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Creating Interactive Daily Schedules for Google Classroom

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Creating Interactive Daily Schedules for Google Classroom

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by Gabrielle at Loving Little Learners is licensed by Creative Commons — Public Domain Mark 1.0

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Creating Interactive Daily Schedules for Google Classroom

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by Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning is licensed under Creative Commons — Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic — CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Intentional questions, group discussion, and dynamic review can provide students with the time necessary to connect ideas and build larger conceptual understandings (Love 2013). Research suggests that when instructors make explicit connections between ideas and across class sessions, however briefly, students' conceptual understanding and context-transfer rises exponentially (Ambrose 2010). The opening and closing moments of class can be effective moments for such connections.

Examples of Classroom Strategies

Many of the strategies utilized to promote effective "first day" and "last day" sessions of classes apply to the first and last moments of individual class sessions. Classic strategies include Gary Smith's (2008) " First-day Questions for the Learner-Centered Classroom," which gains "student buy-in" by asking them to "assess their own learning" and consider how alternate styles might help them achieve their goals.

The "first five minutes" is often heralded as the most crucial, and underappreciated, moment to promote student motivation and engagement. Instructors can deploy a variety of strategies depending on local class culture (adapted from Lang 2016):

Ask Questions - Instructor presents provocative questions about content or concepts at the beginning of class, which can catch student attention and privilege their contributions to learning before the instructor's. Returning to the same questions throughout class can provide a sense of direction and consistency.

Review Earlier Sessions - Instructor asks students to brainstorm and reconstruct (Lang says "retrieve") previous content and conversations. This method provides purpose across meetings and helps students access prior knowledge.

Reactivate Prior Knowledge - Instructor asks questions, provides brief demonstrations, or asks for elaborations in order to activate student thinking about previous topics. This method helps students build new knowledge upon earlier learning.

Writing Exercises - Instructor guides freewriting, 1- minute paper, or response-to-prompt to help students focus on past and future topics. Following up with think-pair-share activities enhances comprehensive review of materials and promotes class discussion.

Recommendations

There are a number of strategies and tools that instructors can use to engage their students in learning at the beginning of class based on the methods described above as well as other classroom techniques. These tools can be used in tandem with one another or independently.

Anecdotes - Provide a compelling anecdote related to class content. This might be an interesting fact, case, or news story that captures students' attention.

Questions - Present a controversial or compelling question for students to think about related to course content. Instructor can have students write their answers on a note card to be collected later or posed as a clicker question. Students can also carry this out as a Think-Pair-Share exercise. Student responses can be discussed at the start of the class session.

Demonstration - Conduct a class demonstration relevant to the material presented that day.

Summary - Ask students to summarize what they learned last class.

Roadmap - Provide students with a roadmap of the class to scaffold their learning.

Objectives - Present the learning objectives for the class session that day.

In addition, some examples of end-of-class instruction include:

Review - Revisit the class learning objectives.

Summary - Ask students to summarize what they have learned. This might be done initially as a Think-Pair-Share or one-minute paper activity and then as a report back to the class.

Exploring Confusion - Ask students where they may still have points of confusion. For example, an instructor can ask the students to write their "muddiest points," or topics or concepts on which they are still confused, on a note card and collect them. These muddiest points can be discussed during a subsequent class.

Preview - Start preparing students for the next class by giving a preview and connecting what they learned during the present class with material to come.

The downloads section (bottom) features a printable handout version of this web page.

References

Ambrose, S., Bridges, M., Lovett, M., DiPietro, M., & Norman, M (2010). How Learning Works: 7 Research - Based Principles for Smart Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lang, James. Small Changes in Teaching: The First 5 Minutes of Class. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Advice, January 11 2016.

Love, B. (2013). Finishing Strong: End-of-Class Review to Improve Relationships, Measurement, and Learning Outcomes. College Teaching 61: 151-152.

Smith, G. (2008). First-Day Questions for the Learner-Centered Classroom. The National Teaching & Learning Forum 17.5: 1-4.

Wood .D, Bruner J., & Ross G. (1978). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17, 89-100.

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Intentional questions, group discussion, and dynamic review can provide students with the time necessary to connect ideas and build larger conceptual understandings (Love 2013). Research suggests that when instructors make explicit connections between ideas and across class sessions, however briefly, students' conceptual understanding and context-transfer rises exponentially (Ambrose 2010).

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Research-Backed Strategies for Better Classroom Management: 6 Classroom Management Mistakes

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Research-Backed Strategies for Better Classroom Management: 6 Classroom Management Mistakes

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by Edutopia is licensed under Creative Commons — Public Domain Mark 1.0

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Research-Backed Strategies for Better Classroom Management

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Transitions (long version): Management in the Active Classroom

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Transitions (long version): Management in the Active Classroom

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by Lisa Zeller and Deb Ortenzi at EL Education is licensed under Creative Commons — Public Domain Mark 1.0

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Transitions (long version): Management in the Active Classroom

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Lisa Zeller and Deb Ortenzi, seventh-grade teachers at World of Inquiry School in Rochester, New York, plan and implement effective transitions that help their classrooms run smoothly and support their students' independence.

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by The Glossary of Education Reform Great Schools Partnership is licensed under Creative Commons — Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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Classroom management refers to the wide variety of skills and techniques that teachers use to keep students organized, orderly, focused, attentive, on task, and academically productive during a class. When classroom-management strategies are executed effectively, teachers minimize the behaviors that impede learning for both individual students and groups of students, while maximizing the behaviors that facilitate or enhance learning. Generally speaking, effective teachers tend to display strong classroom-management skills, while the hallmark of the inexperienced or less effective teacher is a disorderly classroom filled with students who are not working or paying attention.

While a limited or more traditional interpretation of effective classroom management may focus largely on "compliance"-rules and strategies that teachers may use to make sure students are sitting in their seats, following directions, listening attentively, etc.-a more encompassing or updated view of classroom management extends to everything that teachers may do to facilitate or improve student learning, which would include such factors as behavior (a positive attitude, happy facial expressions, encouraging statements, the respectful and fair treatment of students, etc.), environment (for example, a welcoming, well-lit classroom filled with intellectually stimulating learning materials that's organized to support specific learning activities), expectations (the quality of work that teachers expect students to produce, the ways that teachers expect students to behave toward other students, the agreements that teachers make with students), materials (the types of texts, equipment, and other learning resources that teachers use), or activities (the kinds of learning experiences that teachers design to engage student interests, passions, and intellectual curiosity). Given that poorly designed lessons, uninteresting learning materials, or unclear expectations, for example, could contribute to greater student disinterest, increased behavioral problems, or unruly and disorganized classes, classroom management cannot be easily separated from all the other decisions that teachers make. In this more encompassing view of classroom management, good teaching and good classroom management become, to some degree, indistinguishable.

In practice, classroom-management techniques may appear deceptively simple, but successfully and seamlessly integrating them into the instruction of students typically requires a variety of sophisticated techniques and a significant amount of skill and experience. While the specific techniques used to manage classrooms and facilitate learning can vary widely in terminology, purpose, and execution, the following representative examples-taken from Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College by Doug Lemov-will provide a brief introduction to a few basic classroom-management techniques (NOTE: While the general strategies described below are widely used by teachers, the specific terms in bold are not):

Entry Routine is a technique in which teachers establish a consistent, daily routine that begins as soon as students enter the classroom-preparing learning materials, making seat assignments, passing in homework, or doing a brief physical "warm-up" activity would all be examples of entry routines. This technique can avoid the disorder and squandered time that can characterize the beginning of a class period.

Do Now is a brief written activity that students are given as soon as they arrive in the classroom. This technique is intended to get students settled, focused, productive, and prepared for instruction as quickly as possible.

Tight Transitions is a technique in which teachers establish transition routines that students learn and can execute quickly and repeatedly without much direction from a teacher. For example, a teacher might say "reading time," and students will know that they are expected to stop what they are working on, put away their materials, get their books, and begin reading silently on their own. This technique helps to maximize instructional time by reducing the disarray and delay that might accompany transitions between activities.

Seat Signals is a technique in which students use nonverbal signals while seated to indicate that they need something, such as a new pencil, a restroom break, or help with a problem. This technique establishes expectations for appropriate communication and helps to minimize disruptions during class.

Props is the act of publicly recognizing and praising students who have done something good, such as answering a difficult question or helping a peer. Props is done by the entire class and is typically a short movement or spoken phrase. The technique is intended to establish a group culture in which learning accomplishments and positive actions are socially valued and rewarded.

Nonverbal Intervention is when teachers establish eye contact or make gestures that let students know they are off-task, not paying attention, or misbehaving. The technique helps teachers efficiently and silently manage student behavior without disrupting a lesson.

Positive Group Correction is a quick, affirming verbal reminder that lets a group of students know what they should be doing. Related techniques are Anonymous Individual Correction, a verbal reminder that is directed at an anonymous student; Private Individual Correction, a reminder given to an individual student as discretely as possible; and Lightning-Quick Public Correction, a quick, positive reminder that tells an individual student what to do instead of what not to do.

Do It Again is used when students do not perform a basic task correctly, and the teacher asks them to do it again the correct way. This technique establishes and reinforces consistent expectations for quality work.

Reform

In recent years, classroom management has received an increasing amount of attention from education leaders, reformers, and researchers, who have begun to investigate, analyze, and document the effective strategies used by successful teachers. The growing emphasis on classroom management is based on the general recognition that effective instruction requires effective classroom management, and that strong management skills are the foundation of strong teaching. In addition, there are now more professional-development opportunities related to classroom management being offered to teachers, and there have been discussions about the role of practical teaching techniques in teacher education and certification programs, and about whether such programs have overemphasized education theory at the expense of practical, applied skills that teachers will need in the classroom, such as classroom-management strategies.

Debate

While there is widespread agreement in education that effective classroom management is essential to good teaching, there is often debate about which strategies are most effective, or what is the best way to approach the management of a classroom or other learning environment . For example, some educators might argue that effective classroom management begins with student compliance and classroom orderliness, since learning cannot happen when students are not listening, when they are disobeying the teacher, or when they are disrupting other students in the class. In this case, the teacher needs to establish the behavioral and academic expectations for a class and ensure that students comply with those expectations. Other educators, however, would argue that teachers should approach classroom management by actively involving students in the process. For example, some teachers create common classroom expectations and agreements in collaboration with students. In this case, students play a role in developing the expectations, thereby taking "ownership" over the process, and the teacher then helps the students live up to those expectations by reminding them of the previous agreements they made or by asking the class to reflect on their work and behavior as a group in relation to the agreed-upon expectations-i.e., to identify the areas in which the class is doing well and the areas in which it can improve.

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Classroom management refers to the wide variety of skills and techniques that teachers use to keep students organized, orderly, focused, attentive, on task, and academically productive during a class. When classroom-management strategies are executed effectively, teachers minimize the behaviors that impede learning for both individual students and groups of students, while maximizing the behaviors that [...]

