior which has occurred. Puppets acting out these situations and talking about what you could have done instead both for the bullier and the bullied. * Walk away, walk by the teacher, etc. for the bullied. * Include some consequences like if you don’t behave in the group you can’t be in the group. If you are mean to others on the playground you can’t go on the play ground. * Give those who have difficulties some classroom task and help them to be important in the group and they may buy into membership in the group.”