Labeling Behavior: The Second Period Of The Class

The second Period of the class began with two distinctive activities. The first one involved reading activity in the book in which students were expected to interpret the story. The second activity was about personal narrative in which students were expected to write some important events of their life. In the first activity, the students started asking the teacher about their home reading activities, who should assist them, and when they were supposed to do all the reading. Although there were only a few students in the class, they began to talk at the same time. The teacher advised everybody to raise their hands in case they had a question and respect others, and wait for their turn to speak. Then the teacher asked the students to open their

Students’ sometimes make a lot of noise while the teacher is providing the instructions; some get distracted by talking to their peers. Although the teacher used verbal cues, such as “stop talking”, “I will take you to the office”, “keep quiet” to control behavior, they seemed to be ineffective to the fact that after few some time students leaned into the same misbehavior. Moreover, labeling students by geometric shapes may have a negative impact on students’ interaction and participation in the class discussion. For instance, students from the circle group rarely participate in class discussion or are asked to express their opinion. Faltis and Arias (2007) noted that labeling students make them feel intellectually incapable and make it difficult for them to be viewed as important in the class. Even though students may not fully understand the meaning of these labels, they might feel somewhat fallen behind. Finally, the ticket motivators are used as a reward to motivate students and get them engaged in the lesson. Students received tickets every time they come up with the right answers or respond to a question. This could have negative impacts on students’ motivation since their engagement to the learning might be solely dependent on these “rocket tickets”. So, the teacher could try out different strategies to motivate and fully commit students to the learning process. Both sessions of the class observation lasted 2