4 Tips for Managing Your Classroom

I’m often asked about classroom management. How do you manage a classroom? From my perspective, management is not about having a set of structures and schedules; it’s about having the procedures in place to help you meet the needs of all your students. Without a solid structural base, your classroom can become shaky, with unpredictable results for you and your students. Let’s look at four key areas that can affect your instruction.

Four Areas of Classroom Management

1. Student Participation
2. Routines
3. Clear Expectations
4. Small Group Activities

Student Participation

One of my struggles as a teacher was keeping all my students engaged, particularly during whole group discussions of a reading selection. It seemed that no matter what I did, someone wasn’t paying attention. I learned that I need to provide opportunities for interaction for every student whenever possible, and that is difficult when I’m teaching everyone at the same time. A simple but effective strategy is pair/share. Instead of asking a question about the text and calling on one student to answer, students turn to a partner and share their answers with each other. With this approach, you know that everyone has participated, at least with their partner.

Middle school teacher Brandi King points out the importance of calling on a variety of students during a whole group activity:

Some students really don’t mind sitting back while everyone else does the work. In return, some students don’t mind giving everyone else the answers. My students now know that I will call on everyone regardless of who does or does not have their hand in the air, and I won’t accept “I didn’t get that one” for an answer. I make students think about a question before I pass them over to call on someone else. I also make them think about the answers they do give, by asking, “How do you know?”

Another challenge related to student participation is off-topic questions. I remember teaching a descriptive writing lesson, and my students were determined to ask me about everything else. I recommend having a parking lot: a section of your wall or board for off-topic questions. Students can write down their question on a sticky note and put it up on the parking lot. You can then go back and discuss the question later when it doesn’t interfere with your current lesson.

Routines

When students are learning, there are clear routines that provide a sense of stability and predictability in the midst of activity. It is a balancing act, providing enough variety to meet students’ needs while adding enough structure and routine for them to feel a sense of control and predictability. Despite any protests to the contrary, students generally thrive when there is a clear system in place they can depend on and predict.

Connie Forrester describes the importance of routines for her kindergarten students:

If there is one element that is crucial to the success of a teacher, it is structures and schedules. Young children thrive on schedules and find security in knowing the routine. Routines and structures are equally as important as schedules because without solid routines, the schedule would not be as effective. At the beginning of each year, I would carefully walk the children through the day and tell my expectations for each segment. By having clear expectations, it also allowed the children to become risk-takers and have ownership in the classroom.

I was reminded of the importance of routines when one of my graduate students emailed me in a panic. The tenor of her class had changed dramatically when the students returned from the Christmas break. I suggested she start with entrance slips. Students have five minutes to write down what they learned from the prior day’s lesson and any homework. While this happens, she hands back the graded warm-up. Next, as they start on the new warm-up, she takes up entrance slips and determines how much she needs to review before she starts a new lesson. By Friday, I received an email update:

My week ended so much better than it began! Entrance and exit slips are now permanent fixtures in my class. The kids have adjusted to them well. I decided to implement the slips in all of my classes, and oh what a difference they have made. I also plan to start read-alouds daily … just for five minutes. I will begin with something that relates to some of the problems my students may be experiencing now. I actually felt as though I was about to jump off of a cliff on Monday.

Both she and her students responded well to returning to the routine with some minor adjustments.

Clear Expectations

Clear expectations are also an important building block for the structure of your classroom. You probably have classroom policies, but they may be focused on discipline. I’ve found it’s also important to have some that are related to your instruction. For example, my students knew if they asked me a definition for a word, my first response was, “Have you looked it up in the dictionary?” They quickly learned an unwritten rule of mine: Try it yourself before you ask me.

Middle school teacher Natalie House has a more structured approach to the same issue:

When students are working in groups, I give them question cards or question sticks. As the teacher, I decide how many questions they are allowed to ask during a particular assignment. I give the group that many cards or sticks, and take one each time they ask me a question. This helps the group depend on each other and not turn to the teacher each time they get stuck.

Angie Krakeel and Kelly Zorn have a set of procedures as their sixth-graders move from zone to zone in their classrooms. 

As with most of my recommendations, I don’t have a standard set of guidelines that are essential for you to use. Think about your students and your instruction, and then develop expectations that support your teaching and help your students learn.

Small Group Activities

Group work is one of the most effective ways to help students learn. It can increase student motivation and is an important life skill. When I was teaching, some of my students didn’t like to work in groups. They complained every day until I brought in a newspaper article that said the No. 1 reason people were fired from their jobs was that they couldn’t get along with their co-workers. That was an eye-opener for my students, but it was also a good reminder of the importance of working together.

In your classroom, there are a variety of opportunities for students to work together: small group reading, science experiments, debates,  peer revision writing groups, and so forth. However, group work is more effective when you create meaningful activities, design structures that ensure individual and group success, provide instruction to support the process, and make learning fun.  As you try them in your classroom, help your students understand that each person has a role in the activity, and show them what being a good team player is like. 

A Final Note

Managing your classroom is important, and it can be facilitated by basic strategies and routines. Before the year begins, consider what you want to do, and then adapt as needed.