classroom management plan assignment

Classroom Management Plan: The Most Practical Guide and Ready-to-Use Template

Zhun Yee Chew

Poor classroom management can have  adverse consequences  on both teachers and students. For teachers, it results in the loss of instructional time, unnecessary stress, and feelings of inadequacy. Students, on the other hand, are unable to reach their full potential during this crucial learning phase.

When faced with a disorderly and disengaged classroom, the first thing that may come to mind are  classroom management strategies . True, they can certainly help, but they are not one-size-fits-all solutions nor magical potions that can generate instant results. They often need to be thoughtfully integrated into classroom management plans, which encompass classroom procedures, rules, engagement strategies, and more to ensure comprehensive and holistic classroom management.

As such, this is a challenge that is not exclusive to  new teachers . According to  this research , teachers across all levels express feelings of being ill-prepared for classroom management. Worse still, available resources are often laden with jargon and unnecessary complexity, rendering classroom management an enigmatic realm of its own. 

Fret not, as we have prepared this comprehensive yet practical guide to walk you through the step-by-step process of creating a classroom management plan. Additionally, we would like to offer you a free, easy-to-use classroom management plan template that you can readily implement in your day-to-day teaching practice. How does that sound?

What is A Classroom Management Plan?

A classroom management plan is a structured framework of plans, rules, procedures and more that serves as a guideline to provide teachers with a proactive and organized approach to managing the classroom, ensuring a well-managed classroom and conducive learning environment. Classroom management plan can be seen as a broader concept that encompass classroom management strategies, which are specific techniques or approaches that teachers use within the framework of their classroom management plan to address specific issues or achieve certain goals in the classroom.

According to education researcher Teodora Popescu, a  well-managed classroom  typically encompass these elements: 

• Optimal utilization of time and physical resources.
• Strategies that empower students to make positive choices rather than exerting control over their actions.
• Successful execution of instructional techniques.

On top of that, effective classroom management plan ensures a highly engaged classroom, as well as  academic, social, and emotional development  in the students. Hence, if you haven’t already, it is crucial for you as an educator to establish a robust classroom management plan to ensure the attainment of these essential teaching outcomes.

Classroom Management Plan Template

Download our classroom management plan template here to get started. 👇.

Classroom Management Plan

Effective classroom management starts today with better rules, procedures, reward systems, engagement strategies and intervention plans!

How to Create A Perfect Classroom Management Plan

Want to create an effective and foolproof classroom management plan? First it is important to understand the components of effective  classroom management strategies . 

Drawing from an extensive compilation of 150 research studies, the  National Council on Teacher Quality  has advocated five core component of classroom management strategies that have received robust backing from research:

• Rules : instructing and reinforcing expected classroom conduct. 
• Routines and Procedures : instilling and practicing classroom and school procedures.
• Praises and Rewards : offering specific and affirmative recognition of desired and appropriate student behaviors.
• Engagement : implementing classroom activities and strategies that encourage active student participation.
• Misbehavior : implementing consistent intervention strategies for inappropriate student behaviors. 

As such, an effective classroom management plan should include all of these essential elements of effective classroom management strategies. 

In this guide, we will cover both universal classroom management plans as well as targeted classroom management plans, plans, drawing inspiration from a  response-to-intervention (RTI) framework  that is recommended for both general and special education teachers.

A RTI framework is a tiered system of support whereby each tier provides varying levels of intervention intensity and support to students in classroom management.

• Universal Classroom Management Plans : Tier 1 approaches of universal support, rules and procedures applied to everyone. 
• Targeted Classroom Management Plans : Tier 2 approaches targeted towards students who do not respond adequately to universal strategies and misbehave. 
• Targeted Individualized Classroom Management Plans : Targeted towards students who continue to struggle despite Tier 2 interventions, providing even more intensive, individualized support.

Universal Classroom Management Plan Components

Classroom rules.

Classroom rules are a set of rules that students are expected to obey and adhere to at all times. The general rule of thumb is to phrase the rules in dos rather than don’ts to encourage a positive and motivating learning environment. 

Classroom Procedures

Classroom procedures  are routines that you want your students to follow at different times or scenarios. There are various categories of classroom procedures, ranging from morning procedures and end of school day procedures, to transition procedures, homework procedures, emergency procedures, and more. 

Engagement Strategies

Engagement strategies are strategies to encourage active involvement and participation in the classroom. Some of the popular tried and tested engagement strategies include: 

• Differentiated Instruction
• Classroom Games
• Gamification
• Active Learning
• Questioning Techniques
• Interactive Quizzes
• Brainstorming
• Gallery Walk
• Socratic Seminars

Praises and Rewards

Praises and rewards are the positive reinforcers you want to provide your students when they have performed desired or appropriate behaviors in the classroom. This approach cultivates a classroom atmosphere where students willingly follow rules, rather than complying based on fear. There are different types of praises and rewards you can provide your students with:

• Behavior-Specific Praises  – Praises given upon completion of certain tasks or accomplishment of certain skills.
• Reinforcers  – Tangible rewards or non-tangible rewards such as special privileges, free time, or removal of undesirable tasks.
• Token Economy  – Positive behavioral reinforcement through tokens.

Targeted Classroom Management Plan Components

Misbehaviors and  conflicts  do happen from time to time in the classroom. Recommended classroom misbehavior intervention strategies include: 

Surface Management Techniques

Contingency systems, get a free copy of the classroom management plan template.  👇, 10 extra considerations for creating a classroom management plan.

In addition to the components mentioned above, here are some additional considerations to take into account when drafting a classroom management plan:

#1 A Plan is Nothing Without Goals

Review the goals and objectives behind creating a classroom management plan initially. This process enables you to strategize and prioritize management plans and  classroom management styles  that align most effectively with these goals.

For instance, if your aim is to establish a more orderly classroom environment, your priorities would lean towards emphasizing behavioral reinforcement and intervention in your plans. Conversely, if your objective is efficient and productive teaching, your priorities would shift, emphasizing classroom engagement and time management in your plans.

#2 Beyond Extrinsic Motivations

On top of a system of extrinsic rewards, consider implementing  Meaningful Engaged Learning (MEL)  activities focusing on learning by doing, real-world connections and higher-order thinking in your classroom management plan.

MEL is an education approach where students are actively engaged in the learning process, construction of knowledge, and in making connections to real-world contexts. Unlike praises and rewards, MEL often promotes intrinsic motivation through stimulating the natural desire to learn and explore. 

#3 Students as Diverse Individuals

A universal classroom management plan may not work perfectly for everyone considering that students are humans with diverse needs and learning styles. Hence, it is important to recognise the needs and preferences of your students and tailor the plans towards specific individuals when necessary.

#4 Don’t Forget Students with Special Needs 

In the same vein of thought, teachers should always consider the needs of students with disabilities or special needs when drafting classroom management plans, and make necessary adjustments and accommodations.

For instance, you may need to revisit your classroom procedures that may not be friendly for students with dyslexia. Adjust classroom procedures for reading time by providing extended time, assistive technology, or even individualised goals for students with dyslexia is a great example of practicing inclusivity in your classroom management plans.

#5 Are You Culturally Sensitive? 

As teachers, you should be mindful of cultural differences and sensitivities in your classroom, and adapt your classroom management plan to respect diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

For instance, ensure that classroom rules and expectations are culturally inclusive and avoid rules that may inadvertently discriminate against certain cultural practices or beliefs. So instead of having a rule that states “No head coverings in class,”, create a rule that promotes respectful attire: “Please ensure that any head coverings are worn in a way that does not obstruct visibility or disrupt the learning environment.

#6 You Need A Crisis Management Plan

Crisis management plan should be put in place for handling serious or disruptive behaviors in school that could potentially be a threat to the safety of all students and staff. Consider including the following in your crisis management plan: 

• Criteria of defining crisis behaviors
• Steps and procedures to follow when a crisis arises
• Emergency contacts
• Safety Measures
• De-escalation techniques
• Documentation
• Training and drills

Or simply download our Classroom Management Plan to have a copy of the Crisis Management Plan. 👇

#7 Data Is King

Without monitoring and tracking student behaviors, you wouldn’t be able to measure the success of your classroom management plan.

So, devise a system for  tracking and monitoring student behavior  with behaviorcharts, anecdotal recording, or  behavior management tools . And regularly review the data to identify trends and address any emerging issues.

#8 Two-Way Communication

Even though the task of devising a classroom management plan lies in the hands of the teacher, teachers should encourage student feedback and reflection on classroom management periodically and make adjustments based on the feedback.

Involving students in the process of shaping the classroom environment and procedures naturally fuels collective responsibility and ownership towards their actions.  

#9 Factor in School Policies

Of course, it would be unwise not to consider school policies when crafting your classroom management plan. Always align your classroom management plan with school protocols to ensure consistency, not only within your classroom but also throughout the entire school environment.

#10 Legal and Ethical Considerations

Lastly, you wouldn’t want legal issues to obstruct your efforts. Ensure that your classroom management plan aligns with and complies with legal and ethical considerations, including student rights and confidentiality.

Tips to Successfully Implement A Classroom Management Plan 

Once you have drafted your classroom management plan, follow the tips below to successfully implement the plan in your classroom: 

Introduce the Plan as Early as Possible

Ideally, present your management plan on the first day of classes to establish consistency in procedures, penalties, and rewards. The earlier the introduction, the quicker students understand what is expected of them and your will have a higher success rate of integrating these expectations into their habits and daily routines.

Reinforce the Plan With Visuals and Quizzes

Consider crafting visual aids like a poster that prominently displays classroom rules and procedures and position it at a visible spot within the classroom. And regularly reinforce these rules and procedures using  interactive quizzes  or  polls  to help students remember them. 

Be Transparent In Your Communication

Following the creation of the classroom management plan, it is essential that you communicate the expectations clearly and ensure that students understand the rationale and consequences behind each of the rules, guidelines and procedures.

Involve Parents and Guardians

Once you have the classroom management plan in place, consider further engaging with parents and guardians by sharing a copy of the plan with them. Parents often value being provided with clear guidelines for classroom behavior can facilitate future discussions about any behavioral issues.

Build Relationships

A classroom management plan is simply a guideline to assist you in teaching and student management. Fostering meaningful relationships with your students remains the cornerstone of effective classroom management, encouraging students to respond positively to your strategies.

Download this Classroom Management Plan template to start using now to see the results in your classroom! 👇

Additional resources.

Response-to-intervention approach to classroom management

Classroom Management Research by National Council on Teacher Quality

Surface Management Techniques for Misbehaving Students

Meaningful Engaged Learning (MEL)

Behavior-Specific Praises

Classroom Reinforcers

With numerous components supporting one another, it’s clear that  effective classroom management  is a multifaceted endeavor that requires thoughtful integration of strategies into a comprehensive plan.

Our comprehensive guide and user-friendly classroom management plan template have provided you with the necessary tools to create a well-structured plan designed for success. Remember, in addition to implementing the recommended strategies, procedures, and rules, always prioritize the development of meaningful relationships with your students. 

This approach will help you establish a classroom environment that is not only well-managed but also fosters enduring trust, cooperation, and positive learning experiences among your students.

About Zhun Yee Chew

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How to Create a Classroom Management Plan [Guide + Resources]

When you’re standing in front of a classroom full of students ready to deliver a lesson, your pupils are probably always sitting up straight, giving you their undivided attention and never engaging in any behavior that would be disruptive to your teaching — right?

What? No? Well then, congratulations! You are among the vast majority of teachers who must consciously put in place a classroom management plan to keep your students on track and focused on the lessons of the day.

The reality is that classroom disruptions and misbehavior can hinder learning and achievement, which is why it is essential for teachers to have a working knowledge of proven classroom management strategies.

What is a Classroom Management Plan?

“The goal of a successful management plan is to maintain a safe and fun classroom that can focus on learning,” according to Kickboard , an educational company focused on facilitating positive culture in schools. “Classroom management is the combination of tools and practices that provide structure and promote positive learning spaces for students. The teacher, or classroom lead, provides instructions and sets expectations for student behavior in order to regulate classroom activities. Organized students, active participation in learning and minimal behavior distractions are evidence of effective classroom management.”

However, putting in place effective structure, expectations and enforcement practices is something that many teachers struggle with. 

“When I was a teacher, classroom management was not my strongest suit,” says Jennifer Gonzalez , editor of the education blog Cult of Pedagogy. “I relied heavily on forming good relationships with my students, thereby preventing misbehavior. This worked about 90 percent of the time; I really didn’t have a whole lot of behavior problems. Unfortunately, the way I dealt with that other 10 percent was rather haphazard: Far too often, I defaulted to the ‘Wait till there’s a problem, then react’ mode.”

Today, this education blogger points readers interested in putting in place a real classroom management plan to longtime teacher Michael Linsin, now an author and consultant who runs the website Smart Classroom Management .

While emphasizing the need to establish rules and enforce them, Linsin believes it is also essential to do so in a way that does not take the joy out of learning. “My number one goal is not that at the end of the day that they know the rules and consequences. It’s that they’re happy and excited to be part of the class. That they run home to their parents and say, ‘Oh my gosh. I have the best teacher. I have this awesome class. We’re going to do this and that this year. It’s going to be great,’” he told Gonzalez in an interview . “The classroom management secret is to create a classroom that students love being a part of.”

Elements of a Classroom Management Plan

“Classroom management is considered one of the foundations of the educational system,” asserts an article in Research.com . “It refers to the actions that educators take that create a supportive environment for students and teachers alike. The right classroom management plan provides opportunities for academic, social and emotional learning.”

The elements of a classroom management plan can be looked at in several different ways. According to the Research.com article ( “Classroom Management Plan Guide With Examples” ), a well-managed classroom has three important elements:

• Efficient use of time and space
• Strategies that empower the students to make good choices instead of controlling their behavior
• Effective implementation of instructional strategies

Kickboard breaks classroom management down into four key elements :

• Accountability – the expectations, rules, behavior choices and enforcement/reinforcement
• Environment – the creation of a physical space (including the placement of desks, decorations, etc.) that is welcoming and reinforces the desired culture
• People – the teachers and students; teachers modeling positive behaviors, students following suit and providing peer-to-peer accountability
• Time – successful classroom management plans require time and patience, reminders and reinforcement to work their magic

Classroom Management Plan – Rules & Consequences

Yes, the rules are obviously a key element of any classroom management plan. And Linsin, the classroom management consultant, recommends keeping them very short and simple.

Handled well, your rules eliminate any need for yelling, scolding, etc. Putting in place clear rules and consequences “allows you to demand impeccable behavior without causing friction and resentment, which then frees you to build meaningful and influential relationships with your students.”

Linsin recommends the following four rules :

• Listen and follow directions.
• Raise your hand before speaking or leaving your seat.
• Keep your hands and feet to yourself.
• Respect your classmates and your teacher.

And he recommends enforcing them through the following three consequences :

• 1st consequence: warning
• 2nd consequence: timeout
• 3rd consequence: letter home

Linsin counsels teachers to: “Print both your rules and consequences on a large poster board and display them prominently in your classroom. You will refer to your classroom management plan often, and thus your students need to be able to see them wherever they’re seated.”

8 Steps for Setting Up a Classroom Management Plan

When it comes to a more formal approach to setting up a classroom management plan, education consulting firm Positive Action offers the following 8-step approach:

1. Set classroom expectations

2. Consider school policies when drafting a classroom management plan

3. Establish clear and consistent boundaries in your class

4. Use verbal and non-verbal reinforcement

5. Hand out a planned syllabus to your class

6. Know the students in the whole class

7. Teach engaging content to encourage positive behavior

8. Decide on consequences

Set classroom expectations – They recommend involving your students in classroom management “because it helps build a community as well as the classroom culture.”

