Rationale:

As education budgets shrink and class sizes expand, teachers may at times wish to explore new ways of managing large numbers of students. Although I have the privilege of working in an environment that maintains a cap on class sizes, I have none-the-less found a "Team Management" approach to be quite effective within my grade nine classes. As a teacher of business studies, I have been quite pleased with how effective this approach has been at encouraging students to take an active role in managing their behaviour, as well as providing them with actual experience in team management. I invite other educators to examine this program and consider incorporating it within their regular class routine.

Description:

• At the beginning of the course the class is divided into four or five management teams of equal size.

• Each team is provided with a Management Binder. This binder includes attendance sheets, a duty roster, management reports, and a cover page that highlights the our management credo. (Leadership is... service, caring, fostering success.)

• Students rotate through a duty schedule. This ensures that for every team, there will always be a manager on duty. (The bright coloured binders serve to identify which student is on duty on any given day.)

• At the beginning of class, the manager on duty will take possession of the Management Binder. The manager will then take attendance for his/her group, followed by a quick survey of the report completed during last class. By examining last day's report the manager will gain a quick understanding of where his/her team members stand with respect to the material currently being covered in the course. If any of the team members are confused or have questions regarding a given topic, then the manager is to serve as an advocate for his/her team, and make these points known to the course instructor.

• During class the manager is responsible for the behaviour of his/her team members. If the course instructor has any concerns regarding a particular student's behaviour, then the instructor addresses that student's manager. The manager has a fair amount of latitude with respect to how he/she can choose to respond to behavioural concerns. The manager has the freedom to walk around the class (even during lectures, seat work, group work, or class discussion) in order to interact with members of his/her team. The managers are to utilize their interpersonal skills in order to encourage their team members to stay on task. If necessary, a manager can issue up to two penalty marks against each individual team-member within a given class.

• As the end of the class approaches, managers must complete a brief report which records any penalties that have been issued, an explanation for any penalties that have been issued, a brief description of how each team member performed during class, and a quick note indicating how each member responded to the class material. If there are any concerns or points of confusion, then these are are recorded.

• At the end of the class, the managers have a quick meeting with the course instructor. At this time the course instructor records any penalties that were issued by the managers. The instructor also awards each manager a mark out of ten for his/her performance as manager. If a team performed well and the manager served as a positive role model, then the manager will receive a high mark. However, if a team failed to stay on task, and the manager did little to rectify the situation, then that manager's mark will reflect the team's poor performance.

Materials:

1. Credo
2. Duty Roster
3. Attendance Sheet
4. Conduct Report, Page 1 (Front)
5. Achievement Report, Page 2 (Back)

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