Student-Centered Classroom

I like to brag that my classroom is student-centered. Within 2 period of 45-minutes classes, I will only use 10-15 minutes for class discussion and instruction and the rest, my students do the talking or perform activities in class. I seldom sit in my desk and usually, I go around the classroom to check their works or follow up in case they need help or clarifications. In the article link below, Mark Barnes stated 5 steps in creating a progressive, student-centered classroom. These are:

1) Create ongoing projects.

2) Integrate Technology.

3) Replace homework with engaging in-class activities

4) Eliminate rules and consequences.

5) Involves students in evaluation.

I fully support the first two steps but for the last three steps, I have my own version. I explained to my students that homework is not necessary unless I feel that they don't need to do it to support or review our lessons for the day. Sometimes, I gave half of the homework to be work in class and if they can't finish it, then it will become their homework. I like homework sometimes in a way that the next day, I like asking students if they had a hard time answering some problems or if they encounter something that we need to discuss before going to another lesson. For rules and consequences, for Math teachers we are bit stricter than other teachers. Maybe because in Math, answers are either right or wrong, and if not, then there's something wrong in the process. For us, it is very important for the students to understand fully the rules and because if they don't follow rules, then the probability is they'll get wrong answers. And they have to live with the consequence with that mistakes. We don't imply that they're not allowed to make mistakes but then if they do things right in the first place, then they don't have to worry about making mistakes later. Also, setting a classroom rules with students' output is the best way to do it since they know exactly how does it affect the learning-teaching environment. As for the last step, indeed we need to involve students in the evaluation and at the same time, they should know in the first place how they'll be marked before going further in an assignment.

Reference:

http://inservice.ascd.org/five-steps-to-create-a-progressive-student-centered-classroom/