Consider school policies when drafting your plan – Be sure you are adhering to schoolwide discipline procedures while building a classroom management plan that also reflects your own principles, rules and philosophy.

Establish clear and consistent boundaries in your class – A vitally important one here is to insist that students stop talking before you begin and while you are teaching, something that may require patience.

Use verbal and non-verbal reinforcement – Tips here include offering praise with non-verbal communication (such as smiling, nodding or a thumbs up), or shaking your head or frowning to silently signal to a student to keep quiet.

Hand out a planned syllabus to your class – Doing so “will save you and your students a lot of headaches because a syllabus plan establishes expectations from day one and prepares your students on what to learn. At the same time, it allows students to plan informed schedules.”

Know the students in the whole class – Getting to know your students can bring perspective that helps you manage their behavior, while also conveying that you are easy to talk to.

Teach engaging content to encourage positive behavior – As Linsin has also asserted, one of the most effective classroom management strategies is to present curriculum, topics and activities that get your students engaged with your lessons. 

Decide on consequences – Positive Action recommends looking for ways to “use positive strategies to increase students’ competence” and, when negative consequences are needed, be sure to implement “measures that are safe for students and respect their dignity and basic rights.”

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT TEMPLATE [FREE TEACHING TOOL] 

Use our handy 3-page Classroom Management Template to create a plan for everything that goes into successfully operating a classroom.

Classroom Management Tips 

Here is a list of classroom management tips, compiled from multiple sources:

• Build solid teacher-student relationships
• Show that you care
• Celebrate achievements and hard work
• Communicate with parents
• Post your classroom rules and norms
• Keep your rules simple and easy to remember
• Share the meaning of each rule
• Be very specific when modeling desired behavior
• Be consistent
• Encourage students to be respectful
• Teach students to take responsibility
• Be sure your students know emergency procedures
• Set a positive tone for the classroom
• With your structure in place, start fresh each day

Considerations for Elementary School Classroom Management

“Before learning can take place, young students must be helped to settle down and be ready to listen. Disruptions are a constant challenge in any room that’s full of children, and over the years certain elementary classroom management ideas have evolved,” according to Resilient Educator ( “5 Innovative Elementary Classroom Management Ideas” ). The article quotes Kate Ortiz, the National Education Association’s classroom management expert, on these five tips for creating a productive elementary school classroom environment:

• Keep parents engaged
• Avoid favoritism
• Promote students’ respect for each other
• Keep your attention on the disruptive students
• Stay in control of your class

Considerations for Middle School Classroom Management

Middle schoolers can also be a very challenging age when it comes to holding their attention in the classroom.

“Squirrels. That is what they remind me of. We were all that age once and we were all just like squirrels!” says Edutopia blogger Ben Johnson. “Have you ever watched a squirrel? Zoom, freeze for two seconds, flick tail, and repeat. The trick for being a successful middle school teacher is holding their attention for more than just those few seconds.”

A career educator, Johnson said experienced teachers know that it is “impossible to speak over middle schoolers.” Instead, in “The Art of Managing Middle School Students,” he talks about how to use abstract “tools” such as:

• Distraction and connection
• Routine and surprise

“I have always believed that the best discipline plan was to have a good lesson plan, but for squirrelly middle school students, you have to have plan A, B and distraction lesson Z,” he concludes. “It’s important to remember: Middle school students sometimes get flustered and frightened easily, but they also can be easily drawn into the learning with solid expectations, behavior boundaries, and crazy, fun, active learning experiences.

Considerations for High School Classroom Management

 It probably would not shock you to learn that an article offering advice or managing high school students by the education advocacy organization Edmentum would be called “Taming the Chaos (Eight High School Classroom Management Strategies That Work).”

In the piece, former teacher LaToya Hozian shares some lighthearted examples of real-life high school classroom management scenarios. “After teaching high school English for 10 years, I’ve uttered some phrases I never could have imagined would be necessary. For example, ‘Riley, get your sandwich out of your pants!’ Yes, I had to tell a 14-year-old boy to get his sandwich out of his pants.”

Hozian says that when she talks classroom management with teacher friends, “we often laugh because it’s usually thought of as something that only applies to younger students. So, what about high school students? How do you handle a classroom full of students who are dealing with real challenges of growing up … when hormones are raging, everything is over-dramatized, and classroom curriculum is becoming demanding?”

The following tips for high school classroom management are “eight strategies that I had success with in my classroom”:

• Incorporate some comedy
• Be a real person
• Learn names right away
• It’s all about R-E-S-P-E-C-T
• Keep an open-door policy
• Be a good listener
• Be mindful of the broader school environment
• Build relationships 

Classroom Management Plan Resources

Many education advocacy organizations have compiled helpful online pages connecting teachers to a wide spectrum of classroom management planning research and resources. For example, Jennifer Gonzalez of the Cult of Pedagogy blog shares classroom management articles on:

• Are You Sabotaging Your Classroom Management?
• When Students Won’t Stop Talking
• 12 Ways to Upgrade Your Classroom Design
• A 4-Part System for Getting to Know Your Students

 Here are several more classroom management planning resource pages:

 EDUTOPIA

• Creating an Emotionally Healthy Classroom Environment  
• How to Manage Cell Phones in the Classroom
• 4 Early-Year Keys for Effective Classroom Discipline  

  CLASSCRAFT

• 30 Classroom Procedures to Head Off Behavior Problems
• Classroom Management: Building Relationships (video)
• Strategies for Building a Productive and Positive Learning Environment

  TEACHERVISION

• Creating an Effective Physical Classroom Environment
• Classroom Management Strategies & Techniques for Student Behavior
• Proactive Measures for Behavior Management

 Classroom Management Courses

Another high-value option for teachers looking to master classroom management is to enroll in an academic course or program focused on this vitally important topic. 

For example, the University of San Diego’s Division of Professional & Continuing Education offers individual classroom management-related courses , as well as a multi-course Classroom Management Certificate program .

Designed for busy working teachers, the 100% online USD certificate program covers a broad range of essential topics and is an excellent choice for educators interested in professional development opportunities connected to classroom management.

Classroom Management FAQs

“Classroom management is the combination of tools and practices that provide structure and promote positive learning spaces for students,” to Kickboard, an educational company focused on facilitating positive culture in schools. “The teacher, or classroom lead, provides instructions and sets expectations for student behavior in order to regulate classroom activities.”

Why Is it Important to Have a Classroom Management Plan?

Classroom management — aka order in the classroom — is necessary because disruptions and misbehavior can hinder learning and achievement.

What Are the Key Elements of a Classroom Management Plan?

The answer to this question varies depending upon the educator. According to a Research.com article ( “Classroom Management Plan Guide With Examples” ), a well-managed classroom has three important elements:

What Are Some Common Rules Used for Classroom Management?

Classroom management consultant Michael Linsin recommends that classroom teachers keep things simple by putting in place the following four rules:

Curriculum covered in this article

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A Classroom Management Plan for Elementary School Teachers

Teaching can be tough job, especially if you have ongoing behavior issues with young learners. If you’re a new teacher, switching grade levels, or realizing that your current classroom management plan isn’t cutting it, you may feel overwhelmed. Sure, it’s fun to browse Pinterest, teacher blogs, and educational websites to get ideas, but filtering and assembling those ideas into a classroom management plan is a lot of work.

So instead of starting from scratch, implement our plan as a framework and tailor it to your needs. You can pick and choose what you believe will work best for you, and as you find other ideas you like, just mix them in.

This classroom management plan is a step-by-step guide and includes proven strategies and tips for elementary school teachers, and it covers four key components for establishing a successful, well-managed classroom:

Classroom Organization and Set-Up

Read this before you hit the Target dollar bins or spend hours laminating everything in sight. In this section, we discuss the layout and organizational systems of your classroom. This will lay the foundation of your management plan, so take the time to think about how these ideas could fit in your four walls. Read more…

Classroom Rules and Procedures

Classroom rules and procedures may seem interchangeable, but they are actually two different components of your management plan. You’ll want as few rules as possible, and procedures in place that leave your students no room to fail your expectations. We give you tips on both in this section. Read more…

Classroom Management Strategies Using Rewards and Consequences

There are several different reward and consequence systems out there, and multiple arguments for which is best. No system is right or wrong – the best system motivates your particular students. We focus on positive behavior reinforcement, and you can use any of these suggestions in conjunction with school-wide frameworks such as Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). Read more…

Effective Classroom Management Throughout the Year

When your students are at home, in another part of the school, or moving to the next grade level, they won’t have your rules and procedures to tell them how to act. We’ll provide you with social skills activities to strengthen your students’ ability to think critically about their behavior. Read more…

In this plan, we make a lot of references to the first few weeks of school, but if you’re reading this after the start of the school year, or even in the second semester, it’s not too late.

If you try something for a while, and it just doesn’t work for your students, that’s okay, too. Consistency is good, so don’t change your entire management system once a month; however, it’s better to introduce something new than to spend the rest of the year with a chaotic classroom. And if things go sideway, just take a step back, reevaluate, and take some time for self care !

Classroom Organization and Set-up

You may feel a lot of pressure to make your classroom look attractive and colorful . If you’re just starting out, or crafts aren’t your forte, this could seem daunting. Effective classroom organization and set-up is functional first with the cute factor second. But we’ve got you covered on both!

Before you can instruct students on procedures, routines, and expectations, you need the layout and physical systems in place. For example, you don’t want to tell students that part of their morning routine is to turn in their homework if there’s no spot in the classroom for them to put their work. Otherwise, you’ll have 25 students shoving papers in your face when they walk in the door.

The goal is to encourage student independence so your classroom runs smoothly even if you aren’t in the room. You’ll want to make sure students are able to access all of the materials they need without your being the gatekeeper of the pencils, books, paper, etc. Having everything in its place allows you to delegate tasks to your students, empowering them and saving you time. Why do something yourself when you can teach the students to do it for you, right?

The goal is to have your classroom organized so that when the kids get there, you can start teaching the procedures right away.

Organizing Near the Door

Cubbies: You know students come to school with all sorts of things from home, including jackets, backpacks, rain/snow boots, lunch boxes, balls for recess, etc. Assigning a spot in your classroom for each student to put their belongings will not only keep your classroom organized, but also make students feel like they have a place of their own in the classroom. Put students’ names on their cubbies so that they will be easy to find on the first day. If you don’t have built-in cubbies in your room, consider getting some Command hooks or cheap plastic crates.

Attendance/lunch choice: Taking attendance and lunch choice yourself is not an effective use of your limited morning time. As we said earlier, if your students can do it, they should. Somewhere near the door (if possible), create an attendance and lunch choice station. One way to do this is to use a simple clip chart. The top of the chart will say “good morning,” and you’ll clip a clothespin for each child there at the start of each day. The rest of the chart will have spots for students to choose their lunch option for the day. Whichever clothespins are left on “good morning” indicate students who are absent. Laminate each section of the clip chart, and connect the sections with a hole punch and binder hooks. As another option, you could create a similar system on a cookie sheet with magnets for each student.

Turn in “take-home” folders: Give each student a folder to use for all of their “take-home” documents. These documents can include homework, permission slips, notes home, newsletters, and anything else that parents may need to see. Parents can also use this as a reliable way to deliver notes back to school, such as changes in transportation or early dismissal. On a small table, have three trays (stackable paper trays work well): homework, parent notes, and permission slips. You can also customize these trays for things you commonly send home or receive from parents. If you’re putting this on your supply list, ask for the specific folder that works well for you (e.g., all blue with prongs, yellow double pocket folder).

Organizing the Front of Your Classroom

Rules poster:  Display the classroom rules prominently in the front of the room. You’ll want to refer to them often in the first couple of weeks of school and as needed throughout the year.

Daily schedule: Write out the most common components of your daily schedule on sentence strips (e.g., math, science, art, PE) and use a pocket chart to display them. You can easily rearrange and swap out the sentence strips. Students will know exactly what is happening each day – what special they’re going to, what time recess is, etc. – and you will save yourself from answering a million questions about the schedule.

Morning and end-of-day procedures: Post your morning and afternoon procedures so students may refer to them as a daily checklist.

Homework/Other assignments: Write homework and other assignments in the same place daily so that students know where to look for them and can copy them down as part of your routine.

Setting up Desks and Student Seating

• Decide how you would like to arrange students’ desks for the majority of activities. Some schools have preferences for this, so check with your administration. Remember that none of the students should have their backs to the board. If you’re going to arrange the desks in groups, angle them so that the desks are perpendicular to the front of the room. Arranging desks in groups can foster cooperation and communication among students, and the expectations you implement and reinforce will limit/prevent disruptions from chatty students. Assign seats from the first day of school, and make adjustments in the first week as you get to know your students.
• Label your desk groups so that you can easily call on them for things such as lining up. You can use different colors, college names, animals, or something else that works for the theme in your classroom.
• For younger students who will spend a lot of time on the carpet, create a spot for each child to help teach them the concept of personal space. Some classroom rugs are nicely squared off with different colors. If yours isn’t, don’t feel like you have to go buy an expensive new carpet. You can use cheap placemats from the dollar store, or fabric or carpet remnants to create personal squares for each student to sit on.

Additional Classroom Orginization

Cool down corner: Inevitably, an upset student will need a safe place in the classroom to cool down and take a break. Establish a corner of the room with a beanbag chair or pillow and a poster of emotion regulation strategies. Students can practice identifying emotions and managing their feelings in different situations in the interactive online game, Zoo U .

Behavior: We’ll chat more about the different options for encouraging positive behavior later on. If you choose an option that tracks behavior publicly, like a clip chart, you’ll want to have that set up before you introduce the system to your students. Even if you aren’t going to track behavior publicly, you’ll probably want to display posters or anchor charts reminding students of your behavior system (which is different from your rules poster).

Classroom jobs: Create an area to display and assign classroom jobs. An easy way to do this is to take a picture of each student in the first week of school and attach a magnet to the back of the photo. Arrange the classroom jobs on a magnet board, and easily swap the photos around when students change jobs.

Display some personal items: Displaying a few personal photographs, your college banner, or other trinkets on your desk helps to build a relationship with your students. You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) tell your students everything about you. But knowing you as a person, rather than just a teacher, will help students feel comfortable sharing their own home life with you.

Every school day isn’t perfect, even for the best teachers; kids are human and will have bad days. But, you can work toward whatever your ideal classroom looks like by establishing clear classroom rules and procedures from the first day of school.

When students know what is expected of them, and these expectations are reinforced daily, there is little room for power struggles between teacher and student, or complaints from parents.

Classroom Rules

Imagine a basketball game in which none of the players know the rules. The referees would blow the whistle constantly, admonishing players for breaking rules they didn’t know existed. How frustrating would this game be for both the players and the refs, and for the fans in the bleachers? It would be chaos.

In your classroom, you are the referee, your students are the players, and the fans are parents and guardians. If your students don’t know the rules, your classroom will be just as chaotic. So, set your classroom rules from the first day of school, and make sure they’re understood by everyone so there will be no surprises or room for arguments from students and parents.

