Ever scrolled Pinterest and social media and found trending classroom management strategies you absolutely LOVE? But when you try them in real life, they are complete flops? Well today I am spilling the tead on those trendy classroom management strategies that everyone is buzzing about, why they don’t work, and what to do instead.
Ever scrolled Pinterest and social media and found trending classroom management strategies you absolutely LOVE? But when you try them in real life, they are complete flops? Well today I am spilling the tead on those trendy classroom management strategies that everyone is buzzing about, why they don’t work, and what to do instead.
So you're scrolling through TikTok or Instagram and you see a new trending classroom management strategy that you just have to try. You buy all the stuff you cut, laminate, all for it to go crumbling down within the first week. I am so excited for this video. Can I be honest? I've been looking forward to this video because in my six years of teaching, I have definitely had some classroom management successes and fails, and today I'm going to share the top trending classroom management strategies that I tried that were complete flops. So, again, this video is going to be more of my honest opinion. Feel free to take it or leave it, but I'm so excited because if you can learn from any of my lessons money, time that I spent on these then I'm going to share it. So, with that being said, 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.
Speaker 1:So, before we dive into the specific strategies, let's talk about why these classroom trending, classroom management strategies don't work. That you see on social media Not all of them, but in general. The first one is that they're focusing on rewarding or giving attention to good or bad behavior. Yes, technically, what you focus on you create more of, but instead of going to the source of why you're having a problem managing your classroom in the first place, I love you, but you're just putting a bandaid and hoping it sticks. Now I don't see this in a mean way. Like I said, I did this a lot in the past. But let me give you an example Instead of having a chatty class and giving them, I don't know, blurt beans, maybe that's a good indicator that maybe we should look at the procedures of raising their hand. Or maybe students are just sitting too long and so we need to incorporate more movement. Now don't get me wrong. I like cute solutions, like the next teacher, and. But here's the thing I want the strategies I use in my classroom to actually work and not just be a cute or a good idea at the time.
Speaker 1:With that being said, let's dive into the first flop with classroom management trending strategies, which, ironically, is actually blur beans. So blur beans, if you're not familiar with it. What it is is you give your students beans uncooked beans typically three to five at the beginning of the day and every time they blurt, you collect the bean. Now, however many beans were class collected or didn't have to give you or pay, you then goes into a jar and then you can use that towards a reward later in the year. Now students get a certain amount of beans.
Speaker 1:Like I said, if they blur, you take it away. So I did this during student teaching with pennies and I later did it again a couple of years ago in my classroom and, to be honest, it didn't work. It didn't work at all. This was a disaster and don't worry each of these, I'm going to tell you why. Here's why. So the first thing was my students will lose the beans and drop them on the floor. Now, the rule was if you drop it on the floor, it's mine and it counts as like blurting. Well, that's the thing students would then wouldn't be honest and just keep the bean or they would take it from each other. So it looked like they had more beans than what they started with and by the end of the week it turned into my students tattling and students becoming dysregulated. Every time I had to stop class to then take a bean away.
Speaker 1:So if you're tempted by blurt beans, or you tried blurt beans in the past and you want something different, here's what to do instead. If your students are chatting and they're blurting, ask yourself these two questions Are my students moving enough? Unpopular opinion. Students need to move more. They need to move their kids. It says in research that students can only focus for every one to three year old that they are. So, for example, my eight year old second graders can only focus anywhere from eight to 24 minutes at a time. So make sure you are giving our students several brain breaks throughout the day and you might just find that your kids are not chatting as much.
Speaker 1:The second thing is do I need to review the procedure for adding to the conversation? If yes, if it's been a while, or maybe you haven't taken the time to thoroughly introduce this procedure, or you want to revisit model what it looks like and discuss why you are modeling it that way what it looks like and sounds like, model what it doesn't look like and sound like, discuss why it's important and then practice. After that, take some time to shout out students who are raising their hand to add to the conversation, for example. Thank you so much, kota. I'm using my dog means here. Thank you so much, kota, for raising your hand to show me you have a thought you would like to share. Use positive praise, but you don't have to stop your teaching in the middle to then take a bean away and then draw attention to that student. This way, you're practicing the procedure and you're getting to the main cause.