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20 Classroom Management Strategies and Techniques [+ Downloadable List]

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20 Classroom Management Strategies and Techniques [+ Downloadable List]

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by Marcus Guido on the Prodigy Blog, April 10, 2018 is licensed under Creative Commons — Public Domain Mark 1.0

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Paper airplanes fly across the room. Students race between desks. You can't get a word in, as they yell over you.

Disruptive behavior doesn't have to be this dramatic, like a movie scene you'd watch in a media literacy lesson, but poor classroom management will almost assuredly elevate your stress and burnout rates.

Unfortunately, a 2019 report indicates that teachers overwhelmingly report a lack of professional development support in improving classroom management. Despite this unideal situation, there are straightforward and effective classroom management approaches you can implement by yourself. These approaches can enhance prosocial student behavior and academic engagement, establishing an orderly learning environment.

Available as a downloadable list to keep at your desk, below are 20 research-backed classroom management strategies and techniques.

Use the ones that best appeal to your situation and teaching style.

Universal classroom management strategies for educators

These 20 classroom management techniques have shown to improve classroom behavior, build relationships for a better classroom community, and foster a positive classroom environment where student learning is the number one collective goal.

Try these effective classroom management strategies with your students to become a happier, more effective teacher.

1. Model ideal behavior

Make a habit of demonstrating behavior you want to see, as many studies show that modelling effectively teaches students how to act in different situations.

A straightforward way to model certain behaviors is holding a mock conversation with an administrator, other teacher or student helper in front of the class. Talking about a test or other relatable topic, be sure to:

Use polite language

Maintain eye contact

Keep phones in your pockets

Let one another speak uninterrupted

Raise concerns about one another's statements in a respectful manner

After, start a class discussion to list and expand upon the ideal behaviors you exemplified.

2. Let students help establish guidelines

Encourage all students to help you build classroom expectations and rules, as you'll generate more buy-in than just telling them what they're not allowed to do.

This is especially essential for new teachers. Near the start of the school year or during the first day of a semester, start a discussion by asking students what they believe should and shouldn't fly in terms of appropriate behavior.

At what points are phones okay and not okay? What are acceptable noise levels during lessons?

This may seem like you're setting yourself up for failure, but -- depending on the makeup of your class -- you may be shocked at the strictness of some proposed rules. Regardless, having a discussion should lead to mutually-understood and -respected expectations for your classroom culture.

3. Document rules
Don't let your mutually-respected guidelines go forgotten.
Similar to handing out a syllabus, print and distribute the list of rules that the class discussion generated. Then, go through the list with your students. Doing this emphasizes the fact that you respect their ideas and intend to adhere to them. And when a student breaks a rule, it'll be easy for you to point to this document.

You'll likely want to post these rules up in your classroom - if you haven't already - for occasional reference. If you're feeling creative, you can include the rule list in a student handbook with important dates, events and curriculum information, too.

4. Avoid punishing the class

Address isolated discipline problems individually instead of punishing an entire class, as the latter can hurt your relationships with students who are on-task and thereby jeopardize other classroom management efforts.

Instead, call out specific students in a friendly manner. For example:

"Do you have a question?", not "Stop talking and disrupting other students"

"Do you need help focusing?", not "Pay attention and stop fooling around while I'm talking"

This basic approach will allow you to keep a friendly disposition, while immediately acknowledging inappropriate behavior.

5. Encourage initiative

Promote growth mindset, and inject variety into your lessons, by allowing students to work ahead and deliver short presentations to share take-away points. Almost inevitably, you'll have some eager learners in your classroom. You can simply ask them if they'd like to get ahead from time-to-time.

For example, if you're reading a specific chapter in a textbook, propose that they read the following one too. When they deliver their subsequent presentations to preview the next chapter on your behalf, you may find that other students want a bit more work as well.

6. Offer praise

Praise students for jobs well done, as doing so improves academic and behavioral performance, according to a recent research review and study.

When it is sincere and references specific examples of effort or accomplishment, praise can:

Inspire the class

Improve a student's self-esteem

Reinforce rules and values you want to see

Perhaps more importantly, it encourages students to repeat positive behavior. Let's say a student exemplifies advanced problem-solving skills when tackling a math word problem. Praising his or her use of specific tactics should go a long way in ensuring he or she continues to use these tactics. Not to mention, you'll motivate other students to do the same.

7. Use non-verbal communication

Complement words with actions and visual aids to improve content delivery, helping students focus and process lessons.

Many differentiated instruction strategies and techniques are rooted in these communication methods. For example, running learning stations -- divided sections of your classroom through which students rotate -- allows you to deliver a range of non-spoken content types. These include videos, infographics and physical objects such as counting coins.

8. Hold parties

Throw an occasional classroom party to acknowledge students' hard work, motivating them to keep it up.

Even if it's just for 20 or 30 minutes, they should be happy with snacks and a selection of group games to play. Clarify that you're holding the party to reward them and they can earn future parties by demonstrating ideal behavior, collectively scoring high on assessments and more.

9. Give tangible rewards

Reward specific students at the end of each lesson, in front of the class, as another motivational and behavior-reinforcement technique.

Let's say a few students are actively listening throughout the entire lesson, answering questions and asking their own. Before the class ends, walk over to their desks to give them raffle tickets. So others can learn, state aloud what each student did to earn the tickets. On Friday, they can submit their tickets for a shot at a prize that changes each week -- from candy to being able to choose a game for the next class party.

10. Make positive letters and phone calls

Keep students happy in and out of class by pleasantly surprising their parents, making positive phone calls and sending complimentary letters home.

When the occasion arises, from academic effort or behavioral progress, letting parents know has a trickle-down effect. They'll generally congratulate their kids; their kids will likely come to class eager to earn more positive feedback. This can also entice parents to grow more invested in a child's learning, opening the door to at-home lessons. Such lessons are a mainstay element of culturally-responsive teaching.

11. Build excitement for content and lesson plans

This one works well no matter the grade level: elementary school, middle school or high school. Start lessons by previewing particularly-exciting parts, hooking student interest from the get-go.

As the bell rings and students settle, go through an agenda of the day's highlights for the whole class. These could include group tasks, engaging bits of content and anything else to pique curiosity. For example, "Throughout the day, you'll learn about:"

How to talk like you're a teacher (sentence structure)

Why you don't know anyone who's won the lottery (probability)

What all the presidents of the United States have had in common (social analysis)

The goal of this classroom management technique is to immediately interest students in your agenda and thereby dissuade misbehavior.

12. Offer different types of free study time

Provide a range of activities during free study time to appeal to students who struggle to process content in silence, individually.

You can do this by dividing your class into clearly-sectioned solo and team activities. In separate sections, consider:

Providing audiobooks, which can play material relevant to your lessons

Maintaining a designated quiet space for students to take notes and complete work

Creating a station for challenging group games that teach or reinforce standards-aligned skills

Allowing students to work in groups while taking notes and completing work, away from quiet zones

By running these sorts of activities, free study time will begin to benefit diverse learners. This should contribute to overall classroom engagement.

13. Write group contracts

Help student group work run smoothly and effectively by writing contracts that contain guidelines, having everyone sign.

Group contracts should be based on expectations that students have for each other, and you have for them. You can gather the class's thoughts by holding a discussion about what the ideal group member does, and how he or she acts. Once you've written the contract, encourage students to come up with consequences for violating expectations.

By having them sign a fresh version of the contract before each group task and project, you're empowering them to hold each other accountable.

14. Assign open-ended projects

Encourage students to tackle open-ended projects -- projects that don't demand a specific product -- to allow them to demonstrate knowledge in ways that inherently suit them.

This starts by giving the class a list of broad project ideas, asking each student to choose one. Be sure to provide a rubric for each project that clearly defines expectations. By both enticing and challenging students, you should notice they'll:

Work and learn at their own paces

Engage actively with appropriate content

Demonstrate knowledge as effectively as possible

With these benefits, students may actually look forward to taking on new projects.

15. Give only two scores for informal assessments

Recall a time you saw a big "F" in red ink on your work. You were probably too upset to review mistakes and feedback, and so are your students when they see the same.
So, consider avoiding standard marks on informal and formative assessments.
Instead, just state if a student did or did not meet expectations. Then, provide struggling students with a clear path to improve. For example, pair classmates who didn't meet expectations with those who did, giving them a review and practice activity. When strugglers are confident they understand key concepts, encourage them to tell you. Provide a new assessment, allowing them to prove their competency.

Classroom management strategies for individual students

16. Use EdTech that adjusts to each student

Give students who struggle to process your content opportunities to try educational technology that adapts to their needs.

There are many games and platforms that use adaptive learning principles to detect a given student's skill deficits, serving him or her content to help overcome them. For example, Prodigy Math Game is a game that adjusts its content to help students address their trouble spots. It also offers feedback to help them solve specific mistakes, as they answer questions that use words, charts, pictures and numbers. More than one million teachers currently use Prodigy, as it's aligned with curricula across several English-speaking countries.
Try the free platform by signing up below:

17. Interview students

Interview students who aren't academically engaged or displaying prosocial behavior to learn how to better manage them.

While running learning stations or a large-group activity, pull each student aside for a few minutes. Ask about:

What helps them focus

Who they work well with

Their favorite types of lessons

Their favorite in-class activities

Which kinds of exercises help them remember key lesson points

Note their answers to come up with activities and approaches that engage them, thereby limiting classroom disruptions.

18. Address inappropriate or off-task behavior quickly

Avoid hesitation when you must address inappropriate or off-task behavior, especially when a student breaks a documented rule.

Acting sooner than later will help ensure that negative feelings -- whether between students or you and a student -- won't fester. Failure to act can result in more poor behavior, leading to needlessly-difficult conversations.

But keep in mind: It's usually best to talk to the student in private. Research shows that punishing students in front of peers has "limited value."

19. Consider peer teaching

Use peer teaching as a classroom management strategy if you feel your top performers can help engage and educate disruptive and struggling students.

Peer teaching activities, such as pairing students together as reading buddies, can be especially beneficial for students who suffer from low confidence and poor interpersonal skills.

Authoritative research states tutors improve self-esteem and interpersonal skills by giving feedback. Tutees realize benefits because they can ask questions and receive immediate clarification. A later study of at-risk students echoes these advantages. Although you should spend time teaching peer tutors how to properly communicate with tutees, you'll likely find the benefits are worth the work.

20. Gamify personal learning plans

Motivate students on personal learning plans by gamifying those plans, as studies -- such as recent research from South Korea-- indicate this will continuously engage and incentivize them.

Consider gamification strategies such as:

Adjusting your scoring system -- Give experience points (XP) -- along with traditional scores -- on tests and assignments, setting a goal for the student to reach a certain amount of XP per unit. For example, if a student scores 60% on a quiz, give him or her 6,000 XP. You can also award XP for completing extra assignments, participating in class or anything else that shows effort to learn.

