Title:

Classroom Management Practices in A Chinese Language and Culture Classroom

1. Motivation
As a Chinese Language& Culture teacher in Pattengill Academy, I have six regular classes and
one special class a day. Recently there have been some urgent classroom management issues in
one class which is very "famous" class among the 5th classes. In the last several months, these
classroom management issues became so serious that I had to stop the lesson and sent the
students back to their own classroom for several times. In order to create a classroom with
positive learning atmosphere for students to learn Chinese as much as possible as well as to make
the teaching go much more smoothly, I decided to develop some classroom management
practices and apply them into my Chinese teaching.

2. Description of the situation

During these several months, I have taught some culture things that are related to Chinese Spring
Festival. After that, I connected the Chinese Spring Festival to the transportation part and some
grammars and Chinese sentences were taught to students.
Since it has been about half a year for me being a Chinese teacher in Pattengill Academy,
students are more familiar with me and we built a good relationship which shows great help in
my Chinese teaching, however, there is one class which is becoming increasingly harder to
handle for me as well as for the classroom teacher. For example, one day while I was teaching,
one group of students just kept talking which interrupted the class from time to time. The
classroom teacher stepped out to manage the class but they just did not listen and kept doing that.
In my class, students are grouped into six groups. After observing for some weeks, I might put
students into three categories: 1st, students who are always concentrated. 2nd, students who can
be concentrated as long as they are interested in the topic or they are in good "mood". 3rd,
students who keep talking in the class which may interrupt those 2nd kind students, in this way,
the teaching will become hard to continue.
Since there is a classroom teacher in my classroom while his/her students are having my Chinese
class, so what I do is almost teaching, but considering the classroom management issues are so
serious that teaching could be interrupted or stopped, I applied some method with the intention of
making the class move to the right direction.
First, I used another whiteboard in my classroom to keep records of the students' behavior. As
mentioned above, students in my classroom are divided into six groups, I write "Group 1Group6" on the whiteboard. During my class, when I asked one question and one student could
answer it, the group which the students belongs to will get one star and I would draw one star for
the group. This method worked for about only one week.
The second method that I used to improve the students' behavior is that I work with the
classroom teacher. We talked about rearranging the students' seats to make sure that the 3rd kind
of students are not in the same group. But since the students they are used to misbehave and
there are no strict policies in this school, this method really couldn't help a lot.

3. Interpretation of the situation

My understanding of the situation is that first I did not use as many "behavior tracking" methods
as I can, second the cooperation with the classroom teacher did not go as smooth as what I
expected.

Hypothesis1
Few classroom management practices are applied into the Chinese teaching.
With a classroom teacher in my class, I barely manage students because the classroom teacher
will do this. In this way, while I tried to do some management, some students will not consider
my instructions seriously. Considering that, some management issues will just become
increasingly serious.

Hypothesis 2
Chinese classroom behavior system doesnt cooperate with other teachers classroom behavior
system.
As mentioned above, I used the whiteboard to track students' behavior and this method only
belongs to my Chinese classroom. Students only spend 35 minutes in my Chinese classroom and
they might be confused if my classroom behavior system is different from that of their own
classroom. In this way, students may misbehave since they are not familiar with the Chinese
classroom behavior system

4. The stakes: Who did/could gain or lose what?

Without more behavior systems being applied into my classroom, it would be increasingly harder
for me to continue my Chinese teaching. In this way, some students who want to learn Chinese
will be influenced which is not fair for them.
If my classroom system doesnt cooperate with other teachers classroom systems, students may
get confused in the short run. In the long run, my class will become increasingly hard to handle
since students will not follow the Chinese classroom behavior system.
In this way, more classroom managements together with certain reward system should be applied
into my classroom.

5. Deliberation of Alternatives
Alternative One: Apply students' homerooms' systems into Chinese classroom
In order to make sure that the teaching can move smoothly, I will first talk to my 5th grade
colleagues. I can observe their classroom to find the classroom management system they use to
keep students behave correctly and smoothly. For example, I will use the same classroom
management system as all the 5th grade colleague do in their own classroom which is kind like
the "traffic lights": there are blue, green, yellow, orange and red charts on one piece of
paper( Blue means terrific and red means bad which need parent contact) and the paper will be
posted on the whiteboard, students names are written on the magnet. Students behavior decides