Less is More

Create a few straightforward yet inclusive rules for your classroom. Too many rules will be hard for students to remember and follow, so try to keep it to five or six. That means the rules need to be broad enough to encompass all of the behaviors you want to avoid, while being clear enough that students understand what behavior is expected. The most effective rules tell students what they should do, not what they shouldn’t do. For example, “Keep hands and feet to yourself” is preferable to “No hitting or kicking.”

We just gave you a lot of rules for writing classroom rules! You can use our  posters or refer to it for creating your own. Display your rules poster prominently in the front of the classroom so that you and your students may reference it often.

“Something I do in my classroom that works great is to write the rules with my students,” explains Katy Jaeger, a first-grade teacher in Colorado. “We come up with them together, and then everyone signs their name so we all agree. I also call them “Classroom Expectations” as opposed to “rules” to increase positivity.” You can steer your students toward coming up with the rules you’ve already written, and unveil your poster the next day.

Communicate with Parents

Discuss the classroom rules with parents at open house, and send them home on the first day of school. Explain that your students will contribute to the rules on the first day, and invite parents to ask clarifying questions or contribute their thoughts as well. Now that you have their buy-in, if you do need to call home, parents will understand what rule was broken and why this was a rule in the first place. This is your first step in developing a partnership with your students’ parents .

If you have time to send mailings home before the start of school, this is a good opportunity to begin building a positive relationship with your students with a personal letter. Students are often nervous to start a new school year, and this will get them excited to join your classroom. And what child (or adult!) doesn’t love getting a letter in the mail?

Be Consistent

Reinforce classroom rules consistently with all students, even in seemingly minor infractions. If students notice that a classmate doesn’t receive a warning or consequence for breaking one of the rules, they’ll develop bad habits that will be hard to break. And you’ll get a lot of “Why are you picking on me?” responses from students. We’ll cover more on rewards and consequences in the next section.

Classroom Procedures

Procedures are different from rules and are just as integral to a well-managed classroom. If your classroom rules are like the rules of a basketball game, your procedures are the plays, the strategies of the coach and team to keep the game organized in order to win. The coach foresees all of the upcoming obstacles in a game, and designs plays to overcome them. He doesn’t need to give specific instructions during a game, only the name of the play, and each player knows exactly where to be on the court and what to do.

Plays are not learned one day and then used successfully in a game the next. The coach spends time teaching the play and making sure the players understand, and then the players practice over and over again until the play is routine. If a play doesn’t end up working in a game, the coach will make changes and start the practice again.

When working on classroom procedures with your students, you are no longer the referee, you are the coach. You need to foresee all of the different situations that will come up daily in your classroom, and design procedures that will tell your students how to navigate them. Your students will not internalize your procedures with one explanation. You need to spend plenty of time in the first couple of weeks of school explaining the procedures, modeling them, and putting them into practice. If a procedure doesn’t end up working, don’t be afraid to make the necessary changes and practice again.

Teaching Procedures

When teaching procedures, you can use a similar strategy to teaching academic lessons: I do, We do, You do.

First, explain the procedure while modeling it yourself. Use explicit directions that don’t leave any room for interpretation or student failure. Have you ever done the writing exercise that asks you to give instructions for making a PB&J? You might start with the first step of “spread the peanut butter on the bread.” But if I’m totally unfamiliar with the concept, where do I get the bread? How do I open the jar? What do I use to spread the peanut butter – my fingers, a spoon? You’ve probably made a PB&J so many times you could make one in your sleep, so it’s more difficult to break down everything that goes into making the sandwich, and things such as using a knife seem obvious. It’s the same with a procedure such as lining up to leave the classroom. Children need all of the tiny, seemingly obvious steps to set them up for success.

If you want them to end up standing quietly in line at the door, you might explain the procedure like this:

• When I call your table group, you will silently stand up.
• Without talking, push your chair in gently, trying your best not to have it make noise on the floor.
• Walk slowly and silently to the door.
• Stand in a single-file line, keeping your hands to yourself.
• Wait silently and patiently for the rest of the class to line up.

After you explain this procedure, model it for your students while explaining it a second time. Sit down at one of the student desks and go through the movements. Next, check for understanding by asking if anyone can explain the procedure. Call on a student and have her re-explain the procedure to the class. Make any corrections needed.

Have a couple of students demonstrate the procedure while you narrate. “Billy is standing up silently. Sofia pushed in her chair as gently as she could. Daryl is walking silently to the door. Aaliyah is standing behind her three classmates with her hands to herself. Billy, Sofia, Daryl, and Aaliyah are all standing silently and patiently waiting for the rest of the class to line up.”

Call on the rest of the table groups to practice this procedure, acknowledging students who are following it correctly. If a student misses any of the steps, have him go back to the previous step and gently remind him of the procedure. “Charlie, remember we are pushing our chairs in gently, so they don’t scrape the floor or bang our desks.” Continue practicing until the whole class can complete the procedure together.

The explicit directions may feel a little silly and unnatural when you first start, but the kids need to know exactly what you expect of them. There are a lot of procedures you will teach in the first weeks of school, and as new situations and activities arise throughout the year. We’ll go into detail on a few examples below.

Common Procedures

Emergency procedures (fire drill, tornado drill, lockdown, etc.):

Teach these procedures first. You never know when an emergency will happen, and your students will need to behave calmly and safely.

Your school may have specific guidelines for these types of drills, so consult with other teachers and administration. Most schools are required to have a fire drill once a month. School-wide lockdown drills happen less frequently (sometimes only once a school year) but are just as important, so consider having your own drill with your students once a month as well.

“Leave now” codeword:

There could be an emergency situation in which you would want your class to leave the room quickly while you stay behind. This could be due to a medical emergency, such as a student having a seizure, or a student becoming violent/dangerous to others. There won’t be time for explicit directions in these situations, so you’ll need to establish a codeword and procedure. An example of a codeword is “hot dog.” When students hear you say the codeword, they should quickly pick up what they are working on (scooping it up in their hands like they’re holding a hot dog) and silently leave the room. Designate a safe place for them to go, ideally another classroom, or the hallway if necessary. Assign one student to tell the teacher in the other classroom the situation so she can call for help, while the rest of the students sit down and continue working. Once you have practiced this procedure a couple of times, begin to practice it about once a month without warning students, like a fire or lockdown drill.

Morning Routine:

You can start off on the right foot each day by establishing a morning routine. What are the most important things you want students to do before instruction begins to prepare for a successful day? You’ll have a lot going on in the mornings, so students will need to be able to come in and get settled independently.

Morning Routine Example

• Enter classroom quietly
• Mark attendance and lunch choice
• Turn in homework in designated homework spot
• Put jacket/backpack/lunchbox and anything else in cubby
• Make sure you have sharpened pencils and any other materials needed for the day
• Read today’s schedule
• Complete your Do Now (explained below)

Attendance/Lunch choice:

Students will take their own attendance and make their lunch choice on the same clip chart (see Part I of this plan for instructions on how to make and use a clip chart). Instruct students to move their clip from “Good Morning” to their lunch choice. Some schools offer more than one hot lunch choice. If you have laminated your clip chart, you can write in the new choice each day. For the first few weeks of school while students are practicing this procedure, double-check the attendance before you send it to the office. If any students forgot this step in their morning routine, have them go back and do it. Once students have gotten this procedure down, you’ll only need to do a quick scan each morning.

Turning in homework and notes:

After students have made their lunch choice, they should take out their Take Home Folder and put their homework and any notes from home in their corresponding trays. For K-2 students, you could have them turn in their entire folder so that you can look for homework and notes yourself.

Once students have completed the rest of their tasks in the morning routine, you’ll want them to have an activity to start the learning for the day. A simple way to do this is to have a similar “Do Now” each morning. For example, each morning you could put a sentence on the smartboard with grammatical errors and have students correct them. Younger students could practice their letters or handwriting. If, later in the year, your students are struggling with another fundamental, you can switch the Do Now.

End-of-Day Routine:

At the end of the school day, both you and your students will be tired and ready to go home. Keep an awesome school day from devolving into chaos with an established routine for packing up to go home.

End-of-Day Routine Example

• Make sure you have all materials needed for homework
• Pack all belongings in backpack
• Pick up trash around your desk
• Stack chair on desk (ask your school’s custodian what would be most helpful)
• Line up quietly for dismissal

Getting attention/Listening to a speaker:

Throughout the day, there will be times when your students are working independently and you need to call their attention. If you don’t practice a procedure for this from the beginning, you may find yourself flicking the light switch on and off while students yell and giggle, or trying to shout above the noise. (This is especially no fun when another adult is in the room.) You’ll also need to establish how you want your students to get ready to listen while you, a classmate, or anyone else is speaking.

A call and response is a fun way to get your students’ attention. You’ll say a phrase, students will respond with the corresponding phrase or action, and you’ll repeat the process until you have everyone’s attention. One common example is “If you can hear me, clap once; if you can hear me, clap twice”; and so on, because the clapping helps get students’ attention. There are tons of examples out there, including this great  list compiled by National Board Certified Teacher Angela Watson .

To connect your call and response to your active listening pose (explained next), here’s an example:

“Whooooo’s ready? … Hoot Hoot”

“Whooooo’s ready? … to make wise choices?”

When you call the whole class’ attention, it’s because you have something to say, whether it’s directions, a new lesson, or a visitor in the room. Students need to know how you want them to behave once you have their attention, and how to show that they are listening. In comes the Active Listening Pose. Active Listening is “mak[ing] a conscious effort to hear not only the words that another person is saying but, more importantly, try[ing] to understand the complete message being sent.”

Note that this active listening pose does not focus on where students’ body parts are. Some students may actually listen better with a fidget toy in their hands, or while they’re standing or bouncing on an exercise ball. If you’ve made these accommodations for some students in your classroom, you don’t want your active listening pose to prescribe that all students have their hands folded, as it will cause confusion and arguments about fairness among your students.

However, if you’re in a situation where students need to sit a certain way because they’re in tight quarters, such as carpet time or an assembly, you might introduce an additional pose for that particular situation. A good call and response for carpet time is “Criss-cross applesauce … spoons in the bowl,” reminding students to sit with their legs crossed and hands in their laps.

Additional Classroom Procedures

Voice levels:

When students are supposed to talk, whether giving a presentation, working with a group or partner, or answering a question, they need to know your expectation for how loud to speak. Introduce the different acceptable voice levels at the beginning of the year, and model what each of them sounds like. Then, throughout the year, whenever you are about to start an activity in which students will talk, tell them which voice level they should use.

Classroom Jobs:

Once your whole class has learned their procedures, assigning classroom jobs can save you time and transfer ownership of the classroom to students. As with any of your procedures, be sure to teach, model, and practice the classroom jobs with students. When it’s time to switch jobs, have the previous student teach the new job holder the ropes. For upper elementary students, consider switching jobs each month, and to increase accountability, have students fill out an application to choose their new job.

Here is a list of classroom jobs and their responsibilities from  Scholastic .

Use a timer:

It’s always going to seem like there’s not enough time in the day. Students, especially those who may come to you below grade level, need all the time you can give them to learn. Implementing these procedures will cut down on wasted time, but you also need to foster a sense of urgency in your students that any wasted minute is taking away from their learning time. We walk quickly, but safely, in the hallway to our next destination because we need as much time as possible to learn. We put away our ELA notebooks and transition to math as quickly as possible so we don’t lose any math time. Using a timer will help hold both you and your students accountable to the schedule.

You can use e.ggtimer.com to display a timer on the smartboard. This clock-like timer is also a great visual representation for students who can’t tell time yet. In the hallways, you can use your watch or smartphone.

Throughout the day:

These are just a few examples of important procedures, but you’ll want to implement procedures for every aspect of the day. “Whether it’s lining up for recess, sharpening a pencil, or transitioning from one activity to the next, having classroom procedures and routines is extremely important. There is honestly nothing better than having your classroom run like a well-oiled machine,” says Kristine Nannini, an elementary school teacher and blogger. Nannini offers a checklist of 100+ procedures on her Teachers Pay Teachers store, including “What to do if someone enters our class with a birthday treat?” and “What do you look like at an assembly?”

Classroom Management Strategies

“I’ve worked in dozens of schools as a school change coach, and I have seen firsthand that the very best schools teach children how to regulate their own behavior rather than relying on adults to tell them if they are “good” or “bad”…It’s a lot more fun and satisfying working in a school with students who take that responsibility rather than the adults making judgments and always being “in charge.” Why should we be responsible for their behavior? Let’s teach them how to do it!”

Mike Galvin – Senior consultant at Focused Leadership Solutions

Ideally, you will create a classroom culture in which students behave because they want to make good choices, rather than to earn rewards or to avoid negative consequences. But, you can’t expect intrinsic motivation to happen overnight. You will need a thoughtful set of classroom management strategies.

Just as you spend time practicing procedures over and over again, you also have to spend time positively reinforcing good behavior and negatively reinforcing bad behavior until students internalize the message. As Galvin says, we have to take the time to “teach them how to do it.”

Teaching Students to Take Responsibility

In Part II, we mentioned transferring responsibility to your students (access to materials, classroom jobs, taking attendance, etc.). Similarly, we can put students in charge of their own behavior with the right system. Students should be able to recognize appropriate and inappropriate behavior in themselves and others, and adjust accordingly.

Bonus: We have a great lesson, Would You Rather Questions for Kids , to help you discuss the tradeoffs involved in making different choices.

In her blog post , Becky discusses the Raise Responsibility system she uses, based on Marvin Marshall’s book,  Discipline without Stress, Punishments, or Rewards . This system gives students a framework to think critically about their behavior, deciding for themselves if it needs to change. There is also a nuanced distinction between doing something to look good or be rewarded, and doing something simply because it is right.

The Raise Responsibility model separates behaviors into the following zones or levels: D – Democracy

• Doing something because it’s the right thing to do, even if no one is watching

C – Conformity

• Listening and following directions
• Working well with others
• Doing something to look good, be rewarded, or avoid trouble

B – Bullying /Bossing

• Name calling
• Bothering or bossing others
• Breaking classroom rules
• Must be bossed to behave

A – Anarchy

• Loss of control
• Actions that could hurt yourself or others
• Running, hitting, or kicking

The A and B levels encompass bad choices that need correction. The C level includes good behavior, but the student is extrinsically motivated by classroom rewards. The goal is for students to achieve D level, meaning they’re intrinsically motivated to behave well. Display these levels on posters in your classroom.

If a student continues to misbehave after one warning about their level, Becky suggests they fill out a behavior reflection think sheet . She also gives each student a personal level ring so that they can all do a “level check” if needed. You can download these personal level cards for free from Becky’s Teachers Pay Teachers store .

Miss At , another blogger and teacher using the Raise Responsibility model, has students choose their consequence after finishing their reflection. This reinforces the idea of students regulating their own behavior. Miss At suggests providing students with some acceptable consequences as a starting point so that the consequence they choose is still one you find appropriate for their behavior.

Clip Charts

Another popular model for reinforcing and tracking positive and negative behavior is the clip chart. Each student in your class would have a clothespin with his or her name on it that would start in the middle of the chart each day. Students earn the opportunity to move up the chart with good behavior choices, or move down the chart with poor behavior choices. Students start each day with a clean slate with their clip reset to the middle.

Former teacher Rick Morris has a helpful e-book explaining how to create and introduce a clip chart system in your classroom. He says, “Any student who has been asked to move his clothespin down a level or two … has the opportunity to improve his behavior and see his clothespin rise to a better level … The thought that a child is offered a chance at redemption is not only a powerful motivator for the student, it also enables the teacher to act on problem behavior and not just talk about it.”