Speaker 1:The third thing that I want to add here and I'm just kind of going by feeling here is in the past I've also been guilty of not giving my students time to talk with each other. I've always been. I've been so focused on content and trying to get to everything that I forget that my kids are social beings and even though I'm an introvert, they probably want to talk to each other. Don't get me wrong I like to talk to my kids, but you get the idea. So make sure you structure some time in there for your students to talk to each other, because that's also important too.
Speaker 1:The Blur Beans is the first trending classroom management strategy. That was a complete flop for me, and the second one was, to be honest, I almost don't even want to tell you because I should have known better. I'm going to be kind of myself. I'm not going to be a clip chart. So clip charts, this might be aging me. I don't know if they're trending anymore, but here's what it is. So this was around, especially when I first started teaching.
Speaker 1:But you have different colors and students started a color and every time they do something positive, you can ask them to clip up or clip down when they're not following expectations. Typically, there's different warnings, like everyone starts at good day or ready to learn, good day, great or amazing day, and then warning sit out for recess, call home something like that. Okay, I get the intention behind this. Like I said, I'm calling myself out here. I use this for the first couple of years. Here's why it didn't work Students would shut down as soon as I stopped class to then ask them to clip down. They would dysregulate. I would stop, I would call out the behavior in front of the whole class, so everybody was looking at them and then they would just ball or they would freak out and they would dysregulate and then they would start acting out. And I wonder why? That's because I was focusing on the negative instead of the positive and I was calling out their behavior in front of everybody.
Speaker 1:When you know better, you do better. So if you've used a clip chart and you want to go away from it again, my opinion, if you feel like a clip chart is working for you, then Bio means use it. I just didn't like how I felt using it. If you are using a clip chart or you've seen people use clip charts and you're wondering what to use instead, try this. Try to use a super improver wall. Now, a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful human being. If you like my channel, go follow this person. Her name is Miss May from OneFapTeacher. She is a beautiful human being inside and out. If you've been or listened to any of my past content, you know I just love this person through and through. I love her. Okay, van Girl aside. When a student, so she has a free super improver wall inside of her TPT store. So when a student is going above and beyond the expectations, like they've been on it, they've been following expectations without you seeing anything and they're just really really doing well.
Speaker 1:Not when you're teaching, when you're maybe you or students are doing small groups or centers, ask the student to get a sticker or give them a sticker to level up. So it's like game pieces and they can level up and it uses gamification, which I love. But the important thing about this is that it focuses on the positive instead of the negative. You're pointing out the procedures you like, so, for example, I could say oh my goodness, kenai, again dog name. Oh my goodness, kenai, I love how you have been sitting quietly while I've been teaching. You helped your friend get in line quietly and now you're doing your work at a level zero. I would like to give you a sticker here's your sticker and then they would go and they'd put it on their chart and then they can level up once again a certain amount of stickers. What I like to do as an interest incentive is, whenever my students level up, I like to do a handwritten note to families, letting them know that they leveled up and how incredibly proud I am. So I like to do a love note home, and this changed my life, because then families loved this. They loved getting the positive notes home when a student leveled up, so much so that I had a family tell me they framed my notes, which I love, my family.
Speaker 1:And so, anyways, superimproverwall highly recommend you don't have to use a clip chart. If you don't want to, there is a better way, all right. So, as a recap, blurtbeans were the first class trending classroom management strategy. I just did not. It did not work for me. The second one was the clip chart. Again didn't work for me. The third one is a classroom store. Now, this has been around since I was at in school. I went to a school called Rocky Heights and we had Rocky books and you would get bucks for doing what you're supposed to throughout the day, and then you had a store at the end. Well, like that. Okay, again, before I found the SuperimproverWall, I thought, oh, I need, maybe I'll try that because the clip chart is not working. So students get money or stickers or points for awards and at the end of the week I did mine on Fridays, where I opened my store they could get prizes. Typically I just went to the Dollar Tree where I had some donations and they could pick out, and they cost different amounts of money depending how big the prize was. Here's why it didn't work for me.