Using stages -- Refer to topics and units as stages. The former terms have clear connotations for you, but students may not see how they fit together. If they're gamers, they'll understand that reaching the next stage requires overcoming precursory challenges. Emphasize this by framing certain tasks as prerequisites to reach the next learning stage.

If these strategies work especially well for individual students, you should see similar success by using them as class-wide student management techniques.

Downloadable list of classroom management strategies for teachers

Click here to download a simplified list of the above classroom management strategies and techniques to print and keep at your desk.

Classroom management strategies infographic

Below is an infographic based on this article, helping you deploy these classroom management strategies at your own school!

Click to expand! Created by Venngage Infographics that recently launched its own banner maker.

Classroom management FAQs

What is the best classroom management style?

According to Diana Baumrind's work, a clinical psychologist known for her research on parenting styles, some educators believe an authoritative classroom management style may the best one. This type of high control, high involvement classroom management style is characterized by strong expectations of appropriate behavior, clear understandings of why certain behaviors are acceptable and others not acceptable, and warm student-teacher relationships.

However, there is no specific approach that has been proven to be the most effective. So you may wish to review The Classroom Management Book by Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong which includes a variety of solutions that can be easily implemented. Every group of students has varying needs and will likely need a unique approach to help every student bring his or her best self to the classroom and be ready-to-learn every single day.

What are the four components of classroom management?

Implementing the top four components of classroom management from the start will set you and your students up for success all year long. They are:

Classroom design - be intentional about how you set up your desk, your students' desks, bulletin board displays, devices and other aspects of your classroom. Thoughtful classroom design can help create a safe and welcoming learning environment.

Rules/discipline - to create a safe and caring school community, develop classroom rules your students understand and - hopefully - respect. While it may not be fun, be sure to communicate that breaking classroom rules will have concrete yet fair consequences.

Scheduling/organization - being on time, keeping on task and staying organized will help set up your lessons (and your students' learning) up for success.

Instructional technique - while you may not have the flexibility you'd like when it comes to content and curriculum, you should have the freedom to choose how you teach. For example, 8th grade students may prefer a lecture-style lesson with small group discussions while 3rd grade students may prefer learning math with a digital game-based learning platform. Observe how your students learn best and use the classroom management strategies and techniques to teach your lessons.

Why is classroom management so important?

When done effectively, classroom management is important for three main reasons. It:

1. Creates and sustains an orderly learning environment in the classroom

2. Improves meaningful academic learning and fosters social-emotional growth

3. Increases students' academic engagement and lowers negative classroom behavior

Final thoughts about these classroom management strategies

These class-wide and one-on-one approaches to classroom management largely work across subjects and grade levels. Implementable without admin and parent support, they should empower you to establish an orderly -- yet friendly and engaging -- environment.

Look forward to better teacher-to-student and student-to-student interactions as a result. Create or log in to your free teacher account on Prodigy. Aligned with curricula across the English-speaking world, it's loved by more than a million teachers and 100 million students.

Paper airplanes fly across the room. Students race between desks. You can't get a word in, as they yell over you.

Disruptive behavior doesn't have to be this dramatic, like a movie scene you'd watch in a media literacy lesson, but poor classroom management will almost assuredly elevate your stress and burnout rates.

Unfortunately, a 2019 report indicates that teachers overwhelmingly report a lack of professional development support in improving classroom management. Despite this unideal situation, there are straightforward and effective classroom management approaches you can implement by yourself. These approaches can enhance prosocial student behavior and academic engagement, establishing an orderly learning environment.

Available as a downloadable list to keep at your desk, below are 20 research-backed classroom management strategies and techniques.

Use the ones that best appeal to your situation and teaching style.

Universal classroom management strategies for educators

These 20 classroom management techniques have shown to improve classroom behavior, build relationships for a better classroom community, and foster a positive classroom environment where student learning is the number one collective goal.

Try these effective classroom management strategies with your students to become a happier, more effective teacher.

1. Model ideal behavior

Make a habit of demonstrating behavior you want to see, as many studies show that modelling effectively teaches students how to act in different situations.

A straightforward way to model certain behaviors is holding a mock conversation with an administrator, other teacher or student helper in front of the class. Talking about a test or other relatable topic, be sure to:

Use polite language

Maintain eye contact

Keep phones in your pockets

Let one another speak uninterrupted

Raise concerns about one another's statements in a respectful manner

After, start a class discussion to list and expand upon the ideal behaviors you exemplified.

2. Let students help establish guidelines

Encourage all students to help you build classroom expectations and rules, as you'll generate more buy-in than just telling them what they're not allowed to do.

This is especially essential for new teachers. Near the start of the school year or during the first day of a semester, start a discussion by asking students what they believe should and shouldn't fly in terms of appropriate behavior.

At what points are phones okay and not okay? What are acceptable noise levels during lessons?

This may seem like you're setting yourself up for failure, but -- depending on the makeup of your class -- you may be shocked at the strictness of some proposed rules. Regardless, having a discussion should lead to mutually-understood and -respected expectations for your classroom culture.

3. Document rules
Don't let your mutually-respected guidelines go forgotten.
Similar to handing out a syllabus, print and distribute the list of rules that the class discussion generated. Then, go through the list with your students. Doing this emphasizes the fact that you respect their ideas and intend to adhere to them. And when a student breaks a rule, it'll be easy for you to point to this document.

You'll likely want to post these rules up in your classroom - if you haven't already - for occasional reference. If you're feeling creative, you can include the rule list in a student handbook with important dates, events and curriculum information, too.

4. Avoid punishing the class

Address isolated discipline problems individually instead of punishing an entire class, as the latter can hurt your relationships with students who are on-task and thereby jeopardize other classroom management efforts.

Instead, call out specific students in a friendly manner. For example:

"Do you have a question?", not "Stop talking and disrupting other students"

"Do you need help focusing?", not "Pay attention and stop fooling around while I'm talking"

This basic approach will allow you to keep a friendly disposition, while immediately acknowledging inappropriate behavior.

5. Encourage initiative

Promote growth mindset, and inject variety into your lessons, by allowing students to work ahead and deliver short presentations to share take-away points. Almost inevitably, you'll have some eager learners in your classroom. You can simply ask them if they'd like to get ahead from time-to-time.

For example, if you're reading a specific chapter in a textbook, propose that they read the following one too. When they deliver their subsequent presentations to preview the next chapter on your behalf, you may find that other students want a bit more work as well.

6. Offer praise

Praise students for jobs well done, as doing so improves academic and behavioral performance, according to a recent research review and study.

When it is sincere and references specific examples of effort or accomplishment, praise can:

Inspire the class

Improve a student's self-esteem

Reinforce rules and values you want to see

Perhaps more importantly, it encourages students to repeat positive behavior. Let's say a student exemplifies advanced problem-solving skills when tackling a math word problem. Praising his or her use of specific tactics should go a long way in ensuring he or she continues to use these tactics. Not to mention, you'll motivate other students to do the same.

7. Use non-verbal communication

Complement words with actions and visual aids to improve content delivery, helping students focus and process lessons.

Many differentiated instruction strategies and techniques are rooted in these communication methods. For example, running learning stations -- divided sections of your classroom through which students rotate -- allows you to deliver a range of non-spoken content types. These include videos, infographics and physical objects such as counting coins.

8. Hold parties

Throw an occasional classroom party to acknowledge students' hard work, motivating them to keep it up.

Even if it's just for 20 or 30 minutes, they should be happy with snacks and a selection of group games to play. Clarify that you're holding the party to reward them and they can earn future parties by demonstrating ideal behavior, collectively scoring high on assessments and more.

9. Give tangible rewards

Reward specific students at the end of each lesson, in front of the class, as another motivational and behavior-reinforcement technique.

Let's say a few students are actively listening throughout the entire lesson, answering questions and asking their own. Before the class ends, walk over to their desks to give them raffle tickets. So others can learn, state aloud what each student did to earn the tickets. On Friday, they can submit their tickets for a shot at a prize that changes each week -- from candy to being able to choose a game for the next class party.

10. Make positive letters and phone calls

Keep students happy in and out of class by pleasantly surprising their parents, making positive phone calls and sending complimentary letters home.

When the occasion arises, from academic effort or behavioral progress, letting parents know has a trickle-down effect. They'll generally congratulate their kids; their kids will likely come to class eager to earn more positive feedback. This can also entice parents to grow more invested in a child's learning, opening the door to at-home lessons. Such lessons are a mainstay element of culturally-responsive teaching.

11. Build excitement for content and lesson plans

This one works well no matter the grade level: elementary school, middle school or high school. Start lessons by previewing particularly-exciting parts, hooking student interest from the get-go.

As the bell rings and students settle, go through an agenda of the day's highlights for the whole class. These could include group tasks, engaging bits of content and anything else to pique curiosity. For example, "Throughout the day, you'll learn about:"

How to talk like you're a teacher (sentence structure)

Why you don't know anyone who's won the lottery (probability)

What all the presidents of the United States have had in common (social analysis)

The goal of this classroom management technique is to immediately interest students in your agenda and thereby dissuade misbehavior.

12. Offer different types of free study time

Provide a range of activities during free study time to appeal to students who struggle to process content in silence, individually.

You can do this by dividing your class into clearly-sectioned solo and team activities. In separate sections, consider:

Providing audiobooks, which can play material relevant to your lessons

Maintaining a designated quiet space for students to take notes and complete work

Creating a station for challenging group games that teach or reinforce standards-aligned skills

Allowing students to work in groups while taking notes and completing work, away from quiet zones

By running these sorts of activities, free study time will begin to benefit diverse learners. This should contribute to overall classroom engagement.

13. Write group contracts

Help student group work run smoothly and effectively by writing contracts that contain guidelines, having everyone sign.

Group contracts should be based on expectations that students have for each other, and you have for them. You can gather the class's thoughts by holding a discussion about what the ideal group member does, and how he or she acts. Once you've written the contract, encourage students to come up with consequences for violating expectations.

By having them sign a fresh version of the contract before each group task and project, you're empowering them to hold each other accountable.

14. Assign open-ended projects

Encourage students to tackle open-ended projects -- projects that don't demand a specific product -- to allow them to demonstrate knowledge in ways that inherently suit them.

This starts by giving the class a list of broad project ideas, asking each student to choose one. Be sure to provide a rubric for each project that clearly defines expectations. By both enticing and challenging students, you should notice they'll:

Work and learn at their own paces

Engage actively with appropriate content

Demonstrate knowledge as effectively as possible

With these benefits, students may actually look forward to taking on new projects.