When introducing the chart system, make it clear to students what to expect from each level of the chart. Set the rewards for the top parts of the chart or consequences for the bottom levels from the beginning so you are not making these decisions based on your emotions.

As with the Raise Responsibility System, you could also use a reflection sheet or have students choose their own consequence when they reach a certain level on the chart.

ClassDojo is a free, electronic way to manage behavior in your classroom. Teachers input their students’ names via the app or a computer, and each student gets their own monster avatar. You can customize which skills are most important to your classroom, such as cooperation and impulse control. Throughout the day, you can award dojo points to individual students for displaying those skills, and you can also award whole-class points. Students will hear a “ding” noise when you award a point. You can also take away points when students are not making good choices. Some teachers display the points breakdown to the whole class, while others don’t – that’s up to you!

ClassDojo also has features to connect with parents. According to their site, “Parents can see their child’s feedback from their own device at home. Plus, [teachers] can also easily share with parents:

• Photos and videos of students working hard in class
• Ideas for how they can help at home
• Important announcements and reminders”

Sarah, a special education teacher, uses ClassDojo in conjunction with a clip chart. “I…can’t assume that all parents will log into ClassDojo, and I am a big believer in strong home-school communication, especially when it comes to behavior. So I came up with a system to incorporate ClassDojo with my color chart so we could have all hands on deck,” Sarah explains on her blog .

Classroom Rewards

While we want to teach students to do the right thing without expecting a reward, a little recognition when students are making good choices goes a long way. Even as adults, an unexpected “job well done” or shout-out at a staff meeting gives us a little boost. Positive behavior reinforcement can be an important part of your school’s culture, especially if your school uses PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Supports). Now that doesn’t mean you have to hand out candy or some other trinket to students every time they follow a rule. Below are some examples of rewards and acknowledgments that you can use to reinforce positive behaviors with individual students or the whole class:

Classroom Rewards for All Students

When a majority of the class has been exceptional (D level for an extended period, top levels on the clip chart, certain number of dojo points, etc.):

• Cheers and energizers are free celebrations that also get students up and moving and get their wiggles out. You can write the titles on a popsicle stick and choose one from a can each time.
• Put a pom-pom in a jar. If the jar gets filled to a certain point by Friday, give the class a special reward, such as a five-minute dance party.
• Give whole-class points on ClassDojo.
• Call home on a regular basis to praise students so when you need to call home with a negative, you already have a relationship with the parents. Parents may not be used to getting positive calls and will be delighted.
• If you know you won’t have a chance to call home that night, send a note. Consider getting a notepad with carbon copies so you can keep one for your records.
• Send home behavior updates via the ClassDojo app.
• For younger students, consider having a behavior calendar that gets sent home every day. On each day, you can mark which level of your particular behavior system a student ended the day on, or was on the most.
• Have students be on the lookout for good behavior to give shout-outs to their classmates. Put shout out slips (available for free below) in an accessible part of your classroom, along with a spot for students to submit them. You can choose to read a couple or all of them each day to encourage students.
• Homework pass
• Sit next to a friend for the day
• Have your shoes off while working
• Lunch with the teacher
• Pick a classroom job
• Anything else you’ve noticed your students like

Consequences

While you’ll put in every effort to create a positive classroom culture, consequences will still be necessary. In the same way that we want students to learn to do the right thing simply because it’s right, we want students to avoid poor choices, not because they are afraid of getting caught, but because they know they are wrong. Be clear and consistent about what behavior will lead to what consequence.

• Call parents when necessary. If you’ve already built a strong relationship with positive calls, parents will be more supportive and willing to help correct a negative behavior.
• Send copies of reflection sheets home to parents.
• For severe behavior, send to office/write referral.
• Lose five minutes of recess
• Loss of classroom job
• Loss of choice in a certain activity
• Sit by yourself for the day
• Silent lunch
• Loss of participation in a whole class reward
• Take away a privilege your individual students find valuable

“Stay consistent, stay consistent, stay consistent, when giving rewards and especially consequences!” says Alexa Baird, a 4th-grade teacher in North Carolina. “Even the best behaved kid can act out if given the opportunity. Be strong with rewards and consequences for the first two to three months, and the rest of the year will be smooth sailing.”

When Things Aren’t Working:

There may come a time when you lose control of your classroom. These plans and systems are unfortunately not foolproof, and there could be a day when the full moon, Halloween, and three kids’ birthdays perfectly align. “When you are in an emergency situation and you don’t know what else to do to get you through the rest of your class period, pull out a notebook and start writing,” says Jennifer Gonzalez of Cult of Pedagogy. In one of her videos , Gonzalez explains that whenever she did this in her classroom, her students calmed down within a minute. “It doesn’t matter what you’re writing,” she says, “but the students are caught off guard and start to focus on you.” It also works as an exercise to calm the teacher down in this stressful situation. “It’s a self-soothing strategy, a form of meditation, and what it can do is help the teacher get into a calmer state of mind so he or she can make a smart decision, rather than a knee-jerk one,” says Gonzalez.

To use the notebook in your classroom management plan apart from an emergency strategy, see Part 2 of Gonzalez’s video .

And, lastly, make sure you practice self-care ! It’s essential for long-term success in the classroom.

Effective Classroom Management with SEL

“If you focus instruction only on what to do or not to do in a given circumstance, the child will be left at a loss when he faces a situation that was not explicitly taught … We need to help children understand not only how to behave appropriately, but also why behaving in an appropriate manner will be good for them.”

Melissa DeRosier, PhD – Clinical Psychologist

In order to succeed in the classroom and in life, students need to be able to evaluate the pros and cons of different behaviors and understand why the one they choose would work best. And this doesn’t come from robotic following of rules and procedures.

Instead students must develop appropriate social and emotional skills. According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL):

“Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals , feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.”

Just like with your rules and procedures, the key is to introduce, model, and practice social and emotional skills and behaviors with your students – You can use our free SEL lessons to help . Here are a few examples:

• List of Emotions lesson
• All About Me Template
• Charades for Kids
• Positive Affirmations for Kids

Yazmin Chavira, a KIPP alumna and teacher, says, “Once you have one concrete language that everyone is using – teachers, parents, students – that they see it on the walls, their teachers are using it every day in class, that makes it a lot more salient for them.”

And KIPP teacher, Alaina Harper explains how a focus on character impacts reinforcement of behavior in her classroom: “Instead of it being ‘I have a feeling about what you’re doing,’ it’s ‘I have this behavior that you’re doing which highlights this particular strength.’ And so it takes a lot of the personal out of it. So it’s no longer ‘Ms. Harper doesn’t like me’ or ‘Ms. Harper is unfair to me.’ And because of that, they’re more open to being able to address it. Because it’s not that I’m gonna to like you better, it’s that you’re going to be better.”

How do you provide students the opportunity to practice these social and emotional skills? Our online SEL interventions are a great way for students to practice and improve in common situations they would experience at school.

Need Something More Engaging And Effective For A Few Students?

Simply request a free centervention educator account and start using our online programs.

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Create A Strong Classroom Management Plan: A Step-By-Step Guide

• Classroom Management

Having a strong classroom management plan (or not) is the difference between loving your teacher life or dreading each day. No joke. That’s a strong statement but we’re not playing around here. It’s that important.

In this post, you’ll find everything you need to know, and practice, for a classroom that runs smoothly, with a strong family feel at its core. Sound like a dream? Well, grab your coffee and let’s dive in!

#1 Whole Class Reward System

In the world of classroom management, a well-structured whole-class reward system is the backbone of your classroom management plan. Even upper elementary students thrive in an environment where their positive choices are noticed and celebrated.

Speaking from experience, implementing a class reward system like a house system can truly transform the atmosphere in your classroom. I’ve seen firsthand how it encourages teamwork and cultivates a positive learning environment.

Wondering what class reward system I use? In a big fan of using a house system in upper elementary. I’ve tried lots of different systems and it’s the one that has made the most positive impact in my fourth grade classroom. Unlike other whole class systems where the excitement fizzles out, students are hyped on the house system all year long.

#2 Student Reflection

Student reflection is key in a strong classroom management plan. It helps foster self-awareness and personal growth. Using a tool like behaviour tracking at the end of every day gets your students thinking about their actions and how they can continue to make good choices or make better decisions in the future. Daily behaviour tracking is hands down the classroom management tool where I’ve noticed a significant shift in students’ behaviour within the classroom.

Now, you might be thinking, wait, do I actually need to use a whole class system and an individual system? If you’re new to all of this, you don’t have to start both of them at the same time however, in a nutshell, the answer is yes.

Here’s the deal: using both methods allows you to provide the positive reinforcement that the whole-class system provides, while also giving students a chance to reflect on their choices, both the good and the ones that could use a little improvement. That’s where the behaviour management comes into play. It’s all about striking that balance!

#3 Strong Routines

Alright, let’s be real – routines are it when it comes to a well-managed classroom. Practicing those routines a ton at the beginning of the year, setting clear expectations, and giving regular feedback on how students are handling them, truly pays off. From the morning bell to packing up at the end of the day, investing the time to teach and practice these routines is worth it to manage the day-to-day chaos. I promise!

#4 A Plan for Early Finishers

Maybe your students will stay focused and work hard during a task. But what happens when those speedy few are finished? Is there a clear next step for them? Providing early finishers with meaningful tasks keeps them engaged and focused but also reduces distractions for the rest of the class. It’s a win-win. Try implementing must do may do lists for your early finishers.

#5 Consequences

In this approach to a strong classroom management plan, the emphasis is on relationship building and creating a community with clear expectations. Now, you might be wondering, “What do I do when a student makes a mistake? Like, when they punch their friend at recess or refuse to do an assignment?” Truth is, we’ve all had students make these not-so-great choices even with strong relationships in place.

So, how do you handle it? You stay calm and provide a natural consequence, when appropriate. Here’s the deal – consequences aren’t about punishment, they’re about learning. It’s the moment when students connect their actions to the outcomes. Be fair, be consistent, and keep the focus on growth. It’s how we nurture a sense of responsibility and accountability.

Need an example of a natural consequence? If a student refuses to complete an assignment, they may have to complete it before moving on to a preferred activity, may have to take it home to complete or even start it first thing the next morning before diving into the day’s other activities.

#6 Post A Schedule & Be Prepared

You know those days when you forge ahead without a clear plan for the day? Yeah, not pretty. A clear schedule supports students in a predictable rhythm for the day and is a small but crucial part of your classroom management plan. It has a calming effect when they can see what’s to come.

Posting a clear schedule helps ease students into the day as they know what’s to come. You can even jot down specifics on the whiteboard beside each schedule card, so students know exactly what to expect in each subject. This provides even more information for your students which will reduce stress levels. For instance, next to the “science” schedule card, you might write “Animal Life Cycle Projects.”

Now, the same goes for you. When you’re well-planned and prepared, you avoid that frantic feeling that creeps up when you’re not one step ahead of your students. Trust me, they pick up on your vibe and will meet you where you’re at. If you’re feeling frantic, so will they.

#7 Lead with Respect and Love

Respect is a two-way street. The heart of a strong classroom management plan is in the relationships you build. Treat your students with respect and create a space where they feel loved each day. That truly will aid in your classroom management. When students feel respected, cared for, and safe, they’re more likely to engage and cooperate. 

Remember, kids do the best they can with the tools that they have. 

#8 Build Strong Class Community

Along the same lines, taking the time to build a strong class community, from the start, is truly worth your time. When students feel a sense of belonging, they’re more likely to be engaged and supportive of one another. Within a strong community, students are more likely to respect one another, be engaged, and be inclusive. Every teacher’s dream, right?

Some quick-fire ways to build class community, strengthening your classroom management plan, are through morning meetings, group leadership roles, and a house system.

#9 Student Engagement and Choice

Keeping student engagement at the forefront of your planning will support your classroom management plan. The reason being that when students are engaged in classroom activities, they are more likely to participate and to have a positive learning experience. An easy way to boost student engagement is by providing student choice, when possible. One way to do this is by using student choice boards.  

#10 Support Students

Often, when students “act out” it’s because they are struggling. As adults, we can act as detectives to figure out the reason and to support students with what they need. Be attentive to students’ individual needs, whether they need extra help with an assignment, or just need a listening ear. Supporting your students is an important part of your classroom management plan that will need to be adjusted each year, with a different group of students. 

Have many students that need your support with academics? Consider trying station rotations to free you up to work with more students at a time.

The Complete House System

Tired of classroom chaos? Say goodbye to disruptions and endless arguments. Introducing the House System, the perfect addition to your classroom management plan! Designed for upper elementary, this comprehensive system transforms your class into a tight-knit family. With character trait houses, Latin-named houses, and animal-themed houses, students learn, grow, and lead together.

This isn’t just a resource; it’s a complete system! Picture vibrant bulletin boards and engaging house meetings. And the best part? A collection of 60 editable student reward coupons to celebrate your winning house each week. Get ready to motivate your students by earning points for their houses. Check it out now!

There you have it! These ten elements for a strong classroom management plan will support you to effectively run your classroom, with love. It’ll make for a smooth school year for both yourself and your students. Remember, you’re not alone.

Amber Evancio

I'm Amber Evancio and I currently teach grade four in Northern Canada. I'm passionate about helping teachers lead their classes with efficiency and love.

I’m Amber Evancio and I currently teach grade four in Northern Canada. I’m passionate about helping teachers lead their classes with efficiency and love.

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Implementing a successful classroom management plan

We all remember our first year of teaching. If yours was anything like mine, keeping learners focused and engaged wasn’t one of my stronger skills. In fact, I didn’t know how to implement a classroom management plan, let alone a successful one. That first year, my learners didn’t make much progress, and I was often stressed. Over the years, though, I figured out how to create a productive environment where students wanted to learn. Classroom days transitioned from chaotic to enjoyable. 

In a digital environment, it can be even tougher to keep everyone away from distractions and interested in learning. So how do you develop a classroom management plan that works for face-to-face teaching and digital learning? Let’s break down how to start and the tools that will help you.

What is a classroom management plan?

A classroom management plan is an organized yet flexible set of strategies that help you ensure learners are engaged and focused. With an effective plan , disruptive behavior is minimal and students are involved in learning from the start to the end of class. 

Why is it important?

It’s important because students need a positive learning environment in order to succeed. With few distractions and a safe and supportive environment, they’re more likely to dig into class activities and care about their progress. If students feel unsafe or the environment has too many distractions, they can’t meet learning goals.

According to Learning for Justice , in a 2016 Teaching Tolerance survey, “45 percent of teachers who responded indicated that they had wanted to leave the profession at one point because of classroom management and behavioral issues.” Without a classroom management plan, your stress, anxiety and likelihood of burnout may increase. But when your students want to learn in your environment and have respectful relationships, you’ll be happier in your role day to day. 

What are the common challenges?

Students don’t always come to us ready to learn. They may be distracted by relationships with friends or other kids in the school. They may have home life issues on their mind. They may not have had enough to eat or had too much sugar before class. They may be tired from staying up too late or from a restless night of sleep. The list could go on. 

Each child also has their own personality, academic strengths and weaknesses and language skills, which contribute to the learning environment. This also makes it challenging to support each student. Other issues include online distractions and safety issues, large class sizes, and varying school schedules day to day. High school learners may also deal with exam anxiety, AP classes, stress about plans for post-K-12 or working a job while going to school. 

Elements of effective classroom management

What should be included in a classroom management plan.

