Jones and Wong

Henry Wong and Fred Jones have some very similar ideas about Classroom Management. They both believe that it is the key to preventing discipline issues. They also agree that students should be taught and should practice the rules, responsibilities, and procedures over the first two weeks of school. Jones thinks that student’s should help in the creation of class rules, whereas Wong believes that the teacher should establish the rules and that there should be no more than five. I think that this is an area that can be combined, the students can help create the rules with heavy teacher guidance and there should be no more than five.
Wong doesn’t have a discipline plan in his ideas, but he encourages teachers to set one up that works for them and their students. Jones on the other hand believes that the teacher needs to establish that he or she means business and utilize body language to show it and to maintain class control. Wong seems to focus on having a set of procedures for all aspects of the school day in place and making sure that the students practice them enough for it to become second nature for them to follow the procedures. Jones places more emphasis on self-responsibility for classroom management, but encourages student compliance with individual and group incentives. Jones use of body language, incentives, and classroom arrangement could be combined with Wong’s lists of procedures to better manage the classroom.
Both Jones and Wong stress the importance of the first day of school, the first two weeks, and the first five minutes of class. They both believe that students should come in and start working on school work immediately with the use of some sort of short assignment. In addition, both believe that teaching needs to engage the students. Jones calls his means of this “Say-See-Do” instruction. The teacher tells the students about the subject, shows them, and then has the students do it. Wong believes that students learn better from an “activity-question” approach. Wong also believes that assignments should be short to enhance student achievement.
I like both of these theorists’ ideas and it seems that either approach would be successful in practice. Taking bits and pieces from each and combining them could make a more powerful classroom management system.