Speaker 1:First thing, students will lose their currency. Now you have typically two kinds of students. You have the student who has it in their pouch, they have it in wherever you have them, keep it and it is nice and crisp, like the first thing you gave it. And then you have the other student who shoves it in their desk or shoves it in their basket or however. You have the student organize their things or their pouch or their supply box, and then they lose it and then it's a big deal. So that. And then they would also compare money and I could see those kids who had a hard week then kind of shut down and feel bad about themselves and I didn't really want that. So that's why I recommend instead, if you're wanting more of a class incentive instead of like an individual again, for individual I use super improve or walk.
Speaker 1:For like a class incentive, I use beat the teacher, but I think I do it a little different than the trending way to do it. So here's what I do I have a t-shirt and then I have a smiley face or a frowny face or green tellies and red tellies on one side, so my students get a green telling when they are following expectations without me saying anything. Now, the beginning of the year, the beginning, when I use this, I definitely give more green than red, but it slowly starts to get harder and more challenging as the day goes or as the year goes on. Now they get a red telling if they're not following expectations. Here's the problem with this. You can't give them a ton of warnings and give them a red. You have to give them a red right away to show you have high expectations. You want to be consistent with whatever strategy you use. That's just in general.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, at the end of the day we would look at the green or red. Now, typically I would have anywhere from 5 to 10 green and then 5 to 10 red, just kind of depending, or even less. But I try to give no more than 10 green. So what they would do is, at the end of the day, if they hadn't worked green than red, let's say they had 10 green and I don't know, 7 red. We would subtract that and they get 3 green, which means they get 3 minutes of free time or catch up time at the end of the day. So, as long as they had a really good day, they didn't get a think sheet or anything like that and they didn't need to talk to me multiple times and they finished all their work, they get those 3 minutes to themselves to do. I had morning tubs that we did, or community tubs and they would work on that or whatever they wanted. I gave choices. Now let's say that they had more red than green. Maybe we had 7 red and 5 green. We subtract those, we have 2 more red than green. Then they would owe me 2 minutes. Basically, I would use these 2 minutes as a time to review procedures that we really had a hard time with that day.
Speaker 1:So one way you can make this harder. I love being the teacher, by the way, and I've done this everywhere, from kindergarten all the way to middle school. But what I like about this is you can do it teacher versus or just the class in general. You can break the class into boys versus girls, red group versus blue group, left side versus red side, a whole student against the rest of the class. I've done that. When a student I know is really working on their expectations and following behaviors, I make them the star student that day and we try to beat them and typically they do really well because then they're the hero. It's really cool. So, anyways, beat the teacher. Highly recommend that.
Speaker 1:So, as a recap, the Trending classroom management strategies that didn't work for me is one blur beans didn't work for me. Two clip chart didn't work for me. Three classroom store. Four taking away recess Again calling myself out here, if you do this, don't feel bad, I've done this too, but what it is is when a student isn't following expectations, the teacher takes away recess when they don't follow what is expected of them. Here's why this didn't work and why I am a strong advocate now of not taking away recess.
Speaker 1:The truth is 100% transparency or giving them. You know, taking away their lunch of your middle school is you're making it harder on yourself and you're making it harder for your student. Here's why, when I have a student who isn't raising their hand in class and I take away their recess because of it, that student isn't actually learning to raise their hand. Those two aren't related. So the problem is, when you give students that consequence, they typically have a hard rest of the day, because then internally, they're labeling themselves as a bad kid, because only bad kids get their recess taken away or their free time taken away. That being said that and students, like I said, need to move. Especially you have rambunctious kids that have high energy they need to move. I arguably feel like sometimes we don't give them enough time to move or recess. So if you take that time away, you're sending them back to class One. This regulated to upset with themselves Three, labeling themselves as a bad kid, and then four, they have all this pent up energy. So naturally, what's going to happen is they're going to have a really, really hard rest of the day. So if you find yourself wanting to take away recess and you want to find an easier way to handle this, try this instead Enter natural consequences. So natural consequences are whatever the action is has an equal reaction.