There are often misconceptions about managing a class. Whether in a room or an online environment, an educator should not be the one ultimately controlling everything. Managing a class should not be based on punitive measures either. 

While learners do need structure and boundaries, educators should guide them, rather than try to control them. Learners are people after all. They will make mistakes and need to hear positive feedback when they make the right decisions. It’s best to proactively set learners up for success so they feel safe and empowered to make positive choices. 

What are the five components of a classroom management plan?

There are five main components to include when setting up your plan. It’s important to be flexible, though, based on your class and your strengths as an educator.

• Relationship building

This is one of the most crucial parts of a classroom management plan. Spend time building student relationships when you start a school year or semester and then continue to build them throughout the year. Taking the time to get to know students and helping them develop supportive connections with each other motivates them to learn. Relationship-building also helps create a respectful and trusting learning environment. 

• Routines, expectations, rules 

Kids want to know what’s expected of them and have consistency day to day. When they don’t know what’s expected of them, it creates stress and confusion. That’s why it’s important to go over daily classroom routines, expectations for behavior and activities and a short set of basic rules. You can also involve learners when creating rules so they feel like they are part of the process and have buy-in to follow them.

• Positive feedback

According to two studies, as noted in New York University’s Opus , “Teachers’ feedback has been found to influence their relationships with students and students’ outcomes, including their academic engagement and aspects of their self-perceptions.” Positive feedback leads to learners displaying more positive behavior in class. It gives them clear direction about what they’re doing well, and they’ll be more likely to repeat the responsible behavior.

Hāpara Highlights helps you give learners positive feedback about digital behavior and browsing choices. This Chrome browser monitoring tool gives you visibility into what learners are doing online. With that visibility, you can use the message feature to send a learner feedback when you see them make a responsible choice online. Or take a “Snap” of their focused online behavior and email it to them with a note.

• Intervention strategies : If learners act out, remember that it’s not personal. Try to pinpoint why the behavior is happening and provide the appropriate intervention. The goal is to be proactive going forward rather than punish the child. 

For example, I had a seventh grade learner who had a tendency to be disruptive. I figured out that it was difficult for him to sit in an uncomfortable classroom chair for long periods of time. So I let him walk up and down the hall (or skip or dance, whatever he felt like!) when he started to fidget, keeping my eye on him while guiding activities in the room. This stopped the disruptive behavior. Rather than punish him for disrupting, there was an intervention that turned the behavior around.

In a digital environment, you need intervention strategies, too, because it’s so easy for learners to get distracted online. Hāpara Highlights gives you the ability to set up guided browsing sessions for learners who need more structure. Or you can instantly share a link to a learner’s screen if they need a brain break. If needed, you can close a learner’s off-task browser tab and then have an intervention conversation about digital citizenship.

• Explicit instruction : Learners of all ages need to be explicitly taught whatever you expect them to do. For example, educator Jim Tobin taught sixth grade science. He asked learners to staple a set of papers together for an assignment. Straight-forward, right? When he saw the stack of stapled work, there were staples on the side, on the top, in the middle. He realized that many of the kids didn’t know that he wanted a staple in the top left corner. He realized he needed to explicitly teach them what he wanted.

If you introduce a new digital tool to learners, it’s also a good idea to show them step-by-step how to use it. For instance, Jim’s learners use the online student planner Hāpara Student Dashboard . He gives them a step-by-step tour, which empowers them to manage their own activities and class communications.

Implementing and maintaining a classroom management action plan

Get to know your learners.

What improves student performance? The first step in implementing a plan is getting to know your learners. Educator Jim Tobin spends at least three days at the beginning of the new school year or semester getting to know his learners. 

During the first week of school, I gave my seventh and eighth grade English learners a survey that helped me understand them better. Some of the questions included:

• Do you enjoy reading? If so, what do you prefer to read when you have a choice?
• Do you like to write? Why or why not?
• Do you have a quiet place to do your homework?
• What are your favorite things to do outside of school?
• Do you like working with others, or do you like working by yourself?
• What did you like best about English class last year?
• Do you have internet access at home?
• Are you an organized person? Explain. 
• What is your strongest subject and why?
• What is your weakest subject and why?

You can send a Google Form with the survey questions directly to learners’ screens with the “Share links” feature in Hāpara Highlights. Or you can add it to a Hāpara Workspace for learners to access, along with other back-to-school activities. 

Help learners get to know you

It’s also important for learners to get to know you. You don’t have to tell them everything about your personal life, but if you share a bit about your interests, your learners will start to feel comfortable around you. 

Remember, you want to create an environment where you are a guide, rather than the person controlling everything in the class. If learners see you as a person with interests beyond the subject you teach, they’ll start to trust you, which will help you build positive relationships. 

Have learners get to know each other

In his current high school classroom, Jim Tobin starts off the year or semester with activities that encourage learners to work together and solve problems. This is when kids really get to know each other, beyond a “getting-to-know-you” bingo game. They start to understand each others’ strengths, and communication styles and have some laughs. 

If you’re in the classroom, have learners get up and work together on a problem-solving activity. In a digital environment, have learners collaborate online in groups. 

In Hāpara Workspace, you can easily add student groups and differentiate resources and activities by group for a lesson, unit or project. 

View this Workspace

Remind about class expectations

How can you continue to have strong classroom management throughout the year? After you go over class expectations with your learners at the beginning of the year or semester, it’s a good idea to continue to remind them when needed. 

When I taught, there were certain times that a particular class, which had been running smoothly, started needing those reminders. Although my goal was to be friendly and fun, I still was their teacher. That meant that I held true to the class expectations and stayed consistent with consequences when needed.

In a digital environment, it’s easy to use Highlights to send quick reminders to a learner or the class that appears immediately on their screen. Or if you send a class announcement in Google Classroom, learners will see it in their Hāpara Student Dashboard notifications.

Continue to build relationships

How can educators ensure that learners behave? First, don’t let behavior from prior years cloud how you interact with a learner. They may have had behavior issues in another classroom, but that doesn’t mean they will in yours. One student of mine apparently acted out in his classes the year before, but I put him in the front of the room next to my desk and he became my class helper. I didn’t experience issues with him because I gave him the chance to have responsibility. In a digital environment, you can assign learners roles in collaborative groups, and give them different levels of responsibility. 

Continuing to build the positive relationships you put effort into at the beginning of the year is also a major factor in maintaining class behavior. I had a bright learner one year who loved to crack jokes. The problem was that he had started to joke at other kids’ expenses. I pulled him aside one day while the class was collaborating in groups, as I didn’t want to draw attention to calling him out.

I let him know that I appreciated his quick wit. But I also explained how he was hurting his classmates’ feelings by directing jokes specifically at other kids. Together we decided he would use his humor in appropriate ways instead. I didn’t want to shut down his personality altogether, but he needed to understand the boundary. Because he felt respected in the way I approached him, he stopped the jokes aimed at his classmates, was excited to come to class every day and raised his grades.

In a digital environment, it’s easy to check in with learners privately by sending them an instant message in Highlights. It pops directly up on their screen, and you can include emojis to personalize the message.

Minimize distractions and teach digital citizenship

It’s also important to take away distractions, especially in a digital setting. It’s so easy for kids to get off task and wander over to Cool Math Games or read about last night’s football game when they’re supposed to be exploring a class activity online. Teaching digital citizenship helps learners understand how to stay focused and make responsible decisions online.

Highlights makes it easy to keep learners engaged online. You can focus learners on certain websites or filter out certain websites to keep them from being distracted. If you need to close a learner’s browser tab, you can provide a digital citizenship reason that they’ll see on their screen.

Educator Melissa Teagarden says that Hāpara is a “lifesaver in middle school.”

Edtech specialist Jessica Burnette says, “I have seen such a huge difference in my students’ productivity and digital citizenship already. The thing I love the most is that if students need redirecting, I can send them a private message to address the issue and not have to ‘call them down’ in front of everyone. I have also used this tool to motivate students and praise them when they are doing well.  I feel these factors have enabled me to protect my relationships and communication with my students.” 

With Workspace, you can also give learners digital citizenship lessons to help them make better choices during class time. 

• Digital citizenship: Grades K-2
• Digital citizenship: Grades 3-5
• Digital citizenship: Grades 6-8
• Digital citizenship: Grades 9-12

Keep parents and guardians in the loop

Use an app like Remind to send home phone calls or send a class email newsletter. There’s no need to give parents your personal cell phone (it’s important to set boundaries and expectations with families, too). But consistent communication ensures that parents and guardians feel like they are part of their child’s learning experience.

Hāpara makes learning visible for parents and guardians, too. They can view their child’s activities in Workspace at any time. Or they can check out their child’s upcoming due dates, overdue assignments and class announcements in Student Dashboard.

Key takeaways

✔ ️ Spending time on developing positive class relationships is most important for classroom management.

✔️  Be proactive with clear expectations, explicit instruction and positive feedback. 

✔️  Tools such as Hāpara Highlights make it much easier to manage your digital classroom.

Learn what to focus on when building a culture of digital citizenship, including conversation starters for learners and educators!

About the author, nicole bixler, you might also enjoy, pin it on pinterest.

How to Build a Classroom Management Plan

Strategies, processes, and routines that work.

Classroom management is a topic that is often talked about, but where little practical support is offered. What is classroom management? It’s anything that relates to the space, time, and materials organized to impact student learning.

Talk to any educator and they have a classroom management plan. Even if they don’t have a specific set of strategies and are just winging it – that’s their plan. 

But now, more than ever before, having a strategic classroom management plan that continually works for you is imperative. Since the pandemic, more educators are reporting students who lack basic social skills and the ability to follow directions. Classroom management frustrations are being cited as some of the top reasons many educators are considering leaving the field. 

If you’re struggling with classroom management, you’re not alone. It doesn’t make you a poor teacher, nor does it reflect upon you personally. Classroom management is a skill that can be taught and learned, just like the content you share with your own students.

This guide is a collection of strategies, tools, and supports that master educators in our community have shared. Use these ideas to build your own classroom management plan which reflects your teaching style and goals for your students.

Jump to a section:

Reframe Your Definition

Building Your Plan

Procedures That Work

Classroom Management Strategies

Strategies for Each Grade Level

Putting It All Together

Reframe your Classroom Management Definition

It’s important to acknowledge that classroom management is not synonymous with punishment or discipline. In fact, classroom management is the opposite of punishment.

Instead, classroom management focuses on setting your students and yourself up for success during your time with them. It is not meant to be punitive in nature, but instead to feed the basic human need for having clear expectations and a way to achieve those expectations.

Positive classroom management reflects teachers who build relationships with their students, establish clear expectations, provide structure and guidance and have a set of corresponding rewards or consequences for the aligned behaviors.

When you have an established classroom management plan, you are actually able to provide students with MORE freedom, not less, because they understand where the boundaries are located. You are sharing a framework and giving students the ability to move within that framework creatively and collaboratively.

Once you have your classroom management plan in place, you will be able to have more time for: centers, groupwork, independent study, choice and hands-on projects. These are not possible, however, without the time and care to develop and establish your classroom management plan with your students.

There are three key components every classroom management plan needs from the beginning: setting the tone, designing the structure, and creating a written plan. Think of these as the foundational blocks of classroom management. Each is intentionally designed to encourage students and provide boundaries within your instructional setting.

Keeping it Positive

One of the very best things you can do is to remain calm and stay positive in your classroom, no matter what happens. This is MUCH more difficult than it sounds. When you have students who are playing with rulers or banging on instruments after you have told them not to twenty times before, it’s hard to stay positive. But you have to, because they are testing you – and the minute you turn negative, that’s the minute you fail their test.

Starting the class with a positive attitude is a critical strategy for classroom management. Not that fake, syrupy positivity; but a genuine happiness that these students are with you at that moment. It lets students know you care about them as people. Every human being wants to know someone cares about them. So approaching your classroom with this mindset can immediately set you up for a better day. 

Here’s a few ways to encourage positive energy right from the start of class:

• Greet your students at the door – every single class. This clues you into their mood and creates a personal connection.
• Point out positive behavior, rather than negative. Students are looking for attention. If you only give attention to positive behaviors, the negatives will be less tempting to try. Try this: “I like the way that….”
• End the lesson with something they did that you enjoyed – no matter what. Even if the whole class felt like it went awry, find something that your students did that was positive. This will leave them with the knowledge that you are seeking out ways to build them up, not tear them down.

Step Up the Structure

We all thrive on structure – whether we like to admit it or not. How you structure the way your classroom looks, the way you approach instructional delivery, and the way your students can use materials is all a part of a smooth classroom management plan. Structure doesn’t always equal “neat and organized” but it does always equal a productive classroom.

Creating an environment where students know where materials go before, during and after a lesson is critical. Empower your students to take responsibility for these items by establishing clearly how your space is set up at the very beginning of your time with them.

Additionally, establishing routines is an important aspect of the structure of your class. This can include everything from the way your students walk in, to where they sit, the jobs each student has, and how to transition between activities. Create a series of routines for the top 4-5 activities and stick with them – consistency is key.

Here are 3 quick strategies to establish structure in your classroom:

• Create dedicated sections in your space. Humans thrive on knowing where things are located and having organization. Make sure your students know where materials are located, as well as what areas of the space are dedicated to specific purposes.
• Go easy on the amount of visuals in your space. Classrooms that contain visuals everywhere can be hyperstimulating for students. Instead, it’s better to create selective visuals that are high-impact and purposeful to specific tasks or information.
• Set up a routine and stick with it. Every teacher has their own unique routine sequence that works for them. Pick one that truly reflects you and then stick with it. Use the routines each and every class so that your students know what to expect. Additionally, as you introduce new materials or transitions, establish and maintain those routines as well.

Create a Written Plan

The educators with the best classroom management are always the ones who plan for classroom management. Creating a written classroom management plan is one of the best time investments you can make. 

First, you’ll have a support document if your administrator wants to know what your policies and procedures are or ever has any questions. Second, and more important, is that you will have the peace of mind that comes with having an action plan put into place that is both clear and sequential in its use.

This doesn’t need to be an overwhelming document. Don’t go writing 40 pages about each and every step in your classroom management process. Instead, create a sheet like the example below to outline the purpose of classroom management in your space and how you plan to execute it with integrity and consistency.

Procedures that Work

Developing routines and procedures is monumentally helpful when it comes to your classroom management plan. These are separate to strategies, which can be a part of procedures, but are not routines in and of themselves.

Procedures provide students with a sense of calm: they know exactly what to expect and what is expected of them. To help remind students of these procedures, having visuals in place that show the routine expected as well as text that describes it is often helpful. Memes are great for this, as are images of students modeling the routine.

Additionally, it’s incredibly important to be consistent in your implementation. You can’t have a different set of expectations for each class. Develop procedures that are followed across the board. And whenever possible, model through actions, rather than words.

Let’s dive deeper into specific procedures and routines that can help support your classroom structure.

Managing Transitions

Don’t let classroom transitional times cause you and your students trouble. Follow these five steps to ensure smoother, more efficient transitions in the classroom:

• Signal . Use an attention grabber to signal to your students that you need to tell the group something important.
• Say “In a Moment…” Before you give instructions, encourage students to listen by telling them that you expect them to wait until you tell them it is okay to begin.
• Give your directions . Speak as clearly and concisely as possible.
• Give the Go-Ahead. Use a signal or verbally say that you want students to begin following your instructions.
• Observe. Verify your instructions are being carried out properly. Make notes if you think you will need to reteach anything later.

