There are a lot of procedures you will teach in the first weeks of school, and as new situations and activities arise throughout the year.
Teach these procedures first. You never know when an emergency will happen, and your students will need to behave calmly and safely. Your school may have specific guidelines for these types of drills, so consult with other teachers and administration. Most schools are required to have a fire drill once a month. School-wide lockdown drills happen less frequently sometimes only once a school year but are just as important, so consider having your own drill with your students once a month as well.
There could be an emergency situation in which you would want your class to leave the room quickly while you stay behind. Designate a safe place for them to go, ideally another classroom, or the hallway if necessary. Assign one student to tell the teacher in the other classroom the situation so she can call for help, while the rest of the students sit down and continue working.
Once you have practiced this procedure a couple of times, begin to practice it about once a month without warning students, like a fire or lockdown drill. You can start off on the right foot each day by establishing a morning routine. What are the most important things you want students to do before instruction begins to prepare for a successful day? Students will take their own attendance and make their lunch choice on the same clip chart see Part I of this plan for instructions on how to make and use a clip chart.
Some schools offer more than one hot lunch choice. If you have laminated your clip chart, you can write in the new choice each day. For the first few weeks of school while students are practicing this procedure, double-check the attendance before you send it to the office. If any students forgot this step in their morning routine, have them go back and do it.
After students have made their lunch choice, they should take out their Take Home Folder and put their homework and any notes from home in their corresponding trays. For K-2 students, you could have them turn in their entire folder so that you can look for homework and notes yourself. For example, each morning you could put a sentence on the smartboard with grammatical errors and have students correct them. Younger students could practice their letters or handwriting.
If, later in the year, your students are struggling with another fundamental, you can switch the Do Now. At the end of the school day, both you and your students will be tired and ready to go home. Keep an awesome school day from devolving into chaos with an established routine for packing up to go home. Throughout the day, there will be times when your students are working independently and you need to call their attention. This is especially no fun when another adult is in the room.
There are tons of examples out there, including this great list compiled by National Board Certified Teacher Angela Watson. Students need to know how you want them to behave once you have their attention, and how to show that they are listening.
In comes the Active Listening Pose. When students are supposed to talk, whether giving a presentation, working with a group or partner, or answering a question, they need to know your expectation for how loud to speak. Introduce the different acceptable voice levels at the beginning of the year, and model what each of them sounds like.
Then, throughout the year, whenever you are about to start an activity in which students will talk, tell them which voice level they should use.
Once your whole class has learned their procedures, assigning classroom jobs can save you time and transfer ownership of the classroom to students. As with any of your procedures, be sure to teach, model, and practice the classroom jobs with students. For upper elementary students, consider switching jobs each month, and to increase accountability, have students fill out an application to choose their new job. Here is a list of classroom jobs and their responsibilities from Scholastic.
Students, especially those who may come to you below grade level, need all the time you can give them to learn. Implementing these procedures will cut down on wasted time, but you also need to foster a sense of urgency in your students that any wasted minute is taking away from their learning time. We walk quickly, but safely, in the hallway to our next destination because we need as much time as possible to learn.
Using a timer will help hold both you and your students accountable to the schedule. You can use e. In the hallways, you can use your watch or smartphone. Ideally, you will create a classroom culture in which students behave because they want to make good choices, rather than to earn rewards or to avoid negative consequences.
You will need a thoughtful set of classroom management strategies. Just as you spend time practicing procedures over and over again, you also have to spend time positively reinforcing good behavior and negatively reinforcing bad behavior until students internalize the message. In Part II, we mentioned transferring responsibility to your students access to materials, classroom jobs, taking attendance, etc. Similarly, we can put students in charge of their own behavior with the right system.
Students should be able to recognize appropriate and inappropriate behavior in themselves and others, and adjust accordingly. Bonus: We have a great lesson, Would You Rather Questions for Kids , to help you discuss the tradeoffs involved in making different choices. This system gives students a framework to think critically about their behavior, deciding for themselves if it needs to change. There is also a nuanced distinction between doing something to look good or be rewarded, and doing something simply because it is right.
The Raise Responsibility model separates behaviors into the following zones or levels: D — Democracy. The A and B levels encompass bad choices that need correction. The C level includes good behavior, but the student is extrinsically motivated by classroom rewards.
Display these levels on posters in your classroom. If a student continues to misbehave after one warning about their level, Becky suggests they fill out a behavior reflection think sheet. Miss At , another blogger and teacher using the Raise Responsibility model, has students choose their consequence after finishing their reflection. This reinforces the idea of students regulating their own behavior. Miss At suggests providing students with some acceptable consequences as a starting point so that the consequence they choose is still one you find appropriate for their behavior.
Another popular model for reinforcing and tracking positive and negative behavior is the clip chart. Each student in your class would have a clothespin with his or her name on it that would start in the middle of the chart each day.
Students earn the opportunity to move up the chart with good behavior choices, or move down the chart with poor behavior choices. Students start each day with a clean slate with their clip reset to the middle. Share your fears and concerns with the special ed team. So many classroom management challenges can be averted by considering and planning for the needs in your classroom. Understanding procedures and consequences may be just what a child with a behavior problem needs in order to feel more in control of their impulses.
Remember to design lessons that challenge everyone in the way they need to be challenged. Develop plans that work for your teaching style, accommodate all learners, go along with curriculum standards, and pique the curiosity of your students. A well-planned day can make the difference between tired and flat-out exhausted. Each year will be different, but they can all be unforgettably wonderful.
This is a well-curated post I must say. The tips are sure to be really helpful in classroom. Looking forward to more.
Log in to Reply. You must be logged in to post a comment. Build trusting relationships with your students This is hands down the most effective classroom management technique. One Comment gungun sengupta August 28, at am. Leave a reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Unsurprisingly, there is no silver bullet for classroom management success.
That said, as we pored over the more than responses, we did see some clear trends. Here are the most often cited and creative approaches. To learn effectively, your students need a healthy you, said our experienced teachers. So get enough sleep, eat healthy food, and take steps to attend to your own well-being.
Countless studies corroborate the idea that self-care reduces stress, which can deplete your energy and impair your judgment. While self-care is more of a habit or practice for your own well-being than an actual classroom management strategy, the benefits include improved executive function, greater empathy, and increased resilience—all qualities that will empower you to make better decisions when confronted with challenging classroom situations.
This was the theme we heard the most: Building healthy student-teacher relationships is essential to a thriving classroom culture, and even sets the stage for academic success.
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