Glows And Grow

The Glows and Grows is an effective way to acknowledge the successes and challenges of a variety of systems, tasks, behaviors and completed work. The best time to introduce the Glows and Grows strategy in the media center is at the end of the third week. By the third week students will be familiar with the rules and expectations of media class and the media center. To begin we will discuss what the meaning of “Glow” and “Grow” are and I will provide examples if the students cannot. As a class we will reflect on the highlights (glows) of the previous three weeks and the things we want to improve on (grows) for the following weeks. See Glows & Grows sheet in the appendix. The sheet will be filled out on line and revisited on the whiteboard in later weeks to gauge growth. The range for the Glows and Grows can be commentary on how my classroom is structured, what works and what doesn’t and can be followed up with suggestions for changes. In addition to structure it can also be a behavior recognition activity. For my classroom, the behavior recognition piece for each student really won’t work as I do not have the time to manage individual star charts for each student in the school. Instead I would encourage students to generalize on the behavior of the class as a whole and recognize things that work and don’t work within each individual group. When we revisit the “Grow” piece in future weeks, if true growth is made, then it will be reflected on
As a Specials teacher I often do not get much contact with parents. Using the Glow & Grow sheet (see page 2 in Appendix) will allow me to recognize the successes of each student as well as address any behavior issues early in the year. In many cases I only talk to parents for extreme behavior problems. The “Grow” piece will allow me to address all the mild behavior problems in a positive way as I will also give a “Glow” as