You hear over and over in college about classroom management strategies. Your professors gave you “tools for your teacher bag” to help you with the management side of the classroom. Hopefully you saw good classroom management from your practicum host teacher.
Classroom management is a powerful and wonderful thing! It will get your classroom running like a well-oiled machine. Here are 3 ways that you can transform your classroom management.
Classroom Management Starts with Class Rules
You need to design your class rules around what classroom management system you want for your students and classroom culture. In my first few years f teaching, I didn’t know how important this was. I made up rules that sounded good like, “I will always treat others with kindness” and “I will use technology correctly.” These rules aren’t bad, however they didn’t fulfill the purpose of what I wanted my students to be in the classroom.
Then I discovered the Whole Brain Teaching rules, and my life changed! It was on a whim as in I was typing up my Back to School Brochure two days before school started. Their 5 class rules encompass everything I want in how I management my class. These rules outline how students need to behave and sets the intention of why it’s important to follow these rules.
Whole Brain Teaching Class Rules
- Follow Directions Quickly
- Raise Your Hand for Permission to Speak
- Raise Your Hand for Permission to Leave Your Seat
- Make Smart Choices
- Make Our Dear Learning Community Happy
You and your students need to create hand motions that match each rule. Most importantly, the hand motions engage the whole child. The class rules and class culture you put in place will affect the other management strategies you have.
Set Predictable Classroom Routines
Next, you need to set up regular routines in the classroom. Routine means that your students know exactly what to do and what is expected of them. You need them to be predictable and familiar. Students thrive on patterns of predictability. And, it’s best for instruction and learning.
Set up routines within your lessons. You can set up a Repeat After Me routine where students can practice saying key words and phrases. You can start by saying “Class, repeat after me: A noun is a person, place, or thing.” I personally love Using Turn and Talk in the Classroom. This allows students to apply the skill being taught and gives them an opportunity to develop speaking and listening skills.
Set up how students transition from one activity to the next. For me, I have Sit Spots on my carpet. If I’m passing out papers or materials, I have one row stand up and I hand each student in that row a paper. Those students walk to their desk as the next row stands up. This keeps the number of students walking around the classroom to a minimum, and it avoids the issue of a student not getting their materials.
Manage Activities by Reviewing Expectations
Ok- you have a few instructional and practice procedures in place. However you can’t expect the students will do it perfectly each time. You’ll need to review the expectations. You’re not re-explaining; you’re reviewing known expectations. The best way to do this is to think of 1-5 steps expectations for what the students need to do. And visuals are always great!
We use whiteboards a lot for skill practice and quick checks. I teach a 5-step process that sets the expectation how students should be doing and behaving. Before getting out materials, we review How to Use Whiteboards in the Classroom. I have students stand and we do the hand motions that go with each step. And that takes about 15 seconds. After that, the students get their materials and we are ready to start.
Another idea is to ask example versus nonexample questions. Here are some examples: Should I see all students following directions quickly? Are we allowed to run in the classroom during indoor recess?
Reviewing expectations makes your teaching time so much more effective and practice more meaningful when students know what to do.
The systems you place for your students will drive how your classroom operates. It will determine how meaningful your instruction and practice time is. It will keep your running smoothly and thus more learning can take place!
What are some systems for students you need to put in place? What visuals should you use for those systems?