15. Give only two scores for informal assessments

Recall a time you saw a big "F" in red ink on your work. You were probably too upset to review mistakes and feedback, and so are your students when they see the same.
So, consider avoiding standard marks on informal and formative assessments.
Instead, just state if a student did or did not meet expectations. Then, provide struggling students with a clear path to improve. For example, pair classmates who didn't meet expectations with those who did, giving them a review and practice activity. When strugglers are confident they understand key concepts, encourage them to tell you. Provide a new assessment, allowing them to prove their competency.

Classroom management strategies for individual students

16. Use EdTech that adjusts to each student

Give students who struggle to process your content opportunities to try educational technology that adapts to their needs.

There are many games and platforms that use adaptive learning principles to detect a given student's skill deficits, serving him or her content to help overcome them. For example, Prodigy Math Game is a game that adjusts its content to help students address their trouble spots. It also offers feedback to help them solve specific mistakes, as they answer questions that use words, charts, pictures and numbers. More than one million teachers currently use Prodigy, as it's aligned with curricula across several English-speaking countries.
Try the free platform by signing up below:

17. Interview students

Interview students who aren't academically engaged or displaying prosocial behavior to learn how to better manage them.

While running learning stations or a large-group activity, pull each student aside for a few minutes. Ask about:

What helps them focus

Who they work well with

Their favorite types of lessons

Their favorite in-class activities

Which kinds of exercises help them remember key lesson points

Note their answers to come up with activities and approaches that engage them, thereby limiting classroom disruptions.

18. Address inappropriate or off-task behavior quickly

Avoid hesitation when you must address inappropriate or off-task behavior, especially when a student breaks a documented rule.

Acting sooner than later will help ensure that negative feelings -- whether between students or you and a student -- won't fester. Failure to act can result in more poor behavior, leading to needlessly-difficult conversations.

But keep in mind: It's usually best to talk to the student in private. Research shows that punishing students in front of peers has "limited value."

19. Consider peer teaching

Use peer teaching as a classroom management strategy if you feel your top performers can help engage and educate disruptive and struggling students.

Peer teaching activities, such as pairing students together as reading buddies, can be especially beneficial for students who suffer from low confidence and poor interpersonal skills.

Authoritative research states tutors improve self-esteem and interpersonal skills by giving feedback. Tutees realize benefits because they can ask questions and receive immediate clarification. A later study of at-risk students echoes these advantages. Although you should spend time teaching peer tutors how to properly communicate with tutees, you'll likely find the benefits are worth the work.

20. Gamify personal learning plans

Motivate students on personal learning plans by gamifying those plans, as studies -- such as recent research from South Korea-- indicate this will continuously engage and incentivize them.

Consider gamification strategies such as:

Adjusting your scoring system -- Give experience points (XP) -- along with traditional scores -- on tests and assignments, setting a goal for the student to reach a certain amount of XP per unit. For example, if a student scores 60% on a quiz, give him or her 6,000 XP. You can also award XP for completing extra assignments, participating in class or anything else that shows effort to learn.

Using stages -- Refer to topics and units as stages. The former terms have clear connotations for you, but students may not see how they fit together. If they're gamers, they'll understand that reaching the next stage requires overcoming precursory challenges. Emphasize this by framing certain tasks as prerequisites to reach the next learning stage.

If these strategies work especially well for individual students, you should see similar success by using them as class-wide student management techniques.

Downloadable list of classroom management strategies for teachers

Click here to download a simplified list of the above classroom management strategies and techniques to print and keep at your desk.

Classroom management strategies infographic

Below is an infographic based on this article, helping you deploy these classroom management strategies at your own school!

Click to expand! Created by Venngage Infographics that recently launched its own banner maker.

Classroom management FAQs

What is the best classroom management style?

According to Diana Baumrind's work, a clinical psychologist known for her research on parenting styles, some educators believe an authoritative classroom management style may the best one. This type of high control, high involvement classroom management style is characterized by strong expectations of appropriate behavior, clear understandings of why certain behaviors are acceptable and others not acceptable, and warm student-teacher relationships.

However, there is no specific approach that has been proven to be the most effective. So you may wish to review The Classroom Management Book by Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong which includes a variety of solutions that can be easily implemented. Every group of students has varying needs and will likely need a unique approach to help every student bring his or her best self to the classroom and be ready-to-learn every single day.

What are the four components of classroom management?

Implementing the top four components of classroom management from the start will set you and your students up for success all year long. They are:

Classroom design - be intentional about how you set up your desk, your students' desks, bulletin board displays, devices and other aspects of your classroom. Thoughtful classroom design can help create a safe and welcoming learning environment.

Rules/discipline - to create a safe and caring school community, develop classroom rules your students understand and - hopefully - respect. While it may not be fun, be sure to communicate that breaking classroom rules will have concrete yet fair consequences.

Scheduling/organization - being on time, keeping on task and staying organized will help set up your lessons (and your students' learning) up for success.

Instructional technique - while you may not have the flexibility you'd like when it comes to content and curriculum, you should have the freedom to choose how you teach. For example, 8th grade students may prefer a lecture-style lesson with small group discussions while 3rd grade students may prefer learning math with a digital game-based learning platform. Observe how your students learn best and use the classroom management strategies and techniques to teach your lessons.

Why is classroom management so important?

When done effectively, classroom management is important for three main reasons. It:

1. Creates and sustains an orderly learning environment in the classroom

2. Improves meaningful academic learning and fosters social-emotional growth

3. Increases students' academic engagement and lowers negative classroom behavior

Final thoughts about these classroom management strategies

These class-wide and one-on-one approaches to classroom management largely work across subjects and grade levels. Implementable without admin and parent support, they should empower you to establish an orderly -- yet friendly and engaging -- environment.

Look forward to better teacher-to-student and student-to-student interactions as a result. Create or log in to your free teacher account on Prodigy. Aligned with curricula across the English-speaking world, it's loved by more than a million teachers and 100 million students.

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20 Classroom Management Strategies and Techniques [+ Downloadable List]

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Paper airplanes fly across the room. Students race between desks. You can't get a word in, as they yell over you. Disruptive behavior doesn't have to be this dramatic, like a movie scene you'd watch in a media literacy lesson, but poor classroom management will almost assuredly elevate your stress and burnout rates.

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Educational Psychology: Chapter 8, Classroom Management and the Learning Environment

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Educational Psychology: Chapter 8, Classroom Management and the Learning Environment

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by Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton, PressBooks is licensed under Creative Commons — Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International — CC BY-NC 4.0

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This is an excerpt from a professional journal kept by one of us (Kelvin Seifert) when he was teaching kindergarten:

20xx-11-14: Today my student Carol sat in the circle, watching others while we all played Duck, Duck, Goose (in this game, one student is outside the circle, tags another student who then chases the first person around the circle). Carol's turn had already passed. Apparently she was bored, because she flopped on her back, smiling broadly, rolling around luxuriously on the floor in the path of the other runners. Several classmates noticed her, smiled or giggled, began flopping down as well. One chaser tripped over a "flopper".
"Sit up, Carol", said I, the ever-vigilant teacher. "You're in the way." But no result. I repeated this twice, firmly; then moved to pick her up. Instantly Carol ran to the far side of the gym, still smiling broadly. Then her best friend ran off with her. Now a whole new game was launched, or really two games: "Run-from-the-teacher" and "Enjoy-being-watched-by-everybody". A lot more exciting, unfortunately, than Duck, Duck, Goose!
An excerpt from Kelvin's same journal several years later, when he was teaching math in high school:
20xx-3-4: The same four students sat in the back again today, as usual. They seem to look in every direction except at me, even when I'm explaining material that they need to know. The way they smile and whisper to each other, it seems almost like they are "in love" with each other, though I can't be sure who loves whom the most. Others-students not part of the foursome-seem to react variously. Some seem annoyed, turn the other way, avoid talking with the group, and so on. But others seem almost envious-as if they want to be part of the "in" group, too, and were impressed with the foursome's ability to get away with being inattentive and almost rude. Either way, I think a lot of other students are being distracted.
Twice during the period today, I happened to notice members of the group passing a note, and then giggling and looking at me. By the end, I had had enough of this sort of thing, so I kept them in briefly after class and asked one of them to read the note. They looked a bit embarrassed and hesitant, but eventually one of them opened the note and read it out loud. "Choose one", it said. "Mr Seifert looks (1) old , (2) stupid , or (3) clueless ."

Kelvin's experiences in managing these very different classrooms taught him what every teacher knows or else quickly learns: management matters a lot. But his experiences also taught him that management is about more than correcting the misbehaviors of individuals, more than just discipline. Classroom management is also about orchestrating or coordinating entire sets or sequences of learning activities so that everyone, misbehaving or not, learns as easily and productively as possible. Educators sometimes therefore describe good management as the creation of a positive learning environment, because the term calls attention to the totality of activities and people in a classroom, as well as to their goals and expectations about learning (Jones & Jones, 2007). When one of us (Kelvin) was teaching, he used both terms almost interchangeably, though in speaking of management he more often was referring to individual students' behavior and learning, and in speaking of the learning environment he more often meant the overall "feel" of the class as a whole.

Why classroom management matters

Managing the learning environment is both a major responsibility and an on-going concern for all teachers, even those with years of experience (Good & Brophy, 2002). There are several reasons. In the first place, a lot goes on in classrooms simultaneously, even when students seem to be doing only one task in common. Twenty-five students may all seem to be working on a sheet of math problems. But look more closely: several may be stuck on a particular problem, each for different reasons. A few others have worked only the first problem or two and are now chatting quietly with each other instead of continuing. Still others have finished and are wondering what to do next. At any one moment each student needs something different-different information, different hints, different kinds of encouragement. Such diversity increases even more if the teacher deliberately assigns multiple activities to different groups or individuals (for example, if some students do a reading assignment while others do the math problems).

Another reason that managing the environment is challenging is because a teacher can not predict everything that will happen in a class. A well-planned lesson may fall flat on its face, or take less time than expected, and you find yourself improvising to fill class time. On the other hand an unplanned moment may become a wonderful, sustained exchange among students, and prompt you to drop previous plans and follow the flow of discussion. Interruptions happen continually: a fire drill, a drop-in visit from another teacher or the principal, a call on the intercom from the office. An activity may indeed turn out well, but also rather differently than you intended; you therefore have to decide how, if at all, to adjust the next day's lesson to allow for this surprise.

A third reason for the importance of management is that students form opinions and perceptions about your teaching that are inconsistent with your own. What you intend as encouragement for a shy student may seem to the student herself like "forced participation". An eager, outgoing classmate watching your effort to encourage the shy student, moreover, may not see you as either encouraging or coercing, but as overlooking or ignoring other students who already want to participate. The variety of perceptions can lead to surprises in students' responses-most often small ones, but occasionally major.

At the broadest, society-wide level, classroom management challenges teachers because public schooling is not voluntary, and students' presence in a classroom is therefore not a sign, in and of itself, that they wish to learn. Instead, students' presence is just a sign that an opportunity exists for teachers to motivate students to learn. Some students, of course, do enjoy learning and being in school, almost regardless of what teachers do! Others do enjoy school, but only because teachers have worked hard to make classroom life pleasant and interesting. Those students become motivated because you have successfully created a positive learning environment and have sustained it through skillful management.

