Revamp Your Classroom: The Ultimate Guide to Seamless Management and Joyful Learning

Learn how to revamp your classroom management with ease. Use these 3 strategies to confidently manage your elementary classroom to get your students to listen to you and have your classroom running on autopilot.

These 3 strategies will help you confidently teach procedures, create your classroom rules, and incorporate natural consequences.

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I’m Helena, a coach for new and first-year teachers sharing knowledge on how to have a thriving career and personal life.

The Present Teacher Podcast is a resource for classroom management, classroom organization, time management, and teacher wellness. Follow along and learn how to thrive in the classroom and in life.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

So it's the middle of the school year and you're starting to notice your students could use a revamp in their more classroom management and you're looking for a way to get back on track and you're looking for those days where you can sip your coffee with ease, sit back and let your students work without you intervening or saying a thing, the day where your classroom is running like a well-oiled machine. Well, today we are going to be diving in on how to know when you are ready for a classroom management revamp and three things to review if you are ready to revamp your classroom. So let's dive in. Hey, teacher Bestie, my name is Helena and I'm the creator of the Present Teacher podcast. I'm a first year teacher coach and in this podcast you are going to learn everything from simple, actual classroom management, social learning and teacher wellness strategies. You know that impact you want to make in the classroom, or we're going to make it happen here. Before we dive into the three things you need to do to revamp your classroom management, let's talk about how to know when you're ready to revamp your classroom.

Speaker 1: 1:15

Here are the three things that you know that to be true, if you are ready to revamp your classroom. The first one is that you're ready to have effortless school days. You're looking forward to sitting back with the confidence and peace of mind knowing you can step out for a second to talk to a co-worker or a student on the hallway, and your students would be doing exactly what's expected of them. The second way you know you're ready for a classroom management revamp is you're ready to have your students run the classroom without you. You can rest at ease knowing that if you had a sub, your students could run the entire classroom, how it is expected to be ran, without you being there. This reminds me of that time where, in high school, there was a class where a teacher was supposed to have a sub. The sub never showed and she went through two or three class periods of students doing exactly what was expected of them before someone finally reached out to the office to let them know there wasn't an adult in the room. That's the kind of energy we're going for. The third way to know you are ready for a classroom management revamp is you're ready to get to the end of the day realizing you didn't have to stop for disruptive behavior. You're ready to have that. Oh my god, I can't believe my job gets to be this easy moment, and because you have the space to teach and make an impact without having to constantly stop to address disruptive behavior. If you said yes to any of these three things, then you know that's a pretty good indicator that you're ready for a classroom management revamp. With that being said, you might be wondering okay, so how do I go about revamping my classroom management? Well, here are the three things you should review.

Speaker 1: 3:14

If you want to review your classroom management or revamp your classroom management, the first thing you should be reviewing are your procedures. Let's talk about what procedures are, because procedures actually commonly get mixed up with other things and other aspects of a classroom management plan. Procedures are how you want your students to interact with classroom materials, different areas in the classroom themselves and each other. When you have good classroom procedures, they're running well. They keep your classroom running without you saying a word. More students know what the expectations are, how they should move around the classroom, and the biggest reason why they are consistent with it is because they know why and they've been modeled what it should look like and what it shouldn't look like. Here are some examples of procedures you should have in your classroom. Some examples could be getting in line whole group instruction, working independently, using the restroom, grabbing extra materials, transitions, turning something in. All of these are examples of some procedures that you should have in the classroom.

Speaker 1: 4:30

If you want a resource to walk you through how to teach procedures the right way, I will put a link in the description for you to refer back to to a week where I talked and even modeled how to teach procedures. But here's a general overview of how to introduce or reteach procedures. The first thing you're going to do is introduce Good morning boys and girls, good morning students. Today we are going to review I talk about how to turn in our papers. The second step is to model the right way. You're going to physically get up and show your students what it should look like and sound like. The third step is you're going to model the wrong way to do it. For a step, you're going to have a discussion what did it sound like and what did it look like? You're also going to talk about what it doesn't look like and what it doesn't sound like with your students.

Speaker 1: 5:21

And then the most important step, which so many teachers miss, myself included, the first couple of years is the why? Why is it important that we have this procedure in place? Have your students discuss it with you why it's important that you have this procedure in place. This is the buy-in. That way, when students have a choice between modeling or doing the procedure the right way or wrong way, they can remind themselves. I'm going to choose the right way because we do this so we can keep each other safe or not disrupt our friends. Taking those extra five seconds to have this discussion with your students is going to go a long way, and the final step, after you've modeled the wrong way, right way, discussed it and even modeled it again is you're going to practice it as a class.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Now there's this huge dispute or argument or dilemma going around, which is that you shouldn't smile until Christmas. Now, I personally don't believe in that. I believe that you can be a fun and engaging teacher much like my teaching style while still having high expectations of your kids. The reason I say this is because it is completely acceptable to have your students practice the procedures until they get it right. It is one thing to have high expectations of your kids. It's another thing to be strict, cranky and grumpy and not fun if that's your vibe. Having your students review the procedures and practice over and over until they make it a habit is not being strict, cranky or mean. It is setting themselves up for success. It is setting your students and your classroom up for success. So, having said, don't feel afraid to practice repeatedly with your students until they get it right, until they can do it without you saying so.

