WAP 8 Classroom Management

     I have always been someone who strives for complete organization and maximum productivity. Everything in my house has a home and I know where nearly every item is. I don't expect my classroom to be much different. One thing I do struggle with is time management. I have no concept of time and regularly lose track of it. I have alarms set on my phone for everything, including this class. I know that this will continue to be a problem in my classroom. I will get involved in projects and forget about time management.  It is important to manage time because teachers feel like they never have enough time in a school year. A few minutes wasted here and there add up to a substantial amount of wasted teaching time. 

    While searching for applications that could help me better manage this, I found something that could not only benefit me, but my students as well. The website is called online-stopwatch.com and although the idea is simple I feel like this would greatly benefit myself and my students and may become the most used site in my classroom. I like that this website provides a lot of flexibility, I can count up or down and can choose from a large variety of options to provide students with a visual aid of how much time has passed. 

    I feel that young students become very dependent on adults to tell them where to go and when to do so.  Fostering independence in children is something I feel very strongly about. It is one of my main focuses in my current job and it will continue to be a focus in my classroom as well. By providing students with this visual aid, it will help students begin to manage their own time.  Students will monitor their own conversations and tasks. I would encourage students to use timers on their iPads to manage their own time on their devices as well. I would do this by modeling for students how I use my timer and then talk with them about why I use the timer and the benefits of using a timer. I would have students come up with reasons why using a timer can be beneficial and when using a timer may be a good idea to foster ownership. 

    I would use this application in the classroom when having students work in groups at centers. While students are at their centers during my natural resources lesson, I would have this timer displayed on the board so students could manage their time on each task. It will help students plan and prioritize such as deciding if they need to work quickly, move on from a disagreement, or need to ask for help because they are stuck and time is passing. Students will also be able to tell if they have additional time and can dig deeper into the topic. This helps students build time management skills along with self monitoring.

    One problem I can foresee is the visuals may be distracting for some students who have difficulty focusing or being on task. For this reason, I would use the timer that looks like a clock or a timer with numbers to prevent this from happening.  This application offers additional resources such as a group generator, dice, random number generator, and a random name generator. I feel like all of these tools are simple but helpful in managing my time in the classroom. These applications can save time and provide fun and visual ways for students to begin to find their independence.