Fortunately it is possible to earn this sort of commitment from many students, and this chapter describes ways of doing so. We begin with ways of preventing management problems from happening by increasing students' focus on learning. The methods include ideas about arranging classroom space, about establishing procedures, routines, and rules, and about communicating the importance of learning to students and parents. After these prevention oriented discussions, we look at ways of re focusing students when and if their minds or actions stray from the tasks at hand. As you probably know from being a student, bringing students back on task can happen in many ways, and the ways vary widely in the energy and persistence required of the teacher. We try to indicate some of these variations, but because of space limitations and because of the richness of classroom life, we cannot describe them all.

Preventing management problems by focusing students on learning

The easiest management problems to solve are ones that do not happen in the first place! Even before the school year begins, you can minimize behavior problems by arranging classroom furniture and materials in ways that encourage a focus on learning as much as possible. Later, once school begins, you can establish procedures and rules that support a focus on learning even more.

Arranging classroom space

Viewed broadly, classrooms may seem to be arranged in similar ways, but there are actually important alternative arrangements to consider. Variations exist because of grade level, the subjects taught, the teacher's philosophy of education, and of course the size of the room and the furniture available. Whatever the arrangement that you choose, it should help students to focus on learning tasks as much as possible and minimize the chances of distractions. Beyond these basic principles, however, the "best" arrangement depends on what your students need and on the kind of teaching that you prefer and feel able to provide (Boyner, 2003; Nations & Boyett, 2002). The next sections describe some of the options. In considering them (and before moving too much furniture around your room!), you might want to try experimenting with spatial arrangements "virtually" by using one of the computer programs available on the Internet (see: http://teacher.scholastic.com/tools/class_setup/).

Displays and wall space

All classrooms have walls, of course, and how you fill them can affect the mood or feeling of a classroom. Ample displays make a room interesting and can be used to reinforce curriculum goals and display (and hence publicly recognize) students' work. But too many displays can also make a room seem "busy" or distracting as well as physically smaller. They can also be more work to maintain. If you are starting a new school year, then, a good strategy is to decorate some of the wall or bulletin board space, but not to fill it all immediately. Leaving some space open leaves flexibility to respond to ideas and curriculum needs that emerge after the year is underway. The same advice applies especially for displays that are high maintenance, such as aquariums, pets, and plants. These can serve wonderfully as learning aids, but do not have to be in place on the first day of school. Not only the students, but also you yourself, may already have enough to cope with at that time.

Computers in the classroom

If you are like the majority of teachers, you will have only one computer in your room, or at most just a few, and their placement may be pre-determined by the location of power and cable outlets. If so, you need to think about computer placement early in the process of setting up a room. Once the location of computers is set, locations for desks, high-usage shelves, and other moveable items can be chosen more sensibly-in general, as already mentioned, so as to minimize distractions to students and to avoid unnecessary traffic congestion.

Visibility of and interactions with students

Learning is facilitated if the furniture and space allow you to see all students and to interact with them from a comfortable distance. Usually this means that the main, central part of the room-where desks and tables are usually located-needs to be as open and as spacious as possible. While this idea may seem obvious, enacting it can be challenging in practice if the room itself is small or shaped unusually. In classrooms with young students (kindergarten), furthermore, open spaces tend to allow, if not invite, physical movement of children-a feature that you may consider either constructive or annoying, depending on your educational goals and the actual level of activity that occurs.

Spatial arrangements unique to grade levels or subjects

The best room arrangement sometimes depends on the grade level or subject area of the class. If you teach in elementary school, for example, you may need to think especially about where students can keep their daily belongings, such as coats and lunches. In some schools, these can be kept outside the classroom-but not necessarily. Some subjects and grade levels, furthermore, lend themselves especially well to small group interaction, in which case you might prefer not to seat students in rows, but instead around small-group tables or work areas. The latter arrangement is sometimes preferred by elementary teachers, but is also useful in high schools wherever students need lots of counter space, as in some shops or art courses, or where they need to interact, as in English as a Second Language courses (McCafferty, Jacobs, & Iddings, 2006). The key issue in deciding between tables and rows, however, is not grade level or subject as such, but the amount of small group interaction you want to encourage, compared to the amount of whole-group instruction. As a rule, tables make working with peers easier, and rows make listening to the teacher more likely and group work slightly more awkward physically.

Ironically, some teachers also experience challenges about room arrangement because they do not actually have a classroom of their own, because they must move each day among other teachers' rooms. "Floating" is especially likely for specialized teachers (e.g. music teachers in elementary schools, who move from class to class) and in schools have an overall shortage of classrooms. Floating can sometimes be annoying to the teacher, though it actually also has advantages, such as not having to take responsibility for how other teachers' rooms are arranged. If you find yourself floating, it helps to consider a few key strategies, such as:

consider using a permanent cart to move crucial supplies from room to room

make sure that every one of your rooms has an overhead projector (do not count on using chalkboards or computers in other teachers' rooms)

talk to the other teachers about having at least one shelf or corner in each room designated for your exclusive use

Establishing daily procedures and routines

Procedures or routines are specific ways of doing common, repeated classroom tasks or activities. Examples include checking daily attendance, dealing with students who arrive late, or granting permission to leave the classroom for an errand. Academically related procedures include ways of turning in daily homework (e.g. putting it on a designated shelf at a particular time), of gaining the teacher's attention during quiet seat work (e.g. raising your hand and waiting), and of starting a "free choice" activity after completing a classroom assignment.

Procedures serve the largely practical purpose of making activities and tasks flow smoothly-a valuable and necessary purpose in classrooms, where the actions of many people have to be coordinated within limited time and space. As such, procedures are more like social conventions than like moral expectations. They are only indirectly about what is ethically right or ethically desirable to do (Turiel, 2006). Most procedures or routines can be accomplished in more than one way, with only minor differences in outcomes. There is more than one way, for example, for the procedure of taking attendance: the teacher could call the role, delegate a student to call the role, or note students' presence on a seating chart. Each variation accomplishes essentially the same task, and the choice may be less important than the fact that the class coordinates its actions somehow, by committing to some sort of choice.

For teachers, of course, an initial management task is to establish procedures and routines as promptly as possible. Because of the conventional quality of procedures, some teachers find that it works well simply to announce and explain key procedures without inviting much discussion from students ("Here is how we will choose partners for the group work"). Other teachers prefer to invite input from students when creating procedures (asking the class, "What do you feel is the best way for students to get my attention during a quiet reading time?"). Both approaches have advantages as well as disadvantages. Simply announcing key procedures saves time and insures consistency in case you teach more than one class (as you would in high school). But it puts more responsibility on the teacher to choose procedures that are truly reasonable and practical. Inviting students' input, on the other hand, can help students to become aware of and committed to procedures, but at the cost of requiring more time to settle on them. It also risks creating confusion if you teach multiple classes, each of which adopts different procedures. Whatever approach you choose, of course, they have to take into account any procedures or rules imposed by the school or school district as a whole. A school may have a uniform policy about how to record daily attendance, for example, and that policy may determine, either partly or completely, how you take attendance with your particular students.

Establishing classroom rules

Unlike procedures or routines, rules express standards of behavior for which individual students need to take responsibility. Although they are like procedures in that they sometimes help in insuring the efficiency of classroom tasks, they are really about encouraging students to be responsible for learning and showing respect for each other. Exhibit 8 lists a typical set of classroom rules. Treat others with courtesy and politeness.Make sure to bring required materials to class and to activities.Be on time for class and other activities.Listen to the teacher and to others when they are speaking.Follow all school rules.

Exhibit 8: Sample set of classroom rules

Note three things about the examples in Exhibit 8. One is that the rules are not numerous; the table lists only five. Most educational experts recommend keeping the number of rules to a minimum in order to make them easier to remember (Thorson, 2003; Brophy, 2004). A second feature is that they are stated in positive terms ("Do X...") rather than negative terms ("Do not do Y..."), a strategy that emphasizes and clarifies what students should do rather than what they should avoid. A third feature is that each rule actually covers a collection of more specific behaviors. The rule "Bring all materials to class", for example, covers bringing pencils, paper, textbooks, homework papers, and permission slips-depending on the situation. As a result of their generality, rules often have a degree of ambiguity that sometimes requires interpretation. Infractions may occur that are marginal or "in a grey area", rather than clear cut. A student may bring a pen, for example, but the pen may not work properly. You may therefore wonder whether this incident is really a failure to follow the rule, or just an unfortunate (and in this case minor) fault of the pen manufacturer.

As with classroom procedures, rules can be planned either by the teacher alone, or by the teacher with advice from students. The arguments for each approach are similar to the arguments for procedures: rules "laid on" by the teacher may be more efficient and consistent, and in this sense more fair, but rules influenced by the students may be supported more fully by the students. Because rules focus strongly on personal responsibility, however, there is a stronger case for involving students in making them than in making classroom procedures (Brookfield, 2006; Kohn, 2006). In any case the question of who plans classroom rules is not necessarily an either/or choice. It is possible in principle to impose certain rules on students (for example, "Always be polite to each other") but let the students determine the consequences for violations of certain rules (for example, "If a student is discourteous to a classmate, he/she must apologize to the student in writing"). Some mixture of influences is probably inevitable, in fact, if only because the class needs to take into account your own moral commitments as the teacher as well as any imposed by the school (like "No smoking in the school" or "Always walk in the hallways").

Pacing and structuring lessons and activities

One of the best ways to prevent management problems is by pacing and structuring lessons or activities as smoothly and continuously as possible. This goal depends on three major strategies:

selecting tasks or activities at an appropriate level of difficulty for your students

providing a moderate level of structure or clarity to students about what they are supposed to do, especially during transitions between activities

keeping alert to the flow and interplay of behaviors for the class as a whole and for individuals within it. Each strategy presents special challenges to teachers, but also opportunities for helping students to learn.

Choosing tasks at an appropriate level of difficulty

As experienced teachers know and as research has confirmed, students are most likely to engage with learning when tasks are of moderate difficulty, neither too easy nor too hard and therefore neither boring nor frustrating (Britt, 2005). Finding the right level of difficulty, however, can be a challenge if you have little experience teaching a particular grade level or curriculum, or even if students are simply new to you and their abilities unknown. Whether familiar or not, members of any class are likely to have diverse skills and readiness-a fact that makes it challenging to determine what level of difficulty is appropriate. A common strategy for dealing with these challenges is to begin units, lessons, or projects with tasks that are relatively easy and familiar. Then, introduce more difficult material or tasks gradually until students seem challenged, but not overwhelmed. Following this strategy gives the teacher a chance to observe and diagnose students' learning needs before adjusting content, and it gives students a chance to orient themselves to the teacher's expectations, teaching style, and topic of study without becoming frustrated prematurely. Later in a unit, lesson, or project, students seem better able to deal with more difficult tasks or content (Van Merrionboer, 2003). The principle seems to help as well with "authentic" learning tasks-ones that resemble real-world activities, such as learning to drive an automobile or to cook a meal, and that present a variety of complex tasks simultaneously. Even in those cases it helps to isolate and focus on the simplest subtasks first (such as "put the key in the ignition") and move to harder tasks only later (such as parallel parking).