Once you’ve established this routine for transitions, it’s time to monitor and adjust as necessary. If you find that transitions are still difficult for your students, try these 7 tips from arts integration specialist Amanda Koonlaba:

Managing Organization

Classroom organization really falls into 3 categories: the classroom itself, classroom supplies, and student organization. 

When organizing your classroom , be sure to look for consistent colors, themes, fonts, and clarity. It’s so easy to go overboard with visuals and classroom setup . But simple is always better than cluttered. 

Try to create dedicated spaces in your classroom for specific tasks. For example, create a space where students look for anchor charts or definitions. Or, have a dedicated area where students can find books for silent reading. 

This sounds simple – and it is. But it can be just as easy to randomly grab whatever area is available to pull small groups for instruction. If you have a dedicated space where students always go for specific tasks, it makes your classroom management plan so much easier to implement.

When helping students get organized , there are 3 foolproof tips that work for almost anyone:

• Declutter . Give students time to clean out there backpacks, desks, binders and other areas where individual items are stored. Recycle, remove and reorganize!
• Make Checklists . Set up clear expectations by creating checklists. Help students create their own to-do lists. Show students how to prioritize tasks.
• Label and Color Code . Help students color code materials by subject or time of the day that items will be needed. Let students put labels on personal items.

Finally, when organizing materials for your classroom , here are 9 tips and tricks that can streamline your process:

Developing Respect

As educators, we want our students to respect us, our class, and our content. As is so often said, respect is earned and this is a two-way street. Developing a relationship with students will go a long way towards building a respectful environment. Here’s a few pointers to foster respect between you and your students:

1. Reward ONLY students modeling desired behaviors.

Remember that to your students, rewards can come in many different forms: attention, getting you flustered, or in an extrinsic incentive. Be sure that you only acknowledge those students who are using the behaviors you expect. Those students who are challenging your expectations should not receive your attention. Instead, when they are finished, calmly refer them to the consequence earned by their action and move on. Respect given = respect earned.

2. Get to know your students. 

Say hello to them outside of your classroom and engage them in a conversation. Everyone wants to feel valued and this is the foundation to respect. Never point out a student’s struggle or misbehavior and never pull them aside in front of the group. It all comes down to the golden rule: treat others as you would like to be treated.

3. Use the Power of Proximity.

Even though challenging behavior can make us want to stop everything and address it directly, it’s often a better idea to keep going with your activity. Rather than stopping the lesson to speak with the student, try moving closer to that student or continuing to teach while moving that child to another area of the space. Your presence alone may be enough to redirect the student.

4. Treat all students equitably, not equally.

Students are not all the same. What strategies work with one student may not work with another one. The key is to approach your classroom management plan with equity: giving each student what they need to be successful. This is different than equal treatment, where everyone receives the same strategies. This is also a great lesson for our students to learn when working with others, so by modeling this behavior, we are teaching them valuable interaction skills.

Classroom management is not a one- size-fits-all approach. Yet, many times we see teachers who are trying to use the same strategies in high school that they used in elementary or middle school. 

Indeed, some strategies will translate to all grades, but others will not. Our job is to be able to discern ideas that will work for our areas and our grade levels.

Once you find strategies that work for you, leverage them. Don’t try something new just for the sake of something new. In my elementary classroom, my classroom management plan included literally one (sometimes two) strategies and that’s it. It wasn’t flashy, but it worked.

If you are stuck or need a boost in classroom management ideas, I encourage you to look through this list and try just one new tip. If it works, keep it. If not, keep trying!

Teaching Expected Behaviors

This could and should be used at any grade level. It’s not enough to just talk about behaviors – we have to intentionally teach them, practice them, and keep spiraling through them, just like our curriculum.

First, be clear about what you want and what you do not want. Ambiguity is the enemy of effective classroom management. Shine a light on every expected behavior and then show students the incorrect way of doing things. Make sure they understand what you want to see and what constitutes misbehavior.

Second, communicate the importance of expected behaviors by using photographs, posters, and signs to show what you have clearly articulated. 

Third, dominate appropriately and be assertive. Dominance is your ability to provide clear purpose and strong guidance regarding both academics and student behavior. It is your classroom, you are in charge. When you’re assertive, your students will see:

• Your Body Language : stand up straight and keep enough distance to not appear threatening.
• Your Expression : look your students in the face when speaking to them and match your facial expression to your message.
• Your Tone of Voice : this needs to match the situation. It’s not conversational when giving a command, but it is respectful and show emotions when appropriate to the message.

Finally, give feedback and practice. Feedback should be immediate, varied, and meaningful. When you see students doing an expected behavior, immediately share with them how pleased you are to see it. When students are not behaving as expected, swiftly address the issue in a respectful manner.

Practice is extremely important in teaching expected behaviors. We don’t teach a math concept and immediately expect our students to be masters of it. So why would we expect teaching behaviors to be different? Here’s some times to practice behaviors:

• First Week: Give the information and practice every single day for at least an hour.
• First Month : Review every single day – use your judgment for how long
• After Holidays : Review when you return – use your judgment for how long
• Other : Stop and reteach or review when you see a need

Teaching Mini-Lessons

Mini-lessons can be an excellent strategy for students to learn a skill when they have trouble focusing or need constant redirection to stay on task.

Mini-lessons can quickly integrate an arts area with a small chunk of the core lesson you’re teaching. They can be used in whole group, small group, or even individual instruction. But the best part about mini-lessons is that they are short. Mini-lessons give you just 5-10 minutes to teach a concept or skill and let students explore it through an art form.

This keeps students engaged, while working through key concepts. Here’s some examples of both E/LA and Math mini-lessons you may want to try:

E/LA Mini-Lessons:

Math Mini-Lessons:

Small Group Instruction

Small group instruction allows you time with a set of 2-6 students at a time. This allows you to better understand the specific skills each student has surrounding a topic. Here’s some methods and considerations for grouping students in these settings:

• Random : Chosen without method or conscious decision. Used when trying to ensure equal size groups.
• Cooperative : Chosen to allow the assignment of “jobs” for each student. Used when students need to work on specific social skills.
• Ability : Chosen according to ability. Used when students have similar academic needs.
• Interest : Chosen by student interest in a subject or topic. Used when similar interests will enhance overall learning.
• Student Choice : Students group themselves however they wish. Used when social interaction and engagement are needed.
• Expertise : Chosen according to the particular expertise of students. Used when students benefit from knowledge of peers.

Whole Group Instruction

Whole group instruction is appropriate when there is a large amount of information that needs to be presented quickly, as an overview, or to share basic information. Here are 4 ways to use whole groups:

• Lecture : Verbal imparting of knowledge.
• Discussion : Focused on student interactions sharing about a topic.
• Debates : Based on controversial issues – issues that have pros and cons.
• Demonstrates : Showing a step-by-step method

Elementary Classroom Management Strategies

Many of these may be familiar to you, but we list them here because we continue to see them work!

Adapt School System

If your school has a system they use, try to adapt it to your needs. For instance, many schools use the traffic light – green, yellow (warning), red (time out). Try using this with an entire class instead of individual students. Use an art pallet or music staff for more personalization in the fine arts classroom.

Hand Signals

Interruptions can be tough when you have limited time. Try establishing a set of hand signals students can use for specific situations (like asking to go to the bathroom).

Attention Getters

Try using a rhythmic clap or a call and response phrase for attention, such as “We are ready…bum, bum-bum-bum, bum-bum-bum” (tune of Farmer’s Insurance commercial).

Class Competition

This one strategy has helped transform many of our teachers’ management plans. It’s so simple! Each class competes with the teacher (see the t-chart below). Whenever the students demonstrate a desired behavior, select a student to put a tally mark on their side of the chart. If the teacher notices challenging behaviors, you receive a tally mark on your side as the teacher. At the end of the class, if the class has more points than the teacher, they get a check for their class. When the class receives 5 checks, they win a “game” day – a lesson that is taught in game format.

Middle School Classroom Management Strategies

Middle school students want to feel independent and empowered. Anytime you can utilize strategies that fill this need, you are creating an environment where students will want to learn and be engaged.

Shift the Power

One of the ways to do this is to shift the responsibility for class set up to the students. Provide them with the opportunity to design aspects of their learning environment: specific centers/stations, perhaps a presentation area for their work, or even how each table will be organized. 

This gives them choice over their learning environment and provides you with less “work” of setting up and putting away.

If you are on a cart or if you have different setups for each class, put the students in charge of getting materials out and organizing them upon cleanup. It builds responsibility and an investment into their own class experience.

One last thing: Change up the learning spaces often to keep your students on their toes.

Seat Choice Roles

Give students responsibility for certain jobs/roles depending on their seat choice for that day.

Problem-Solving Station

Do you have early finishers? Students who rush through their work? Try setting up a “problem-solving” station that provides students with an essential question or problem and a variety of materials they can use to solve that problem if they finish early.

Decide Now App

Use the Decide Now app as a reward for excellent CLASS behavior. Have students collaborate on what rewards would be meaningful for them and then plug them into the app. When students earn a reward, you can use the app to randomly pick something they chose as an option.

High School Classroom Management Strategies

At this level, students work to earn the respect and responsibility they feel they deserve. Your classroom management system should reflect specific opportunities for students to demonstrate that reciprocal, respectful relationship.

3-2-1 Strategy

Synthesizing information learned in your classroom doesn’t end with you. Use this strategy as a way to wrap up the lesson and to encourage students to be engaged throughout their time with you. Used consistently, students know that they need to actively participate throughout the lesson to contribute at the end of class.

At the end of class, have students summarize the lesson with 3 things that they learned, 2 things that were interesting from the lesson and 1 question they still have. These can be submitted as an exit ticket, through an online tool like Socrative or as a class discussion.

Poll Students

Get student opinions or check for understanding with apps like Socrative or Poll Everywhere . Can be used with mobile devices or clicker systems.

Provide 10 minutes of instruction and then offer 2 minutes for students to process or respond to what you’ve just taught. This encourages much more active participation.

Pick up the Pace

Limit the downtime available in your class. This includes transitions between topics or into groups. Provide a countdown system so that students are moving quickly and transitioning to the next activity.

Classroom Management Tips and Tricks for All Grade Levels

Each of these ideas can be used in any situation and with any grade level. Feel free to adapt these to fit your personal teaching style and student learning preferences.

Lower the Volume

When you find yourself ready to raise your voice above the volume of the room, stop and shift to speaking softly and calmly. The softness is the opposite of what students will expect and will gain their attention much faster.

Pause Your Instruction

Every once in a while, stop mid-instruction and ask students to respond to what you just shared. This breaks up the content and encourages students to be active listeners and contributors to the learning.

Looks-Like, Sounds-Like Chart

Anchor charts help provide the key information visually in small segments. In the “Looks Like, Sounds Like” anchor chart, you can identify positive behaviors you expect and have students describe (or draw/sketch/photograph) what each behavior looks like and sounds like in the classroom.

Humor is a technique that is often overlooked or overused. Students are humans too and we all like to laugh! Embed humor at key times or in visuals (like using #notyourmaid when asking students to clean up) to help provide a release and connect with your students on a human level.

Final Thoughts

​​Creating a classroom management plan provides you with an opportunity to connect and engage with your students in what may be their only positive experience that day. Just remember:

• Make a plan. You can’t approach classroom management by tossing jello and seeing what sticks. Instead, think through a specific plan for management and write it down.
• Be consistent. Implement your plan step by step and consistently enforce it at every turn for all students.
• Find 1-2 strategies that work. Don’t overcomplicate this – find what works for you and stick with it.

Additional Guides

Looking for more helpful ideas, strategies, and tools? Try one of our other resource guides:

Initial Thoughts

Perspectives & resources, as a new teacher, what do you need to know about managing student behavior, page 1: creating a classroom behavior management plan.

• Page 2: Cultural Considerations and Behavior

How do you develop an effective behavior management plan?

• Page 3: Statement of Purpose
• Page 4: Rules
• Page 5: Procedures
• Page 6: Positive Consequences
• Page 7: Negative Consequences
• Page 8: Crisis Plan
• Page 9: Action Plan
• Page 10: References & Additional Resources
• Page 11: Credits

disruptive behavior

Any action or verbalization that interferes with classroom instruction and impedes other students’ ability to learn.

The good news is that many disruptive behaviors can be minimized, or even avoided altogether, if teachers consistently implement comprehensive classroom behavior management. Getting an early start can help, too. The more time teachers spend addressing behavior management before school starts, the fewer behavior problems they are likely to contend with during the school year.

For Your Information

Disruptive behaviors can result in:

• Lost instructional time (according to some sources, up to 50%)
• Lowered academic achievement for the disruptive student and peers
• Heightened teacher stress and frustration
• Decreased student engagement and motivation
• Inequitable and disproportional disciplinary referrals
• Greater teacher attrition

Before they can begin to create a comprehensive behavior management system, teachers must have an understanding of the key concepts related to behavior and of foundational behavior management practices. If you have not already done so, we recommend that you visit the first IRIS Module in the behavior management series to learn more about each of these all-important topics.

• Classroom Behavior Management (Part 1): Key Concepts and Foundational Practices

Once teachers feel comfortable with these key concepts and foundational behavior management practices, they are prepared to create a comprehensive classroom behavior management plan (subsequently referred to as a classroom behavior management plan). This plan should be thoughtful and intentional, and it should contain the core components described in the table below.

As they develop these components, teachers should give them proper and serious consideration in order to minimize the need for subsequent revision, as well as to avoid the need to reteach them to their students in the event they were not clearly articulated in the first place. That said, the components of a behavior management plan are not written in stone. They can and should be revised or adjusted as circumstances dictate.

Listen as Lori Jackman discusses how a classroom behavior management plan can help a teacher enter the classroom with confidence. Next, Melissa Patterson talks about the importance of being flexible and making changes to the plan as needed.

Lori Jackman, EdD Anne Arundel County Public Schools, retired Professional Development Provider

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View Transcript

Melissa Patterson Teacher

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Transcript: Lori Jackman, EdD

For an individual teacher who’s just been hired to be able to walk in with a plan of what are you going to do when a kid misbehaves, or what are you going to do for the kids who behave, and what are your expectations, and how are you going to teach it to the kids, so to be able to walk in with that that first day kind of helps them cross the threshold of their classroom a bit more confident than the teacher who’s, like, “I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure it out,” which is what I was told in my teacher prep programs. “Don’t worry. You’ll figure out that discipline thing once you’re there.” I think it gives them an air of calmness when they stand up and introduce themselves to their students those first days of “I’m your teacher, and here’s the plan for helping us all behave.”

Transcript: Melissa Patterson

I think the biggest piece of advice is to have that behavior management plan, but then to make sure that you leave room for flexibility. Because you can create the best plan but then go in and find that it’s not going to work in that specific classroom. So leaving room for flexibility, understanding that things change at the drop of a hat, and that you’re going to have to make changes. But I think the flexibility has to be there for student input as well. You can create a plan, but if you go in and you set all of these hard, concrete rules you’re going to have a lot of student pushback. But if you involve students in creating their environment, you’re going to have a lot more success when the students feel like they have some kind of control over their own space.

Research Shows

Students whose teachers implement the core components of a classroom behavior management plan exhibit less disruptive, inappropriate, and aggressive behavior than do students whose teachers do not use such practices. (Alter & Haydon, 2017; Mitchell et al., 2017; Simonsen et al., 2015)

Returning to School

• Welcome and greet students with enthusiasm and genuine concern for their well-being.

social emotional learning (SEL)

A process through which students gain the knowledge and skills to develop self-control and self-awareness in order to manage emotions, build healthy identities, and maintain positive relationships.

