Running head: SPEAQ SUMMARY AND RESPONSE

SPEAQ Summary and Response

Michelle Veronica De Guzman

McGill University
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SPEAQ Summary and Response

On February 4th, 2017, I attended the SPEAQ conference and enjoyed the talk Class

Management: Preparing, Monitoring & Reacting by professor Robert Therrien. Before

beginning his talk, professor Therrien gave us a KWL chart for his topic classroom management

which contained three sections: Preparing, Monitoring, and Reacting. With the students that were

present, we collectively filled in the What I Know and the What I Want to Know sections.

Professor Therrien proceeded by answering the questions and concerns we had in the What I

Want to Know section by giving us classroom management tips. Professor Therrien underlined

the importance to prevent and be proactive, which goes hand in hand with lesson planning. To

have an effective lesson plan enables the educator to prevent troublesome behaviour. This

includes having a lesson plan B, because this way, if students are not behaving well during a

lesson, teachers would be ready with another and hopefully a better plan. When students do

behave well, professor Therrien mentioned the importance of using positive reinforcement as

much as possible, which causes students to keep their good behaviour going. Also, when taking

attendance, professor Therrien said that educators should give students a task to keep them busy

and to prevent negative behaviour. When faced with a first occurrence of bad behaviour, we

should minimize it. We should only react if the behaviour is disruptive; we should ignore

situations that are not. Professor Therrien also mentioned that we should use seating plans

because this is also a helpful way to minimize disruptions during class time. If a student

misbehaves even with a seating arrangement, it is effective to move towards them without saying

a word but with maintaining eye contact with them; this lets the student understand the message

that you are giving them and they will probably stop the misbehaviour. Additionally, if students

are speaking during a lecture, teachers should just move them without offering any choice of
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where they want to move to. What made this talk very interesting was professor Therriens use of

scenarios. He would ask one of us to volunteer and teach a subject while giving other students a

task of misbehaviour such as swearing, yelling woohoo, crying, etc. He would then ask the

volunteer teacher to then react to this behaviour and he would say if their reaction is appropriate

or not. I liked that professor Therrien did this because they were examples of very real situation

that could arise in our future careers. Overall, I enjoyed this talk by professor Therrien because

classroom management is very important to have when teaching, and I believe that I will apply

the tips that he has given us during this talk. I especially liked some of his closing words which

were, during situations when students misbehave, to keep calm, be friendly but NOT friends.

This is very helpful for me because I tend to forget the difference when I teach students.