Sequencing instruction is only a partial solution to finding the best "level" of difficulty, however, because it does not deal with enduring individual differences among students. The fundamental challenge to teachers is to individualize or differentiate instruction fully: to tailor it not only to the class as a group, but to the lasting differences among members of the class. One way to approach this sort of diversity, obviously, is to plan different content or activities for different students or groups of students. While one group works on Task A, another group works on Task B; one group works on relatively easy math problems, for example, while another works on harder ones. Differentiating instruction in this way complicates a teacher's job, but it can be done, and has in fact been done by many teachers (it also makes teaching more interesting!). In the next chapter, we describe some classroom management strategies that help with such multi-tasking.

Providing moderate amounts of structure and detail

Chances are that at some point in your educational career you have wished that a teacher would clarify or explain an assignment more fully, and perhaps give it a clearer structure or organization. Students' desire for clarity is especially common with assignments that are by nature open-ended, such as long essays, large projects, or creative works. Simply being told to "write an essay critiquing the novel", for example, leaves more room for uncertainty (and worry) than being given guidelines about what questions the essay should address, what topics or parts it should have, and what its length or style should be (Chesebro, 2003). As you might suspect, some students desire clarity more than others, and improve their performance especially much when provided with plenty of structure and clarity. Students with certain kinds of learning difficulties, in particular, often learn effectively and stay on task only if provided with somewhat explicit, detailed instructions about the tasks expected of them (Marks, et al., 2003).

As a teacher, the challenge is to accommodate students' need for clarity without making guidance so specific or detailed that students do little thinking for themselves. As a (ridiculously extreme) example, consider a teacher gives "clear" instructions for an essay by announcing not only exactly which articles to read and cite in the essay and which topics or issues to cover, but even requires specific wording of sentences in their essays. This much specificity may reduce students' uncertainties and make the teacher's task of evaluating the essays relatively straightforward and easy. But it also reduces or even eliminates the educational value of the assignment-assuming, of course, that its purpose is to get students to think for themselves.

Ideally, then, structure should be moderate rather than extreme. There should be just enough to give students some sense of direction and to stimulate more accomplishment than if they worked with less structure or guidance. This ideal is an application of Vygotsky's idea of the zone of proximal development that we discussed in Chapter 3: a place (figuratively speaking) where students get more done with help than without it. The ideal amount of guidance

-the "location" of the zone of proximal development-varies with the assignment and the student, and it (hopefully) decreases over time for all students. One student may need more guidance to do his or her best in math, but less guidance in order to write her or his best essay. Another student may need the reverse. But if all goes well, both students may need less at the end of the year than at the beginning.

Managing transitions

Transitions between activities is often full of distractions and "lost" time, and is a time when inappropriate behaviors are especially likely to occur. Part of the problem is intrinsic to transitions: students may have to wait before a new activity actually begins, and therefore get bored at the very moment when the teacher is preoccupied with arranging materials for the new activity. From the point of view of the students, transitions may seem essentially like unsupervised group time, when seemingly any behavior is tolerated.

Minimizing such problems requires two strategies, one of which is easier to implement than the other. The easier strategy is for you, as teacher, to organize materials as well as possible ahead of time, so that you minimize the time needed to begin a new activity. The advice sounds simple, and mostly is, but it sometimes takes a bit of practice to implement smoothly. When one of us (Kelvin) first began teaching university, for example, particular papers or overhead transparencies sometimes got lost in the wrong folder in spite of Kelvin's efforts to keep them where they were easy to find. The resulting delays about finding them slowed the pace of class and caused frustrations.

A second, more complex strategy is to teach students ways to manage their own behavior during transitions (Marzano & Marzano, 2004). If students talk too loudly at these times, for example, then discuss with them what constitutes appropriate levels or amounts of talk, and discuss the need for them to monitor their own sound level. Or if students stop work early in anticipation of ending an activity, then talk about-or even practice-waiting for a signal from yourself to indicate the true ending point for an activity. If certain students continue working beyond the end of an activity. On the other hand, try giving them warning of the impending end in advance, and remind them about to take responsibility for actually finishing work once they hear the advance warning, and so on. The point of these tactics is to encourage responsibility for behavior during transitions, and thereby reduce your own need to monitor students at that crucial time.

None of these ideas, of course, mean that you, as teacher, should give up monitoring students' behavior entirely. Chances are that you still will need to notice if and when someone talks too loudly, finishes too early, or continues too long, and you will still need to give some students appropriate reminders. But the amount of reminding will be less to the extent that students can remind and monitor themselves-a welcome trend at any time, but especially during transitions.

Maintaining the flow of activities

A lot of classroom management is really about keeping activities flowing smoothly, both during individual lessons and across the school day. The trouble is that there is never just "one" event happening at a time, even if only one activity has been formally planned and is supposed to be occurring. Imagine, for example, that everyone is supposed to be attending a single whole-class discussion on a topic; yet individual students will be having different experiences at any one moment. Several students may be listening and contributing comments, for example, but a few others may be planning what they want to say next and ignoring the current speakers, still others may be ruminating about what a previous speaker said, and still others may be thinking about unrelated matters-the restroom, food, or sex. Things get even more complicated if the teacher deliberately plans multiple activities: in that case some students may interact with the teacher, for example, while others do work in an unsupervised group or work independently in a different part of the room. How is a teacher to keep activities flowing smoothly in the face of such variety?

A common mistake of beginning teachers in multi-faceted settings like these is to pay too much attention to any one activity, student, or small group, at the expense of noticing and responding to all the others. If you are helping a student on one side of the room when someone on the other side disturbs classmates with off-task conversation, it can be less effective either to finish with the student you are helping before attending to the disruption, or to interrupt yourself to solve the disruption on the other side of the room. Although one of these responses may be necessary, either one involves disruption somewhere. There is a risk that either the student's chatting may spread to others, or the interrupted student may become bored with waiting for the teacher's attention and wander off-task herself.

A better solution, though one that at first may seem challenging, is to attend to both events at once-a strategy that was named withitness in a series of now-classic research studies several decades ago (Kounin, 1970). Withitness does not mean that you focus on all simultaneous activities with equal care, but only that you remain aware of multiple activities, behaviors, and events to some degree. At a particular moment, for example, you may be focusing on helping a student, but in some corner of your mind you also notice when chatting begins on the other side of the room. You have, as the saying goes, "eyes in the back of your head". Research has found that experienced teachers are much more likely to show withitness than inexperienced teachers, and that these qualities are associated with managing classrooms successfully (Emmer & Stough, 2001).

Simultaneous awareness-withitness-makes possible responses to the multiple events that are immediate and nearly simultaneous-what educators sometimes called overlapping. The teacher's responses to each event or behavior need not take equal time, nor even be equally noticeable to all students. If you are helping one student with seat work at the precise moment when another student begins chatting off-task, for example, a quick glance to the second student may be enough to bring the second one back to the work at hand, and may scarcely interrupt your conversation with the first student, or be noticed by others who are not even involved. The result is a smoother flow to activities overall.

As a new teacher, you may find that withitness and overlapping develop more easily in some situations than in others. It may be easier to keep an eye (or ear) on multiple activities during familiar routines, such as taking attendance, but harder to do the same during activities that are unfamiliar or complex, such as introducing a new topic or unit that you have never taught before. But skill at broadening your attention does increase with time and practice. It helps to keep trying. Merely demonstrating to students that you are "withit", in fact, even without making deliberate overlapping responses, can sometimes deter students from off-task behavior. Someone who is tempted to pass notes in class, for example, might not do so because she believes that you will probably notice her doing it anyway, whether or not you are able to notice in fact.

Communicating the importance of learning and of positive behavior

Altogether, the factors we have discussed-arranging space, procedures, and rules, and developing withitness- help communicate an important message: that in the classroom learning and positive social behavior are priorities. In addition, teachers can convey this message by offering timely feedback to students about performance, by keeping accurate records of the performance, and by deliberately communicating with parents or caregivers about their children and about class activities.

Communicating effectively is so important for all aspects of teaching, in fact, that we discuss it more fully later in this book (see Chapter 9,"The nature of classroom communication"). Here we focus on only one of its important aspects: how communication contributes to a smoothly functioning classroom and in this way helps prevent behavior problems.

Giving timely feedback

The term feedback, when used by educators, refers to responses to students about their behavior or performance. Feedback is essential if students are to learn and if they are to develop classroom behavior that is socially skilled and "mature". But feedback can only be fully effective if offered as soon as possible, when it is still relevant to the task or activity at hand (Reynolds, 1992). A score on a test is more informative immediately after a test than after a six-month delay, when students may have forgotten much of the content of the test. A teacher's comment to a student about an inappropriate, off-task behavior may not be especially welcome at the moment the behavior occurs, but it can be more influential and informative then; later, both teacher and student will have trouble remembering the details of the off-task behavior, and in this sense may literally "not know what they are talking about". The same is true for comments about a positive behavior by a student: hearing a compliment right away makes it easier to the comment with the behavior, and allows the compliment to influence the student more strongly. There are of course practical limits to how fast feedback can be given, but the general principle is clear: feedback tends to work better when it is timely.

The principle of timely feedback is consistent, incidentally, with a central principle of operant conditioning discussed in Chapter 3: reinforcement works best when it follows a to-be-learned operant behavior closely (Skinner, 1957). In this case a teacher's feedback serves as a form of reinforcement. The analogy is easiest to understand when the feedback takes the form of praise; in operant conditioning terms, the reinforcing praise then functions like a "reward". When feedback is negative, it functions as an "aversive stimulus" (in operant terms), shutting down the behavior criticized. At other times, though, criticism can also function as an unintended reinforcement. This happens, for example, if a student experiences criticism as a reduction in isolation and therefore as in increase in his importance in the class-a relatively desirable change. So the inappropriate behavior continues, or even increases, contrary to the teacher's intentions. Exhibit 9 diagrams this sequence of events.