the position of the magnet of each student. In this way, students will not cross the line so that few
students will misbehave.
Alternative Two: Develop an individual behavior system that is only used in Chinese classroom
In order to make my Chinese classroom learning atmosphere positive, I would like to create an
individual behavior system that only belongs to my own Chinese classroom.
I will use the other small whiteboard in my classroom to track students behavior. On the
whiteboard there are "group1" to "group 6", each class I will choose a student to help me keep
track of the behavior of each group. If students they misbehave, the selected student will take a
star off from the group. If students they are focused and concentrated, they can get a star.
At the end of the class, I will announce the winning group and write down the students' names
for my monthly awarding.
Comparison
Applying students' homerooms' systems into Chinese classroom will make students feel more
comfortable while they are learning Chinese in my classroom. Students are familiar with the
behavior system in their own classroom and they will certainly follow the rules in their
classroom, in this way, there might be fewer behavior problems in my Chinese classroom and my
teaching will go more smoothly. But in the long run, considering I have six classes and their own
behavior systems may vary, it is a little bit hard for me to apply all the systems in my own
classroom. In this way, I would be very tired changing from systems every day and it will
certainly affect my teaching.
When it comes to alternative two, though it will be tough for me to set up a new individual
behavior system for my own classroom at first, but I believe that after students are used to it,
there will be fewer students who will misbehave. In this way, my own Chinese classroom will
develop a positive learning atmosphere which will help students learn Chinese better.
Considering all the aspects of these two alternatives, I will choose alternative two as it is easier
to work on and what's more, students will re-recognize the role of Chinese lesson which will
make the Chinese teaching more smooth.

6. Develop a Plan
First of all, I will use another small whiteboard as the resource to carry my behavior system.
This is how it works. Students will be divided into six groups and on the whiteboard there will be
"Group 1" to "Group 6". At the beginning of each class, each group will have three stars. I will
randomly choose one student to help me track the behavior of students in six group.
Here are the rules: Earning Policy: If students can answer my question, their group will get one
star; If students are quiet and concentrated while doing seatwork, their group will get one star
Losing Policy: If students talk without my permission, their group will lose one star; If students
are not concentrated or do things which are not allowed in the classroom, they lose one star.
At the end of the class, I will announce the winning group and keep the records of the winning
students. At the end of each month, I will announce the winning student and give out a prize. In
this way, some students will be inspired to behave well in my Chinese classroom.
Second, at the beginning of each class, I will give students the chance to stand by the wall. If
they choose to remain in their seats, they have to make sure they will not act out during the class,

they will have to stand by the wall if they can not keep the promise. If they choose to stay by the
wall, still they are not allowed to talk during the class.
Last but not least, to deal with those students with many problems, there will be a three warning
system designed for them: The first warning will be given by me by reminding his/her improper
behavior; The second warning will be given if he/she keeps acting out and the student will stay in
his/ her spot rather that sitting in the chair. The third warning will be given if the student is still
acting out after the second warning, and under this circumstance, the student will have to leave
his seat and go and sit in the back alone by him/herself.

7.Description of the implementation

In order to carry out the plan that I describe in section 6, at the beginning of one class which is really
hard to manage, I first chose some naughty students who were going to talk to stand by the wall and
told them that they were still not allowed to talk.
Then, in order to manage the whole class efficiently, I used a whiteboard to track students behavior. On
the whiteboard, there were groups names with three stars for each, I chose a student to help me
add/erase stars if the groups were good/bad.
While some students began to talk, I stopped them immediately with some positive instructions like
We are learning, not talking but it worked so little. In this way, I made the announcement that if they
choose to talk, they choose to sit in the back of the classroom.
If there was still too much talking, after having students sit in the back of the classroom, I would
choose those talkers to to stand by me, in this way, there would be less talking and misbehavior.
At last, at the ending of each class, I would announcement the group which won the most stars during
the class for their positive behavior and write down students names in the group as a record. I would
give out some prizes according the the record of students.
All of these management practices can be found in my fifth video and here is the link:
https://mediaspace.msu.edu/id/1_42je1cd8?width=400&height=285&playerId=21848991

8. Assessment of the effort

Like what I described before, due to students misbehavior which made my class increasing hard to
manage, I decided to carry out some classroom management practices in order to improve this kind of
situation.
At first I found there was not an efficient behavior system in my class so I added one and it worked for
some days. Then in order to keep some students quiet and make sure they can learn in my classroom, I
put more management practices like what I described in section 6.
As getting a behavior system in my classroom, students were quiet during the class because they did
care about how many points/stars they can get at the end of the class. What's more, it helped some
students to be my little assistant to help me stop other students' misbehavior without my directions
which made my class more efficient.
With multiple management practices being applied into my classroom, some naughty students began to
behave well which is a huge improvement for them but there are still some students who just act as

usual. In this way, I think those students will not change their behavior regardless of many management
practices. Although we believe there is always a suitable plan for each student, the fact is we don't
really have enough energy and resources find the suitable plan.
Like what I described above, my plan was overall successful considering that it did help some
students to be more focused in my classroom which made them learn more and made my
classroom more efficient. But not everything is perfect, it did not help some students who need
some special plan to help them learn more. There were not specific plans for students with
ADHD or autism, in this way, misbehavior of these kinds of students could not be improved.