Blog 6:
The article I read was a discussion about a first year teacher's experience teaching seventh grade. Veteran teachers were responding to her struggles with classroom management. Some of the advice they gave included: greet students at the door, have task for them to complete everyday when they walk in so they have a sense of urgency from the beginning of class, understand and plan for the curriculum. The biggest item I took away from this list (and some of the other suggestions in the blog posts) where to have an activity for students to do right away when they walk. In theory I have had this since the beginning of  the year but in actuality this does not always play out because I didn't practice it enough with my kids at the very beginning of the year. Having my kids start an activity right away will save time and effort because they will (theoretically) start the class off being focused.

Classroom management has been my biggest struggle this year. At the beginning of the year I didn't fully understand the need to be consistent and the need to be very strict from the beginning. These two factors have hurt me because my students know they can take advantage and if they push me far enough I sometimes will break. My main struggle is that my students talk when I am talking or someone else is talking. My classroom is often loud and very hard to focus in if you are a student who really needs quiet. My biggest accomplishment is that students have large disruption in my class (normally) and that they do listen to me. My students always move seats when I ask them two (sometimes I need to ask them more than once but they do always move) and they will eventually quiet down if I do a countdown clock.