1. Curriculum & Programming for the Primary Grades

2. What are Primary Grade Children like Physically?
Physical development
Slow and steady growth
Increasing growth and increasing bodily control
Variations in physical appearance
Motor development
Growing confidence in physical skills
Running and chasing games
Organized sports
Minimal differences between boys’ and girls’ motor skills
Maturity through puberty
Refinement of fine motor skills

3. What are primary grade children like socially and emotionally?
Industry vs. Inferiority (Erikson)
Driven to initiate activities
Learning to be competent and productive
Motivation
Mastery-oriented attributions
Learned helplessness
Emotionally
Learn to express emotions in healthy ways

4. Activities to support positive social-emotional development of children
Use literature to discuss emotions
Encourage children to express their emotions, even the negative ones
Write about feelings
Provide opportunities for play
Provide for cultural differences

5. What are primary grade children like cognitively?
Concrete operational thinking (Piaget)
Change is a result of maturation and experience
Less egocentric
Think more logically (rule-based thinking)
Use mental images and symbols
Perform operations such as
Reversibility
One-to-one correspondence
Classification
Class inclusion

6. Classroom Management for Young children

7. What is Classroom Management?
Discipline:
Teachers’ strategies that create and maintain an orderly and productive learning environment
Teachers’ responses to student misbehavior

8. Planning for Transition Times
Classroom management problems most common during transitions
The whole class is ready for the next activity (going outside, finishing a craft, …) except one child
Children are confused about what to do or what they need
Strategies to avoid problems
Special songs or ringing a bell as a 5-minute warning
Everyone joins in the clean-up song
Don’t insist on perfection when children line up - they aren’t very good at it
Find fun ways to move in a line
If there is an aide or volunteer parent, have him/her take up at the rear of the line and help stragglers get ready

9. Developmental View of Student Characteristics
Stage 1: K - grade 2
Compliant and eager to please teachers
Short attention span and restless
Require close supervision
Break rules because of forgetfulness
Need rules and procedures to be explicitly taught, practiced and reinforced
Stage 2: Grades 3 - 6
Increasingly independent, but still want approval and affection from teachers
Understand need for rules and enjoy participating in making rules
Know how far they can push
Need rules to be reviewed, and consistently and impartially enforced

10. Piaget’s Stages of Moral Development
Premoral stage
Heteronomous stage
Autonomous stage

11. Piaget’s Stages of Moral Development
The Premoral Stage
Ages: up to 4 years
Children show no concern for or understanding of social rules and conventions
Implications for teaching and classroom management?

12. Piaget’s Stages of Moral Development
The Heternomous Stage
Ages: 4 to 7 years
Children view rules as moral absolutes
Children rely on others to determine what’s right or wrong
Ethical value of an action determined by its consequences
Punishment is punishment for its own sake
Believe in immanent justice
Implications for teaching and classroom management?

13. Piaget’s Stages of Moral Development
The Autonomous Stage
Ages: age 7 + transitioning into this stage
No longer view rules as moral absolutes
Ethical value of an action determined by the intentions
Punishment should be restitution
No longer believe in immanent justice
Implications for teaching and classroom management?

14. Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
Preconventional Level
Avoidance of Punishment
Adherence to rules and conventions because they are told to do so by an authority figure
Reward Seeking
Adherence to rules and conventions only if it leads to personal advantage.
Conventional Level
“Good boy” / “Good Girl” Orientation
Adherence to rules and conventions to win approval and be seen as a virtuous person.
Law and Order Orientation
Adherence to rules and conventions out of sense of duty and sense of obligation to maintain the social order
Implications for teaching and classroom management?

15. Cognitive Approaches to Classroom Management
Characterized by each student understanding the need for a productive learning environment and taking personal responsibility for doing so
Metacognition
Self-regulation
Self-determination
Deeper level of understanding because students construct own understanding of rules and procedures, as well as the basis for the rules
Moral development
Cognitive approaches foster:

16. Interventions for Misbehavior: A Cognitive Approach
Verbal-nonverbal congruence
Nonverbal communication (e.g., body language, proximity, eye contact and tone of voice) should be consistent with what you say
Communication should focus on the behavior and help students understand the effects of their actions on others
Active listening
Problem ownership
Logical consequences
Are the consequences conceptually related to the misbehavior? If so, they help the learner see the link between their actions and the consequences

17. A Cognitive Approach to Calling Out in Class
Verbal-nonverbal congruence
Communication should focus on the behavior and help students understand the effects of their actions on others
Active listening
Problem ownership
Logical consequences

18. Interventions for Misbehavior: A Behaviorist Approach
A classroom management system that emphasizes carefully stated rules and specifically described reinforcers and punishments
Assertive discipline
Praising desired behavior
Ignoring inappropriate behavior
Using indirect cues
Using desists (verbal or nonverbal communication a teacher makes to a student to stop a behavior)
Applying consequences
Intervention continuum

19. Intervention Continuum for Talking In Class: A Behaviorist Approach
Praising desired behavior
Ignoring inappropriate behavior
Using indirect cues
Using desists (verbal or nonverbal communication a teacher makes to a student to stop a behavior)
Applying consequences