• Make additional time available to individual students for guidance and emotional support.
• Promote high expectations but recognize that increased time will be needed to remind students of appropriate behaviors.
• Teach students organizational and study skills strategies to help promote academic success, which in turn leads to less disruptive behavior.
• Provide prompts for appropriate behavior.
• Establish an easy home-school communication system (e.g., communication folder).

High-Leverage Practices

HLP7 : Establish a consistent, organized, and respectful learning environment. HLP8 : Provide positive and constructive feedback to guide students’ learning and behavior. HLP9 : Teach social behaviors.

HLPs, which all special education teachers should implement, are divided into four areas: collaboration, assessment, social/emotional/behavioral practices, and instruction. For more information about HLPs, visit High-Leverage Practices in Special Education .

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9 Chapter 9: Assessment and Classroom Management

Guiding Questions for Chapter 9

• What key terms are associated with assessment and classroom management?
• How do teachers assess student learning, mastery, and achievement?
• How do teachers provide a safe, healthy, and productive learning environment?
• What important principles will guide your assessment and classroom management decisions?

Introduction to Assessment

We begin with a brief history of assessment. . .

Teachers seek basic answers about seemingly simple questions: To what extent have students mastered the lesson, unit, or course objectives? Yet, formulating a plan to answer those questions involves a series of complex decisions.

In this section we introduce you to the purposes, types, terms, and principles of assessment.  In the following section, you will learn about some basic assessment strategies.

Purposes of Assessment

In education, we assess for a variety of purposes. Here are some of the more important purposes of assessment:

• Instructional Purposes
• To diagnose student learning  prior to instruction
• Provide feedback to students
• Make decisions about the curriculum
• M ake decisions about instruction
• Set high expectations
• Public Accountability State testing
• Student Accountability Grading
• Student Placement

Types of Assessments

Teachers choose from a variety of types of assessment.

• Paper and Pencil Assessment (e.g., essay, multiple choice, short answer, fill in the blank, true/false, matching, rearranging, and ranking)
• Performance Assessment (e.g., rubrics, checklists, rating sheets, notes, diaries, story completion and logs)
• Portfolio Assessment

Classroom Level Assessment

Most teachers construct their own assessments–a challenging task.

Read: Fox, Dennis. 2000. “Classroom Assessment Data: Asking the Right Questions.” Leadership 30 (2): 22–23.

Principles of Assessment for Teachers

Finally, every teacher operates from some set of  principles that guide their assessment decisions. Years ago, I committed to paper the principles that guide my assessment decisions.

Dr. Vontz’s Principles of Assessment

• Clearly explain to students how they will be assessed and the criteria that will be used.
• Vary assessment strategies.
• Assess students often.
• Think of assessment as another learning opportunity for students.
• Assessment should clearly align with objectives.
• Assessment decisions should be made with individual students and classes in mind.
• Set high standards for students.
• Assess authentic tasks.
• Help students to become proficient at self-assessment.
• Do not test trivia!

Read: Gathercoal, Paul. 1995. “Principles of Assessment.” Clearing House 69 (September): 59–61.

Terms of Assessment

Teachers, like other professionals, use a particular language to describe various aspects of their work. Some of the most common terms associated with assessment are defined below.

• Assessment . The process of finding out what students know and are able to do—the emphasis is on what is happening now (e.g., to what extent can students write the ABC’s correctly?).
• Evaluation . The process of comparing what is with what ought to be , which normally involves a value judgment (e.g., can students write the ABC’s with no mistakes?).
• Test . A systematic procedure for sampling some aspect of human behavior.
• Measurement . The process of obtaining a numerical description of the extent to which an individual possesses some characteristic.
• Norm-referenced Tests . The results of norm-referenced tests are used to compare one group of students with another group (e.g., Missouri students at grade eight compared to students across the United States at grade eight or I.Q. tests).
• Criterion-referenced Tests . The results of criterion-referenced tests are used to evaluate the extent to which each student’s achievement has met some standard or criteria (e.g., 85% correct).
• Formal Assessment . The formal techniques (e.g., paper and pencil tests, performance assessment, portfolios) teachers use to judge the extent to which students are achieving learning outcomes or objectives.
• Informal Assessment . The informal techniques (e.g., observations, group discussion, questioning, individual conferences) teachers use on a daily basis to judge the extent to which students are achieving learning outcomes or objectives.
• Formative Assessment . This type of assessment is conducted to diagnose learning difficulties and to plan instruction (e.g., a pre-test at the beginning of the year to assess student knowledge of early United States history).
• Summative Assessment . This type of assessment is concerned with evaluating the extent to which students have achieved.
• Authentic Assessment . Assessing students’ ability to perform real world or authentic tasks.
• Scoring Rubric . A rating scale that describes student achievement in relation to some task.  Rubrics are used assess students and to clarify instruction.

Assessment Example

Read: Ende, Fred. 2014. “Every Assessment Tells a Story.” Science Scope 37 (5): 32–37.

Overview of Assessment Strategies

Let’s time travel again: What types of assessments do you recall in elementary, middle, and high school? College? What kinds did you like? What kinds did you find frustrating? What were some of the issues with assessments? Did you always try your best on every assessment? Some more than others? Why?

Back to the present…in your field experiences, notice the types of assessments your cooperating teachers use? To what levels of success?

Let’s examine some of the types of assessment that are available for you to use in your classroom:

No Assessment

Sometimes an activity or lesson does not merit assessment. Perhaps this is because it is connected to another activity that will be assessed, or perhaps it involves something that simply cannot be assessed.

Informal Teacher Observation

At the very least, teachers are always watching and attempting to gauge the extent to which students understand, are engaged, and so on. While these observations will not be reflected in the grade book, they will help shape the instruction and assessments to follow.

Credit/No Credit

Some assignments are not worthy of a critical assessment for quality, but some kind of value must be attached in order to get students to complete the work. Many teachers, therefore, assign credit/no credit status, and award a minimal number of points (e.g., five or ten) for the adequate completion of the assignment. It is usually necessary to provide some sort of standard for students to understand what is required to achieve “credit” (e.g., “show me you took the assignment seriously”).

Self Assessment

The practice of having students assess their own work. Often this is done before the work is submitted for more formal assessment by the teacher.

Holistic Scoring

Holistic scoring has received quite a bit of bad press of late, but it has long been the preferred method of scoring student writing. The instructor simply reads the work to be assessed, makes marginal comments as appropriate, writes a paragraph or so in support of the final grade, and then assigns a grade. Usually, this is a letter grade, as it is easier to rationalize how a paper can be a “B” as opposed to trying to explain what makes a paper an 86. This method is probably most appropriately used to score essay or short-answer portions of examinations.

Objective Tests

Traditional tests or quizzes using questions with answers that are right and answers that are wrong.

Analytic Scoring

Best applied to extended written work, speeches, projects, portfolios, and the like, this method involves creating a rubric based on the important qualities of the assignment. Each trait listed should include descriptors of various levels of performance so that products of different quality can be distinguished from one another. The six-trait, analytic scale is one example of this type of assessment.

Primary-Trait Scoring

Again best applied to extended works, this methods assesses student work on the basis of a single trait. For example, a poem might be scored on the basis of “voice,” or an employment application might be scored strictly on “mechanics.” This type of scoring helps to focus student attention on one quality, and it is effective for measuring the success of instruction in a particular area. Primary-trait scoring is not particularly useful in providing an overall assessment of student work.

A collection of student work, typically scored using a rubric. These collections can be cumulative (e.g., a writing folder containing all student work) or developmental (e.g., selected artifacts collected over time to show growth) or showcase (e.g., the students’ very best work). Typically a portfolio offers a balance of required and optional artifacts. The portfolio itself might be scored using an analytic scoring guide (rubric).

Standardized Tests

Formal tests developed by the government, commercial test makers, or local schools. These exams are used to compare students, teachers, schools, and states against one another; to assess the effectiveness of educational programs; and to plan curriculum and instruction to meet the needs of students. It is worth remembering that these tests provide another measure of the success of classroom activities.

Key Points on Assessment

• Know what you want to test/assess. Just because you’ve reached the end of a unit or a book or an activity doesn’t mean a certain assessment is required. Think about what you want your students to know or be able to do, and then make your assessment (and, of course, your teaching) directly link to that goal.
• Use assessment to see what your students understand. Assessment is a great tool to determine what your students are learning and what you may need to reteach.
• Use assessment to assess your teaching strengths and areas needing improvement. These assessments provide a view of how you’re doing as ateacher.
• Mix it up; don’t use the same type of assessment every time. (Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences should encourage you to give a variety of assessment types so your students have ample opportunities to showcase what they know in a way that takes advantage of their own abilities and strengths.) Allow your students options regarding the type of assessment they can use.
• Document that your content area standards are being covered.
• Don’t assess out of anger. Assessments are valuable, but don’t use them as a classroom management tool or for punishment. As teachers, we need to see assessments as valuable learning tools…so we need to implement them in such a manner, as well.
• Once your students have been assessed, then it’s time for you to grade those assessments and provide meaningful feedback so your students can progress.

Pitfalls of grading

• Not being consistent in what is considered “right” vs. “wrong,” or “good vs. bad.” Students need to know the benchmarks of quality work; show them examples, if possible, and thoroughly discuss your expectations.
• Putting grades in the grade book just to fill space. Quality  of assessments needs to be balanced with quantity of assess ments. Students need multiple opportunities to show what they know, but those opportunities also need to be meaningful.
• Not grading in a timely fashion. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the responsibility of grading students’ work…and by the volume of grading required. However, students need to receive your feedback fairly soon after having completed the assessment so they will receive the most benefit from your feedback. And that leads us to…
• Not providing enough feedback. Smiley faces are nice, but your students need more details. Provide specific ideas on how they can improve and what they should work on for “next time.”
• Providing too much feedback. Let’s face it, a student who receives a paper that has been bloodied by a red pen isn’t going to be eager to share the next one with you. If a student struggles with an assessment, which should mean he or she is also struggling with your daily class work, provide a few areas that he or she can address, as well as ideas on how to improve in those areas. Don’t overwhelm your students by trying to “fix” everything at one time. Learning, like life, is a continual process.

Note on Designing Rubrics

Performance rubrics are commonly used across disciplines and subjects toclarify expectations and aid assessment. Like most things in teaching, there is an art to constructing a powerful rubric.  Watch the brief introduction below.

Read: “TAME THE BEAST: TIPS FOR DESIGNING AND USING RUBRICS.” States News Service , January 18, 2012 .

Note on Designing Multiple Choice Questions  

Please consider the following excerpts from various essays regarding instrument item construction. We hope you find the short review helpful.

Question Format

A review of the literature suggests that the strongest format is one where the multiple-choice items are prepared as direct questions. This is in contrast to incomplete statements, or clusters of answers such as a and b, b and c, etc.

Lucy Jacobs (IU) offers suggestions for writing multiple-choice items that measure the higher thinking skills. Not all of these will be applicable for concepts such as the social contract, constitutionalism, or rights, but they may stimulate your thinking:

• Present practical or real-world situations to the students. These problems may use short paragraphs describing a problem in a practical situation. Items can be written which call for the application of principles to the solution of these practical problems,or the evaluation of several alternative procedures.
• Present the student with a diagram of equipment and ask for application, analysis, or evaluations, e.g., “What happens at point A if…?” or “How is A related to B?”
• Present actual quotations taken from newspapers or other published sources or contrived quotations that could have come from such sources. Ask for the interpretation or evaluation of these quotations.
• Use pictorial materials that require students to apply principles andconcepts.
• Use charts, tables, or figures that require interpretation.

Multiple-Choice Item-Writing Checklist

Do make sure that:.

• The item assesses important knowledge or skills.
• The question (or stem) presents a clearly formulated problem or question.
• There is only one right answer.
• The “distracters” should be plausible and free of clues that might help students easily eliminate one or more of the incorrect choices.
• The wording of the item clearly conveys the intent of the item and does not present obstacles to the students’ ability to demonstrate what they know.
• Use simple, basic vocabulary.
• Make sure sentence structure in the item is simple—avoid passive voice.
• The item should include only the information needed to answer the question or complete the task.
• Avoid idiomatic language and terms.
• The answer choices should be as brief and simple as possible.
• Always state items and questions in positive terms. Avoid using “negatives” in both the item stem and answer choices.
• All answer choices must be approximately the same in length.
• All answer choices should be similar in complexity and detail. (Avoid making the correct answer overly attractive.)
• Make sure all answer choices are grammatically parallel.
• Verify all answer choices are grammatically consistent with the stem of the item.
• Never use “all of the above” and “none of the above” as answer choices.

BIAS/SENSITIVITY ISSUES

• The item should provide all students with a fair opportunity to demonstrate what they know, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, socioeconomic status, or the region in which they live.
• The subject, issue, or theme addressed by the item should not demean or offend.

How To Improve a Multiple Choice Item

• criticizes the mayor in a public meeting.
• slanders another person publicly.
• wishes to speak against the government.
• demonstrates against tax increases.
• criticizing the mayor in a public meeting.
• slandering another person publicly.
• wishing to speak against the government.
• demonstrating against tax increases.
• Pennsylvania
• accelerating slowly
• jammed on the brakes
• hold the wheel firmly
• slowly decelerating
• jamming on the brakes
• holding the wheel firmly
• slowing down gradually
• to maintain peace among the peoples of the world
• to establish international law
• to provide military control
• to form new governments
• to develop a new system of international law
• to provide military control of nations that have recently attained their independence
• to establish and maintain democratic forms of government in newly formed nations

Writing Stems

We will first describe some basic rules for the construction of multiple-choice stems, because they are typically, though not necessarily, written before the options.

1.      Before writing the stem, identify the one point to be tested by that item. In general, the stem should not pose more than one problem, although the solution to that problem may require more than one step.

2.      Construct the stem to be either an incomplete statement or a direct question, avoiding stereotyped phraseology, as rote responses are usually based on verbal stereotypes. For example, the following stems (with answers in parentheses) illustrate undesirable phraseology:

What is the biological theory of recapitulation? (Ontogeny repeats phylogeny) Who was the chief spokesman for the “American System”? (Henry Clay)

Correctly answering these questions likely depends less on understanding than on recognizing familiar phraseology.

3.      Avoid including nonfunctional words that do not contribute to the basis for choosing among the options. Often an introductory statement is included to enhance the appropriateness or significance of an item but does not affect the meaning of the problem in the item. Generally, such superfluous phrases should be excluded. For example, consider:

The American flag has three colors. One of them is (1) red (2) green (3) black

One of the colors of the American flag is (1) red (2) green (3) black

In particular, irrelevant material should not be used to make the answer less obvious. This tends to place too much importance on reading comprehension as a determiner of the correct option.

4.      Include as much information in the stem and as little in the options as possible. For example, if the point of an item were to associate a term with its definition, the preferred format would be to present the definition in the stem and several terms as options, rather than to present the term in the stem and several definitions as options.

5.      Restrict the use of negatives in the stem. Negatives in the stem usually require that the answer be a false statement. Because students are likely in the habit of searching for true statements, this may introduce an unwanted bias.