Reinforcement can happen in class if an undesirable behavior, leads to a less aversive state for a student. Social isolation can be reduced by public misbehavior, which stimulates attention that is reinforcing.Ironically, the effort to end misbehavior ends up stimulating the misbehavior.others'gainsStudentStudent is isolated socially → Student publiclymisbehaves →attentionExample of Unintended Negative Reinforcement in the Classroom:

Exhibit 9: Attracting attention as negative reinforcement

Maintaining accurate records

Although timeliness in responding to students can sometimes happen naturally during class, there are also situations where promptness depends on having organized key information ahead of time. Obvious examples are the scores, marks, and grades returned to students for their work. A short quiz (such as a weekly spelling test) may be possible to return quite soon after the quiz-sometimes you or even the students themselves can mark it during class. More often, though, assignments and tests require longer processing times: you have to read, score, or add comments to each paper individually. Excessive time to evaluate students' work can reduce the usefulness of a teacher's evaluations to students when she finally does return the work (Black, et al., 2004). During the days or weeks waiting for a test or assignment to be returned, students are left without information about the quality or nature of their performance; at the extreme they may even have to complete another test or do another assignment before getting information about an earlier one. (Perhaps you yourself have experienced this particular problem!)

Delays in providing feedback about academic performance can never be eliminated entirely, but they can be reduced by keeping accurate, well-organized records of students' work. A number of computer programs are available to help with this challenge; if your school does not already have one in use, then there are several downloadableeitherfreeoratlowcostfromtheInternet(e.g. http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Educational/Teachers_Help/Gradebooks/). Describing these is beyond the scope of this book. For now we simply emphasize that grading systems benefit students' learning the most when they provide feedback as quickly and frequently as possible (McMillan, 2001), precisely the reason why accurate, well-organized record-keeping is important to keep.

Accurate records are helpful not only for scores on tests, quizzes, or assignments, but also for developing descriptive summaries of the nature of students' academic skills or progress. A common way to develop a description is the student portfolio, which is a compilation of the student's work and on-going assessments of it created by the teacher or in some cases by the student (Moritz & Christie, 2005; White, 2005). To know how a student's science project evolved from its beginning, for example, a teacher and student can keep a portfolio of lab notes, logs, preliminary data, and the like. To know how a student's writing skills developed, they could keep a portfolio of early drafts on various writing assignments. As the work accumulates, the student can discuss it with the teacher, and write brief reflections on its strengths thus far or on the steps needed to improve the work further. By providing a way to respond to work as it evolves, and by including students in making the assessments, portfolios provide relatively prompt feedback, and in any case provide it sooner than by waiting for the teacher to review work that is complete or final.

Communicating with parents and caregivers

Since parents and caregivers in a sense "donate" their children to schools (at least figuratively speaking), teachers are responsible for keeping them informed and involved to whatever extent is practical. Virtually all parents understand and assume that schools are generally intended for learning. Detailed communication can enrich parents' understanding, of how learning is addressed with their particular child's classroom, and show them more precisely what their particular child is doing. The better such understanding in turn encourages parents and caregivers to support their child's learning more confidently and "intelligently". In this sense it contributes indirectly to a positive learning environment in their child's class.

There are various ways to communicate with parents, each with advantages and limitations. Here are three common examples:

Even if you make several efforts to communicate, some parents may remain out of contact. In these cases it is important to remember that the parents may not be indifferent to their child or to the value of education. Other possibilities exist, as some of our comments above imply: parents may have difficulties with child care, for example, have inconvenient work schedules, or feel self-conscious about their own communication skills (Stevens & Tollafield, 2003). Even so, there are ways to encourage parents who may be shy, hesitant, or busy. One is to think about how they can assist the school even from home-for example, by making materials to be used in class or (if they are comfortable using English) phoning other parents about class events. A second way is to have a specific task for the parents in mind-one with clear structure, such as photocopying materials to be used by students later. A third is to remember to encourage, support, and respect the parents' presence and contributions when they do show up at school functions. Keep in mind that parents are experts about their own particular children, and without them, you would have no students to teach!

Responding to student misbehavior

So far we have focused on preventing behaviors that are inappropriate or annoying. The advice has all been pro- active or forward-looking: plan classroom space thoughtfully, create reasonable procedures and rules, pace lessons and activities appropriately, and communicate the importance of learning clearly. Although we consider these ideas important, it would be naïve to imply they are enough to prevent all behavior problems. For various reasons, students sometimes still do things that disrupt other students or interrupt the flow of activities. At such moments the challenge is not about long-term planning but about making appropriate, but prompt responses. Misbehaviors left alone can be contagious, a process educators sometimes call the ripple effect (Kounin, 1970). Chatting between two students, for example, can gradually spread to six students; rudeness by one can eventually become rudeness by several; and so on. Because of this tendency, delaying a response to inappropriate behavior can make the job of getting students back on track harder than responding to it as immediately as possible.

There are many ways to respond to inappropriate behaviors, of course, and they vary in how much they focus on the immediate behavior compared to longer-term features or patterns of a student's behavior. There are so many ways to respond, in fact, that we can describe only a sample of the possibilities here. None are effective all of the time, though all do work at least some of the time. We start with a response that may not seem on the surface like a remedy at all-simply ignoring misbehaviors.

Ignoring misbehaviors

A lot of misbehaviors are not important or frequent enough to deserve any response at all. They are likely to disappear (or extinguish, in behaviorist terms) simply if left alone. If a student who is usually quiet during class happens to whisper to a neighbor once in awhile, it is probably less disruptive and just as effective to ignore the infraction than to respond to it. Some misbehaviors may not be worth a response even if they are frequent, as long as they do not seem to bother others. Suppose, for example, that a certain student has a habit of choosing quiet seat-work times to sharpen her pencil. She is continually out of her seat to go to the sharpener. Yet this behavior is not really noticed by others. Is it then really a problem, however unnecessary or ill-timed it may be? In both examples ignoring the behavior may be wise because there is little danger of the behavior disrupting other students or of becoming more frequent. Interrupting your activities-or the students'-might cause more disruption than simply ignoring the problem.

That said, there can still be problems in deciding whether a particular misbehavior is truly minor, infrequent, or unnoticed by others. Unlike in our example above, students may whisper to each other more than "rarely" but less than "often": in that case, when do you decide that the whispering is in fact too frequent and needs a more active response from you? Or the student who sharpens her pencil, mentioned above, may not bother most others, but she may nonetheless bother a few. In that case how many bothered classmates are "too many"? Five, three, just one, or...? In these ambiguous cases, you may need more active ways of dealing with an inappropriate behavior, like the ones described in the next sections.

Gesturing nonverbally

Sometimes it works to communicate using gestures, eye contact, or "body language" that involve little or no speaking. Nonverbal cues are often appropriate if a misbehavior is just a bit too serious or frequent to ignore, but not serious or frequent enough to merit taking the time deliberately to speak to or talk with the student. If two students are chatting off-task for a relatively extended time, for example, sometimes a glance in their direction, a frown, or even just moving closer to the students is enough of a reminder to get them back on task. Even if these responses prove not to be enough, they may help to keep the off-task behavior from spreading to other students.

A risk of relying on nonverbal cues, however, is that some students may not understand their meaning, or may even fail to notice them. If the two chatting students mentioned above are engrossed in their talking, for example, they may not see you glance or frown at them. Or they might notice but not interpret your cue as a reminder to get back on task. Misinterpretation of nonverbal gestures and cues is more likely with young children, who are still learning the subtleties of adults' nonverbal "language" (Guerrero & Floyd, 2005; Heimann, et al., 2006). It is also more likely with students who speak limited English or whose cultural background differs significantly from your own. These students may have learned different nonverbal gestures from your own as part of their participation in their original culture (Marsh, Elfenbein, & Ambady, 2003).

Natural and logical consequences

Consequences are the outcomes or results of an action. When managing a classroom, two kinds of consequences are especially effective for influencing students' behavior: natural consequences and logical consequences. As the term implies, natural consequences happen "naturally", without deliberate intention by anyone. If a student is late for class, for example, a natural consequence is that he misses information or material that needed to do an assignment. Logical consequences are ones that happen because of the responses of or decisions by others, but that also have an obvious or "logical" relationship to the original action. If one student steals another's lunch, for example, a logical consequence might be for the thief to reimburse the victim for the cost of the lunch. Natural and logical consequences are often woven together and thus hard to distinguish: if one student picks a fight with another student, a natural consequence might be injury not only to the victim, but also to the aggressor (an inherent byproduct of fighting), but a logical consequence might be to lose friends (the response of others to fighting). In practice both may occur.

In general research has found that both natural and logical consequences can be effective for minimizing undesirable behaviors, provided they are applied in appropriate situations (Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clarke, & Curran, 2004). Consider a student who runs impulsively down school hallways. The student is likely to have "traffic accidents", and thus (hopefully) to see that running is not safe and to reduce the frequency of running. Or consider a student who chronically talks during class instead of working on an assigned task. The student may have to make up the assignment later, possibly as homework. Because the behavior and the consequence are connected logically, the student is relatively likely to see the drawback of choosing to talk, and to reduce how much he or she talks on subsequent occasions. In either case, whether natural or logical, the key features that make consequences work are (a) that they are appropriate to the misbehavior and (b) that the student understands the connection between the consequences and the original behavior.

Notice, though, that natural and logical consequences do not always work; if they did, there would be no further need for management strategies! One limitation is that misbehaviors can sometimes be so serious that no natural or logical consequence seems sufficient or appropriate. Suppose, for example, that one student deliberately breaks another student's eyeglasses. There may be a natural consequence for the victim (he or she will not be able to see easily), but not for the student who broke the glasses. There may also be no consequences for the aggressor that are both logical and fully satisfactory: the aggressor student will not be able to repair the broken glasses himself, and may not be able to pay for new glasses either.

Another limitation of natural and logical consequences is that their success depends on the motives of the misbehaving student. If the student is seeking attention or acceptance by others, then consequences often work well. Bullying in order to impress others, for example, is more likely to lose friends than to win them-so bullying motivated in this way is self-limiting. If a student is seeking power over others, on the other hand, then the consequences of bullying may not reduce the behavior. Bullying in order to control others' actions by definition actually achieves its own goal, and its "natural" result (losing friends) would be irrelevant. Of course, a bully might also act from a combination of motives, so that natural and logical consequences limit bullying behavior, but only partially.

A third problem with natural and logical consequences is that they can easily be confused with deliberate punishment (Kohn, 2006). The difference is important. Consequences are focused on repairing damage and restoring relationships, and in this sense they focus on the future. Punishments highlight a mistake or wrongdoing and in this sense focus on the past. Consequences tend to be more solution focused. Punishments tend to highlight the person who committed the action, and they often shame or humiliate the wrong doer. ( Table 17 summarizes these and other differences.)

Table 17: Differences between consequences and punishments

Focused on individual's actions

Focused on character of student or child

Focused on repairing mistakes

Focused on establishing blame

Focused on restoring positive relationships

Focused on isolating wrong-doer

Tend to reduce emotional pain and conflict

Tend to impose emotional pain or conflict

Classroom examples of the differences between consequences and punishment are plentiful. If a student fails to listen to the teacher's instructions, then a consequence is that he or she misses important information, but a punishment may be that the teacher criticizes or reprimands the student. If a student speaks rudely to the teacher, a consequence may be that the teacher does not respond to the comment, or simply reminds the student to speak courteously. A punishment may be that the teacher scolds the student in the presence of others , or even imposes a detention ("Stay after school for 15 minutes").

