Classroom Management Plan

My Plan for Classroom Management

Classroom Management is one of the hardest things to do for a teacher. It is not something that can be accomplished, but is something that has to be worked on every day as long as you are a teacher. I have seen many different ideas for classroom management in the rooms that I have worked in over the last 3 years. Depending on what grade you teach your management strategies will have to be different. I will be discussing my ideas for a lower elementary classroom.
The beginning of the year is the most crucial time for getting your classroom management plans into place. I will talk about three things that are essential for a classroom to be managed; rules and consequences, positive behavioral supports, and going over procedures. All of these things will need to be started at the beginning of the school year.

The first classroom management strategy that I am going to talk about need to be done on the first day of school. It is getting the classroom rules into place. I will talk to my students and have them help me make up the rules. I will have between 3-7 rules. We will write all the rules and ideas that they have on the board and then after every ones ideas are on the board we will discuss them and make our final draft. This way I can put the ideas that are similar into one rule. So the "no hitting' and the 'no kicking' can be put into one rule; Keep your hands to yourself. I think that having the students help you with making the rules will help them feel more responsible for them and feel that they are apart of the rules and will want to follow them.
After we make up our rules then we will go over the consequences for not following the rules. In a younger classroom I will use the card system. Everyone will have a pocket with 5 cards in them. Each card will be a different color. When a student misbehaves and does not follow a classroom rule, then they will have to switch a card. Each card will have a different consequence and the last card will be that the student will have to call their parents.

The next classroom management strategy that I will discuss is Positive Behavioral Supports (PBS). After discussing the rules and consequences then I will tell them about our marble jar. I will explain to the students that sometimes we make bad choices and we have to flip cards. But I want to see them making good choices and I will recognize this by having them put a marble in our PBS jar. The consequences for making a bad decision are individual, but the PBS that I am going to use is for the whole class. Every time that I "catch someone being good" then I will ask them to put a marble in the jar. When we fill up the entire jar with marbles then our whole classroom will get to have a party. Before you start the marble jar you can discuss with the students what kind of party they want to have.
This will help the kids want to make good choices. I have also found that the kids in the class put peer pressure on each other to be good so that they can get a marble. With everyone working together to make good choices hopefully the bad choices will be minimal.

The last classroom management strategy that I am going to discuss is going over procedures. This is yet again something that needs to be done at the beginning of the year. If you want your classroom to work smoothly then you need to be sure that the students know exactly what you expect of them. So when you go over everyday procedures like going to the bathroom then you have to show the students exactly what you want them to do as you tell them. Then you need to have the students get up and practice. So modeling and practicing are key. Since most of these procedures will be new to the students then the teacher will need to remind the students of them periodically and if a student does not follow the procedure then remind them how to do it and ask them to try it again. This way the students will have time to practice.

There are many many many other classroom management strategies, but I feel that going over the rules and consequences, PBS, and the procedures will be a great start to getting your classroom organized and ready for the rest of the year. My plan is to be very flexible and change things when I see that they do not work. Since classroom management is an ongoing issue for teachers I want to look at other teachers ideas and see what works and does not work for them. Then I can have more ideas on what to incorporate into my future classroom.