Classroom Management
Here are some ideas and tips to help you with classroom management, especially in the Lab. If you have large class sizes, these are essential for keeping your sanity. :)
Establish rules and expectations before ever setting foot in the lab.
Spend the first week of the year establishing expectations and procedures in your classroom and you will have fewer problems later. Classroom Rules and ExpectationsHave a typed handout of your classroom/lab rules that students and parents sign saying they have read and understood them. You can use this example from my classroom. Go over the rules. If you have a short video on lab safety use that. Teacher Tube is a good source of these. Better yet, have your kids create their own video. | Assign Seats You may not mind allowing your students to sit where ever they wish, but I can guarantee that your substitute will or a teacher that has to step in for a few minutes because you need to run to the office. Keep a seating chart in a binder near your desk. Create a blank template of where your student seats are using empty squares. Cut little yellow stickies and put each student's name on one. Then arrange the stickies on the blank template for where they sit. The stickies make it easy to update the chart anytime you change a student's seat. You can rearrange them in an instant and your chart will always be up-to-date. | Organize Supplies Buy plastic dish tubs from one of those Everything-is-a-dollar stores. Purchase enough for two classroom's lab groups. Number them with each group's number or name. Then for each lab either, 1. You can place the necessary supplies and equipment in each tub for one class (allow your earlier finishers to use the second set and prepare for the next period). Or, 2. Place the necessary supplies and equipment on a table and one student from each group can pick them up themselves and place in their tub. I kept a supply of those paper boxes with removeable lids and shoe boxes that I would store items in. Tape a piece of paper that tells students how many of each item to pick up. For example, when we made windmills from several sizes of balsam sticks. I had each size in a shoebox with a note attached saying "Pick up 5 - 6in pieces" on one box and "Pickup 2 - 4 in. pieces" on another. This makes items easy to store and access when you need them. Even if you don't have much storage area, you can stack boxes in the back corner of the classroom/lab. | Reinforce Positive BehaviorI had a ticket system in my class for reinforcing positive behavior. Each student received four tickets at the beginning of each month (I didn't actually give them tickets at the start of the month but kept track of them on paper). For each classroom infraction such as sleeping, not bringing their text, talking after being asked not to etc., they would lose a ticket. At the end of the month I would pass out the number of tickets they still had, they would write their names on the back and I would put them in a jar. Then I would raffle off different things like: candy bars, free late homework passes, bathroom passes, chips, free pizza coupons, etc. This rewards students who followed the class rules. |
The best book I ever read on classroom management was the Wong's First Day of School. I highly recommend it to all teachers, no matter how long they have been in the classroom.
More teaching tips that are not classroom management specific can be found on my
Teaching Tips
page.
If you are looking for classroom management ideas that are more suited for upper language arts middle school and early high school, I recommend Daily-Teaching-Tools.com.
Return to Shelterbooks and Teacher Resources from Classroom Management.
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