Conflict resolution and problem solving

When a student misbehaves persistently and disruptively, you will need strategies that are more active and assertive than the ones discussed so far, and that focus on conflict resolution-the reduction of disagreements that persist over time. Conflict resolution strategies that educators and teachers tend to use usually have two parts (Jones, 2004). First, they involve ways of identifying what "the" problem is precisely. Second, they remind the student of classroom expectations and rules with simple clarity and assertiveness, but without apology or harshness. When used together, the two strategies not only reduce conflicts between a teacher and an individual student, but also provide a model for other students to follow when they have disagreements of their own. The next sections discuss the nature of assertion and clarification for conflict resolution in more detail.

Step 1: clarifying and focusing: problem ownership

Classrooms can be emotional places even though their primary purpose is to promote thinking rather than expression of feelings. The emotions can be quite desirable: they can give teachers and students "passion" for learning and a sense of care among members of the class. But feelings can also cause trouble if students misbehave: at those moments negative feelings-annoyance, anger, discomfort-can interfere with understanding exactly what is wrong and how to set things right again. Gaining a bit of distance from the negative feelings is exactly what those moments need, especially on the part of the teacher, the person with (presumably) the greatest maturity.

In a widely cited approach to conflict resolution called Teacher Effectiveness Training, the educator Thomas Gordon describes this challenge as an issue of problem ownership, or deciding whose problem a behavior or conflict it really is (Gordon, 2003). The "owner" of the problem is the primary person who is troubled or bothered by it. The owner can be the student committing the behavior, the teacher, or another student who merely happens to see the behavior. Since the owner of a problem needs to take primary responsibility for solving it, identifying ownership makes a difference in how to deal with the behavior or problem effectively.

Suppose, for example, that a student named David makes a remark that the teacher finds offensive (like "Sean is fat"). Is this remark the student's problem or the teacher's? If David made the comment privately to the teacher and is unlikely to repeat it, then maybe it is only the teacher's problem. If he is likely to repeat it to other students or to Sean himself, however, then maybe the problem is really David's. On the other hand, suppose that a different student, Sarah, complains repeatedly that classmates refuse to let her into group projects. This is less likely to be the teacher's problem rather than Sarah's: her difficulty may affect her ability to do her own work, but not really affect the teacher or classmates directly. As you might suspect, too, a problem may sometimes affect several people at once. David, who criticized Sean, may discover that he offended not only the teacher, but also classmates, who therefore avoid working with him. At that point the whole class begins to share in some aspect of "the" problem: not only is David prevented from working with others comfortably, but also classmates and the teacher begin dealing with bad feelings about David.

Step 2: active, empathetic listening

Diagnosing accurately who really has a problem with a behavior-who "owns" it-is helped by a number of strategies. One is active listening-attending carefully to all aspects of what a student says and attempting to understand or empathize as fully as possible, even if you do not agree with what is being said (Cooper & Simonds, 2003). Active listening involves asking questions in order continually to check your understanding. It also involves encouraging the student to elaborate on his or her remarks, and paraphrasing and summarizing what the student says in order to check your perceptions of what is said. It is important not to move too fast toward solving the problem with advice, instructions, or scolding, even if these are responses that you might, as a teacher, feel responsible for making. Responding too soon with solutions can shut down communication prematurely, and leave you with inaccurate impressions of the source or nature of the problem.

Step 3: assertive discipline and I-messages

Once you have listened well to the student's point of view, it helps to frame your responses and comments in terms of how the student's behavior affects you in particular, especially in your role as the teacher. The comments should have several features:

Step 4: negotiation

The first three steps describe ways of interacting that are desirable, but also fairly specific in scope and limited in duration. But in themselves, they may not be enough when conflict persists over time and develops a number of complications or confusing features. A student may persist in being late for class, for example, in spite of efforts by the teacher to modify this behavior. Or two students may repeatedly speak rudely to each other, even though the teacher has mediated this conflict in the past. Or a student may fail to complete homework, time after time. Because these problems develop over time, and because they may involve repeated disagreements, they can eventually become stressful for the teacher, the student, and any classmates who may be affected. Their persistence can tempt a teacher simply to dictate a resolution-a decision that can leave everyone feeling defeated, including the teacher.

Often in these situations it is better to negotiate a solution, which means systematically discussing options and compromising on one if possible. Although negotiation always requires time and effort, it is often less time or effort than continuing to cope with the original problem, and the results can be beneficial to everyone. A number of experts on conflict resolution have suggested strategies for negotiating with students about persistent problems (Davidson & Wood, 2004). The suggestions vary in detail, but usually include some combination of the steps we have already discussed above, along with a few others:

Decide as accurately as possible what the problem is. Usually this step involves a lot of the active listening described above.

Brainstorm possible solutions, and consider their effectiveness. Remember to include students in this step; otherwise you end up simply imposing a solution on others, which is not what negotiation is supposed to achieve.

Keeping management issues in perspective

There are two primary messages from this chapter. One is that management issues are important, complex, and deserving of serious attention. The other is that strategies exist that can reduce, if not eliminate, management problems when and if they occur. We have explained some of those strategies-including some intended to prevent problems and others intended to remedy problems.

But there is an underlying assumption about management that this chapter emphasized fully: that good classroom management is not an end in itself, but a means for creating a classroom where learning happens and students are motivated. Amidst the stresses of handling a problem behavior, there is a risk of losing sight of this idea. Telling a student to be quiet is never a goal in itself, for example; it is desirable only because (or when) it allows all students to hear the teacher's instructions or classmates' spoken comments, or because it allows students to concentrate on their work. There may actually be moments when students' keeping quiet is not appropriate, such as during a "free choice" time in an elementary classroom or during a group work task in a middle school classroom. As teachers, we need to keep this perspective firmly in mind. Classroom management should serve students' learning, and not the other way around. The next chapter is based on this idea, because it discusses ways not just to set the stage for learning, as this chapter has done, but ways to plan directly for students' learning.

Chapter summary

Classroom management is the coordination of lessons and activities to make learning as productive as possible. It is important because classrooms are complex and somewhat unpredictable, because students respond to teachers' actions in diverse ways, and because society requires that students attend school. There are two major features of management: preventing problems before they occur and responding to them after they occur. Many management problems can be prevented by attending to how classroom space is used, by establishing daily procedures, routines, and rules, by pacing and structuring activities appropriately, and by communicating the importance of learning and of positive behavior to students and parents. There are several ways of dealing with a management problem after it occurs, and the choice depends on the nature of the problem. A teacher can simply ignore a misbehavior, gesture or cue students nonverbally, rely on natural and logical consequences, or engage conflict resolution strategies. Whatever tactics the teacher uses, it is important to keep in mind their ultimate purpose: to make learning possible and effective.

On the Internet

www.theteachersguide.com/Class Management.htmThis is part of a larger website for teachers containing resources of all kinds. This section-about classroom management-has several articles with very "nuts and bolts" tips about management. You may also find their page of resources for substitute teachers useful.

www.teachnet.comAnother website for teachers with lots of resources of all kinds. A section called "Power Tools" has dozens of brief articles about various aspects of classroom management.

Key terms

Active listening

Classroom management

Conflict resolution

I-messages

Learning environment

Logical consequences

Natural consequences

Negotiation

Overlapping

Portfolio

Problem ownership

Procedures

Ripple effect

Rules

Withitness

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This is an excerpt from a professional journal kept by one of us (Kelvin Seifert) when he was teaching kindergarten: 20xx-11-14: Today my student Carol sat in the circle, watching others while we all played Duck, Duck, Goose (in this game, one student is outside the circle, tags another student who then chases the first person around the circle).

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by: Ms. Caplan at Colorful Creators
is licensed under Creative Commons — Public Domain Mark 1.0

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The Importance of Schedules and Routines

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The Importance of Schedules and Routines

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by Head Start Early  Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center is licensed under Creative Commons — Public Domain Mark 1.0

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Familiar activities can provide comfort for both adults and children during challenging and uncertain times. Just like adults, children feel more confident and secure when their daily activities are predictable and familiar. A consistent daily schedule and step-by-step routines give children a predictable day. Schedules and routines in the group care setting and at home help children:

Feel in control of their environment

Feel safe, secure, and comfortable

Know what is happening now and what comes next

Know how to do an activity or task

Engage in learning

Why are routines and schedules important?

When infants and toddlers are part of familiar activities and routines, they develop relationships with the people they interact with and gain a sense of belonging and self-confidence.

As older toddlers and young children grow, they can follow routines, demonstrate emerging independence, and adjust to change more easily.

Engaging, predictable environments and ongoing positive adult-child interactions are necessary for promoting children's social and emotional development and preventing challenging behaviors. You can help by following clear and simple schedules and routines. (Hemmeter, Ostrosky, and Fox 2006).

Partnering with Families on Schedules and Routines

Keep it simple. Ask families about things they do every day. They don't have to do anything new!

To start, help family members break down one of their scheduled tasks into steps to create the routine.

Encourage families to let their children help. For example, ask parents if there are parts of the routine the child can do on their own or with a little assistance-and let them do it.

Let parents know that reviewing the schedule every morning and throughout the day with their child helps them know what is going to happen next.

Remind families to keep the routine and schedule as similar as possible each day.

Let parents know they should also be flexible. You can say something like, "Plans change, things happen, but give your child a warning ahead of time if things are going to be different. Let them know what is going to happen."

Encourage parents to offer a choice in activities or the steps of a routine whenever possible.

What is the difference between a schedule and a routine?
A schedule represents the big picture and includes main activities that happen across the day.

Routines are the steps needed to complete each part of the schedule.

Reinstating Schedules and Routines When Programs Start Back Up

Re-teach and remind children of the:

Schedule and routines using visuals

Steps in common group care routines, such as sitting at circle time and washing hands

Note changes in the schedule that result from being away from the program.

Review the schedule at the beginning of each day.

Refer to the schedule before and after activities throughout the day.

Model the steps and allow children to practice them.

Provide positive, descriptive feedback when children both attempt to follow or succeed in following the routine.

Hemmeter, Mary Louise; Michaelene Ostrosky, and Lise Fox. "Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning: A Conceptual Model for Intervention." School Psychology Review 35(4) (2006): 583-601.

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The Importance of Schedules and Routines | ECLKC

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Learn the difference between schedules and routines and why they are important. Discover ways to partner with families on schedules and routines and reinstate them when programs reopen.

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Classroom Morning Routines (Why do they matter?)

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Classroom Morning Routines (Why do they matter?)

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by Melanie Howell, Teacher's Playbook
is licensed under Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0

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Classroom Morning Routines (Why do they matter?)