6.      Avoid irrelevant clues to the correct option. Grammatical construction, for example, may lead students to reject options, which are grammatically incorrect as the stem is stated. Perhaps more common and subtle, though, is the problem of common elements in the stem and in the answer.  Consider the following item:

What led to the formation of the States’ Rights Party? The level of federal taxation The demand of states for the right to make their own laws The industrialization of the South The corruption of federal legislators on the issue of state taxation One does not need to know U.S. history in order to be attracted to the answer, b. Other rules we might list are generally commonsense, including recommendations for independent and important items and prohibitions against complex, imprecise wording.

Writing Options

Following the construction of the item stem, the likely more difficult task of generating options presents itself. The rules we list below are not likely to simplify this task as much as they are intended to guide our creative efforts.

• Be satisfied with three or four well-constructed options. Generally, the minimal improvement to the item due to that hard- to-come-by fifth option is not worth the effort to construct it. Indeed, all else the same, a test of 10 items each with four options is likely a better test than a test with nine items of five options each.
• Construct distracters that are comparable in length, complexity, and grammatical form to the answer, avoiding the use of such words as “always,” “never,” and “all.” Adherence to this rule avoids some of the more common sources of biased cueing. For example, we sometimes find ourselves increasing  the length and specificity of the answer (relative to distracters) in order to insure its truthfulness. This, however, becomes an easy-to-spot clue for the test-wise student. Related to this issue is the question of whether or not test writers should take advantage of these types of cues to construct more tempting distracters. Surely not! The number of students choosing a distracter should depend only on deficits in the content area which the item targets and should not depend on cue biases or reading comprehension differences in “favor” of the distracter.
• Options which read “none of the above,” “both a. and e. above,” “all of the above,” or “etc.” should be avoided when the students have been instructed to choose “the best answer,” which implies that the options vary in degree of correctness. On the other hand, “none of the above” is acceptable if the question is factual and is probably desirable if computation yields the answer. “All of the above” is never desirable, as one recognized distracter eliminates it and two recognized answers identify it.
• After the options are written, vary the location of the answer on as random a basis as possible. A convenient method is to flip two (or three) coins at a time where each possible Head-Tail combination is associated with a particular location for the answer. Furthermore, if the test writer is conscientious enough to randomize the answer locations, students should be informed that the locations are randomized. (Test-wise students know that for some instructors the first option is rarely the answer.)

Excerpted (with permission) from an essay by Jerard Kehoe Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Classroom Management

One third of all teachers leave the profession in the first three years, and nearly half of teachers leave after five years. These statistics are alarming. Of course, a variety of factors contribute to a person’s decision to leave teaching. One of the most common reasons former teachers provide, however, is problems with classroom management and student discipline. Every day, teachers make scores (a fancy word for 20) of decisions that will impact student learning, behavior, and the environment they are creating with their students. This chapter aims to provide you with some initial insights that will grow with additional experience and practice.

Introduction to Classroom Management

Like other aspects of a teacher’s job, classroom management is complex. There is no script to follow, and many of the most important classroom management decisions arise in the context of actually teaching—there isn’t time to carefully and critically reflect. You cannot ask the students for a timeout so you can consult a textbook, a colleague, or a principal about what to do or say. Being a successful classroom manager requires practical wisdom—doing the right things, for good reasons, in the best ways. This section is an introduction to ideas that you will spend a career refining.

The Goal of Classroom Management

The goal of classroom management is to create, with your students, a safe, healthy, and positive learning environment. Every classroom has a climate, a culture, a “feeling tone.” How would you like your students to describe your classroom? Most teachers would hope their students would say things like: focused, engaged, challenging, fun.

For Starters

Much of what constitutes effective classroom management happens before the school year or semester ever begins. Effective classroom managers are proactive; they tend to think of solutions to problems before they happen. Here are a few general classroom management considerations teachers should resolve before they ever meet their students.

What rules will govern your classroom? Who will create them? How will they be communicated to students? What happens if a rule is broken? As you might imagine, answers to these questions vary widely among teachers. Based on our experience, we offer a few tips about creating rules:

•   Keep them simple and general.

•   Avoid attempting to create a rule for every way a student might misbehave.

•   Provide clear examples ad non-examples Example: Respect me, respect yourself, and respect each other.

What will be your policy for late work, going to the bathroom, food or drink in class, tardies, plagiarism, cell phones, academic honesty, or forgetting materials? Effective teachers have carefully considered and answered these questions before class ever begins.

Example: 10% is deducted from late assignments for every day an assignment is late, up to a maximum of five school days, at which time the assignment becomes a zero.

Rewards and Punishments

Incentives and consequences are often a part of a teacher’s classroom management program. Although students should be motivated in other ways, what might be some appropriate rewards or punishments in your class?

Example: At the end of the semester, I will add 2% extra credit to your overall grade. I will deduct .5% for every time you 1) use the bathroom,  2) come to class unprepared, 3) come late to class, 4) leave trash in your desk.

The classroom is a dynamic place. What procedures will you use to accomplish routine tasks? Read Harry Wong, Rosemary Wong, Karen Rogers, and Amanda Brooks’s Managing Your Classroom for Success. Consider what procedures you will use for:

• Entering the classroom

• Tardiness

• Dismissal

• Quiet work time

• Attention-getting signal

• Calling on students

• Asking for help

• Make-up work

• Turning in papers

• Returning papers

• Leaving your seat

• Leaving the room

• Time when work is complete

• School announcements

• Visitors in the classroom

• Watching videos

• Lunch (if applicable)

• Grading, tests, extra credit

Read: Wong, Harry, Rosemary Wong, Karen Rogers, and Amanda Brooks. 2012. “Managing Your Classroom for Success.”  Science & Children  49 (9): 60–64.

Tips for Promoting a Positive Classroom

Read Sprick, Randy, and K. Daniels. 2010. “Managing Student Behavior.”  Principal Leadership  11 (1): 18–21 .

Compare their tips to those created by Tom Vontz years ago. How are these tips alike, and how are they different?

Vontz’s Tips for Classroom Management

• CLARIFY EXPECTATIONS AND VISION AND SUPPORT WITH SPECIFIC EXAMPLES AND NON-EXAMPLES.
• JUSTIFY YOUR CONCEPTION; PROVIDE A RATIONALE.
• KEEP EXPECTATIONS AND VISION SIMPLE.
• YOU CANNOT CONTROL STUDENT BEHAVIOR.
• ACCEPT THAT THERE ARE BETTER AND WORSE WAYS OF RESPONDING TO STUDENT BEHAVIOR.
• CONSISTENTLY MONITOR STUDENT BEHAVIOR AND ADHERE TO YOUR VISION—USE ACUMEN.
• GET TO KNOW EACH STUDENT WELL—ESTABLISH TRUST.
• STUDENTS SHOULD SHARE SOME DEGREE OF POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR.
• STUDENT TALKING/CHATTER.
• HAVE A GENERAL PLAN.
• THINK OF PARENTS AS IMPORTANT PARTNERS IN THE EDUCATION OF THEIR CHILD; THINK ABOUT WHEN THEY MIGHT APPRECIATE A PHONE CALL.
• DON’T TAKE YOURSELF OR YOUR CLASSROOM TOO SERIOUSLY.
• REMEMBER THE THREE C’S OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT: CLARITY, CONSISTENCY, AND CALMNESS.

The Don’ts of Classroom Management and Discipline

Read: Spitalli, Samuel J. 2005. “The Don’ts of Student Discipline.” Education Digest 70 (5): 28–31.

Classroom Management Strategies

First and foremost, classroom management is not synonymous with discipline, though people often lump them together in the same educational discussions. Indeed, they are related, but we need to understand that the link is cause and effect. Good classroom management means less discipline is required. And less discipline means fewer headaches for you, the classroom teacher, and fewer issues for your administrators to deal with, as well.

As you visit classrooms, or remember your own classroom experiences as a student, what types of behavior issues have you observed? Could some classroom management strategies have eliminated…or, at least, reduced…some of the issues?

Read: 5 Quick Classroom-Management Tips for Novice Teachers

As you gain experience in the classroom, you’ll also become much better at foreseeing what types of behavior issues could appear, based on the type of activity they’re participating in, possibilities of where discussions might lead, and even environmental issues such as a snowstorm headed to your area or the excitement of spring break approaching. All of these require a savviness in the classroom so you can be prepared for all the possibilities.

And with your growing experiences in classroom management, you will have a sense of missteps you might be able to avoid. As one administrator told me early on in my first year of teaching, “You’ll know where that train is headed before it even leaves the station.”

So, in addition to general advice, what tricks work for teachers? Watch the popular video on Classroom Management “Hacks” below.

Specific problems often require specific solutions.

Read and watch:  Classroom Management Strategies & Techniques.

And, finally, always consider the following:

•  Set the tone of your classroom early on.

•  Keep rules simple.

•  Good classroom management means much less need for discipline and much more time for learning.

•  Never respond when you’re angry.

•  Never touch a student, especially if you’re angry.

•  Always remember that the student in front of you is someone’s child and is deserving of respect.

Unfortunately, we, and that includes students and teachers, never respond as well as we would like in all classroom situations. To use one of my daughter’s theater references, each day you “End Scene.” Every day is a new day, where you need to give your students and yourself a clean slate, even after a difficult situation. People—young and old alike—make mistakes; allow yourself and your students to move on with an opportunity for a new, successful day.

Elementary Case Studies

Cindy is a very mature 12-year-old sixth-grade student. She is intelligent, and good grades come easily to her. She is the youngest child in the family and is still referred to as the baby. If Cindy does not get her way at school, she sulks and has been known to blurt out obscenities. Her parents are very religious and would not condone such behavior. They feel that some mistake must have been made, since Cindy told them she hasn’t done anything wrong.

What do you do?

Shawna is in third grade. She is 9 years old, very pretty, extremely conscientious, and works hard on any assignments. Shawna is an overachiever. On recent group achievement tests, Shawna’s scores were average. Her parents were outraged and insisted she be tested again. Subsequent tests revealed the same results. The parents began putting pressure on Shawna to work harder.

Secondary Case Studies

A young teacher is worried about the exuberant affection a junior boy shows toward her. He occasionally puts his arm around her or slaps her on the back when he sees her. The student comes from a large family where much affection is shown, so the teacher feels hesitant about telling the boy how she feels.

A group of students frequently talk quietly during instruction. You have asked them to be quiet and warned them not to talk when you are talking, yet they continue. You decide your best option is to split them up. When you ask the first student to change seats, Steve refuses and asks why you are picking on him.

Core Teaching Skills Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Vontz and Lori Goodson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Classroom Management Plan Assignment

When it comes to Special Education, teachers also have to cope with learning differences, disabilities, and basic problems that occur within a classroom on any given day. However, my philosophy of classroom management is that when it comes to special needs children, their abilities and at what levels they can perform different tasks are the most important factors.

I’m not implying that children don’t need to be challenged and encouraged to move out of their inform zones to face the challenge and/or task placed before them but understanding that they will perform to the best of their ability. Education whether it’s traditional or specialized should be there to empower students with knowledge not enable them to avoid learning because it’s “too hard” or because their affected by tons of outside influences. Teaching is my passion and I have enjoyed and also learned from every classroom that I was privileged to teach.

Don’t waste your time! Order your assignment!

My philosophies range from encouraging the student to do his/her best and making sure that the environment that I invite my students into remains to be healthy, happy and safe. For even more insight on my classroom philosophies, my “l Believe” statements which express my principal as an Educator are as follows: I Believe Statements believe that Special Education is a necessary to enhance the lives and total being of special needs students. Believe that teachers who work in the Special Education field have a unique gift and are passionate about helping special needs children. Live that it is important that educators as a whole understand the plight of special education. Believe that without special education and programs that support special education we do our communities a disservice. Live that I am making a huge difference in my community and in the field Of education by focusing on special education. Classroom Environment My classroom will be cozy yet conducive to learning; fun but filled with tools that will lead to academic success.

My desk will be up front so when students enter the room, they can easily access my desk if necessary. The room will also have tables for students to work from when tackling group work. There will also be individual desks in the classroom to accommodate individual learning and most importantly when students are taking tests and need to coco on his/her performance alone. My room will also have a reading center, a writing center and a technology center.

In the reading center, students will have access to age-appropriate books and other supplemental reading material that will encourage students to become stronger, more avid readers. In the writing center, students will have access to writing prompts that will require them to respond through writing. Not only will this activity encourage students to become the best writers that they possibly can be, it also creates an environment where writing will be viewed as therapeutic and something hat he/she is capable of doing (and very well) with just a little bit of practice.

Lastly, the technology center will allow students to use the most state-of-the- art computers, pads, etc. , to access and browse the Internet. Here’s an example of how my classroom will be arrange: Classroom Rules & Procedures When it comes to classroom rules, I enjoy allowing the students to decide the rules so they feel like they are a part of the classroom management plan. Usually students will develop some of the same rules that parents, teachers and stakeholders would be proud of.

Here are some examples of the lassoer rules that would use in my classroom: 1 Keep Your Hands & Feet To Yourself 2. Listen To Instructions 3. Turn In All Assignments On Time 4. Respect Your Peers 5. No Talking During Tests & Assessments 6. Raise Your Hand Before Speaking Aloud As with any entity that utilizes a rules system, rules are meant to be broken and adjustments have to be made from time to time therefore the abovementioned rules aren’t set in stone.

In addition to the rules, Positive Behavior Supports & Reinforcements When a student is struggling in the classroom and it’s becoming a pattern of is/her bad behavior, an Individual Education Program, can assist teachers in helping those students who struggle from day to day. The PIPE team would consist of the students, his/her parent/guardian, and any available team members. The PIPE plan would have a detailed list of the target problem behaviors and an extensive list of strategies that can help the student feel accomplished leading to better grades, etc.

Working With Families Having family support is vital in helping a student reach academic success. The relationship between the parents/guardians and the teacher and support Taft has to be high priority and above all else, especially when the child is exhibiting serious behavior issues. At the beginning of each school year, I will send home a questionnaire for parents to complete that encourages the parent(s) to inform me of any quirks or behaviors that I need to be fully aware of as it relates to their child.

I will also keep the lines of communication open with my parents/guardians so they understand that my door is always open and hope that the sentiments are the same. Instilling Self-Determination In Students By having a well-organized and well thought out Classroom Management Plan hat discusses my personal philosophy, the classroom environment, classroom rules and procedures and behavior plans, I am creating an environment that will allow me to spend less time bogged down with classroom errors/issues and more time instilling positive characteristics within my students.

Conclusion As this class comes to a close, I am grateful for all the knowledge that have obtained. My favorite topics were those that allowed me to detail “My philosophy” and the Positive Behavior Supports where we developed an PIPE— that was very informative. I have learned how to be a more effective teacher ND to embrace the kind of teacher that I want to be —compassionate, patient, visionary. I want to dream big for my students and provide every opportunity for them to succeed no matter what they’re facing in their life.

I plan to continue my studies in Special Education and Education in general so I will be able to incorporate the best practices and methods for equipping our future leaders in fairness and with effectiveness. I especially want to know all there is to know about incorporating technology into the classroom. Look forward to continuing my efforts as a Special Education teacher and shaping he minds of my students. And I hope that the sentiments are the same.

Instilling Self-Determination In classroom rules and procedures and behavior plans, am creating an As this class comes to a close, am grateful for all the knowledge that I have philosophy/’ and the Positive Behavior Supports where we developed an PIPE— patient, visionary. Want to dream big for my students and provide every opportunity for them to succeed no matter what they’re facing in their life. I future leaders in fairness and with effectiveness.

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