Speaker 1: 7:20

As a recap, the first thing you should do review if you want to revamp your classroom management is to review, revisit procedures. The second thing you're going to want to review are your classroom rules. Now, there's a lot of different opinions out there about classroom rules, but I like to think of these as the non-negotiables. These rules are how the class agrees to interact with each other and themselves and materials in the classroom. I recommend having no more than three to five because you want your students everything to refer back to the rules, you can say we use walking feet, so we can respect rule number one, we are safe. So everything goes back to the rules. The rules are the foundation to the classroom management. The procedures help you support the rules and make sure everybody is following the rules. So, again, I would go through revisit the rules, have your students sign off that they agree to work with the rules or follow the rules. And don't forget to review your rules. I personally do them every day as a primary teacher. You can do whatever is best for you, but feel free to go back and re-look at those rules.

Speaker 1: 8:39

The third thing you're going to want to review in your classroom management remand are consequences. Now, consequences are what happens if a student doesn't follow expectations. Here's a lesson that I see a lot of teachers make a mistake with, including myself when I first started was you don't want to give your students 20 warnings and then maybe do something about it. When I first started teaching, I was terrified to give a consequence, because I was scared then that I would be a mean, strict teacher. But again, along my journey, I learned the difference between having high expectations and being strict and rough and not having fun and cranky. There's a difference between the two. So, with that being said, you want to make sure that you follow through with your consequences. Otherwise, your students are going to continuously push the envelope and see what they can get away with. So here's what you want to do you want to list out what steps are you going to take if a student doesn't follow expectations.

Speaker 1: 9:49

Step one, let's say the first time they don't follow, what are you doing Now? I personally don't believe in calling out a student on their mistake in front of the whole class. I have a whole classroom management playlist I will make sure to put down below. But essentially you want to figure out what levels of interaction are you going to have with a student before you need to take a bigger action or ask for support. So some examples are maybe the first time, step one, the first time they do it, it's a verbal warning. Or maybe you use proximity, you stand close to the student and see if they fix the behavior. The second time they do it, what do you do then? An example could be maybe you then pull a student to the sideline out of the hallway or somewhere where they're friends and other peers can't hear them, because you don't want to publicly embarrass a child because of a mistake. I personally wouldn't appreciate that if in a staff meeting a principal called me out on an honest mistake I made, especially if I didn't know I was doing it on purpose. So that can be step two and so forth. But you want to come up with different levels of how you're going to interact with the student before you get outside support. When students know the expectations and why they are there, and then the consequences they have for not following the classroom expectations the way that you're expecting them to interact, the more likely they are to follow the classroom rules and expectations, the more likely they can thrive in the classroom because, at the end of the day, students Thrive off of structure. They love structure, they love having routines. It's all about having those routines and structure in place for students to thrive and to know where the limits and boundaries are.

Speaker 1: 11:47

If you wanna dive deeper into classroom management, I have some resources that you can dive deeper into classroom management. The first one is here on this platform. I have a ton of different weeks where I talk about classroom management and different strategies you can incorporate into your classroom. The second resource I have for you is the Mastering Classroom Management Guide. This is answering your top questions about how to confidently run your classroom in a way where you feel at ease and effortless. The third resource I have for you is a three-day Mastering Classroom Management Challenge. This is a free three-day challenge to confidently master your classroom. In this challenge we break down how to deal with a chatty class, what to do when students aren't following directions and how to figure out your unique classroom management style, because, at the end of the day, you and I teach differently. You and I have different teaching styles and I want to honor that in all of the resources I provide for you, so we actually cover that in day one.

Speaker 1: 12:54

The third resource I have for you is the Present Teacher Circle. This is a step-by-step on how to not only be a classroom management pro and to confidently manage your classroom, but it also to manage all the other areas in your classroom and teacher tasks so you can live a life full of ease. This includes how to plan, how to collect data, how to communicate with families, how to organize your resources, how to set goals, how to take care of yourself and set boundaries. All of these are included inside the Present Teacher Circle, so this is something you want to learn more about, not only classroom management, but all these other areas. I want to invite you to join us inside of that program as well.

Speaker 1: 13:41

That wraps up the three things to review to revamp your classroom management. As a review, you will know you're ready to revamp your classroom when you are ready to have an effortless school day when you're ready to have your students run the classroom without you and you're ready to go get to the end of the day realizing you didn't have to stop to constantly manage or interfere with disruptive behavior. And the three things that you should review for our classroom management revamp are procedures, rules and consequences. That wraps up our topic for this week. As always, remember we are stronger together and I will see you next time, teacher Bestie. Bye.

Speaker 1: 14:28

Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. I hope that you were able to take away some value that will help you thrive inside and out of the classroom. It would mean the world to me if you could take five seconds right now and leave a review on this podcast. And if you found this podcast especially helpful, make sure to take a screenshot of this episode right now and tag me on your socials to let me know you're listening. As always, remember that we are stronger together. With All the Love in the World, helena, aka the President, teacher, see you next time, teacher Bestie. Life goes on forever.