Speaker 1:So let me give you some examples for this, because I know this was especially hard for me to figure out when I first started. But, for example student messes up the bathroom. They throw water and soap on the mirror or they make a huge mess, or they teepee the whole entire stroller, bathroom, classroom, bathroom. Consequence don't take away recess. Have them clean it up. If they do it again, maybe then they do a thing. She third time family contact. Fourth time admin involved or behavior plan Okay.
Speaker 1:Another example student talking in line. Consequence don't take away recess. Practice instead Practice for lying. Again, I used beat the teacher. So if a student had a really hard time with procedures and we tried several times throughout the day and they couldn't get it figured out. And it was not a behavior situation where a behavior plan was needed. You can always have students practice the expectations or practice the procedures. Then Okay. Next one student talking at the carpet. Reaction or consequence practice sitting at the carpet Okay. So students aren't going to want to practice this 20 to 30 times. So if you practice it four to five times, they're eventually going to get it. They're going to want to move on to something more fun. So having them redo until they get it to your expectations is a good consequence. Pair this with the free time that I talked about earlier and it really helps students learn to follow expectations.
Speaker 1:Now a quick disclaimer I want to add here. One thing you'll learn about me is I don't believe in calling students out on their behavior in front of the whole class unless it is extremely dangerous or unsafe for other students. By that I mean throwing the extreme behaviors. But if a student is talking, I'm not going to call out that student in front of everybody. I'm going to send my kids to do something. I'm going to pull that student to the side and have this conversation, then have them practice on the sideline. I'm not going to make a public display of it because, again, students dysregulate. Like with the clip chart, you're calling them out on their behavior. They shut down worse behavior. So that's the other trending classroom management strategy I used. That didn't work.
Speaker 1:The final one behavior bingo. Now, admittedly, I'm kind of torn on this one, because typically, underneath how this works is you have certain skills covered with, like a sticky note, and every time your students do something they can, you know, get a sticky note removed. I like this because it works on a specific skill, but instead what would happen, especially when I had to sub, is my kids would peek and they figured out a party that we were going to have anyways. So what I like to do instead again, miss May, I love her One fat teacher, check her out. She has classroom incentive parties and so, let's say, this week I've noticed my kids are having a really hard time in line. So every time that they are doing what they're following expectations in line, then I give them one of the numbers, one through 20 towards that classroom party, if you want to do those, and there's like popcorn, cookies, hot chocolate. She has them based on theme and season, which is really fun. So I use that and it's a game changer. So use that instead of the behavior bingo, just because it was a lot of moving pieces and sometimes your kids peek and as far as fun.
Speaker 1:So that wraps up the five trending classroom management strategies that didn't work for my class. As a recap, you've got blur beans those didn't work for me Clip chart Don't want to go back to this days classroom store, taking away recess and behavior bingo. Now, again, these were all my personal behavior and from my personal experience. I hope you take this. If something I say doesn't align with you and it really works for your class, that is absolutely amazing. Keep using it. This is just from my personal experience and my hope is, if you haven't used these and you kind of don't feel aligned with them they don't feel like they would drive with you, but you feel like you have no other option I hopefully gave you some tools that you can use instead that might work for your classroom. So, with that being said, if you want to dive deeper into classroom management, I want to invite you to a classroom management challenge or if you want me to answer the top 10 questions I get in regards to classroom management. I want to invite you to download the master your classroom management guide. That's a free guide that will send to your email, all about how to comfortably master your classroom.
Speaker 1:Or, if you want to take it a step further, I want to invite you to join the present teacher circle. So when I first started teaching, I felt like I was really alone and it was a lot of trial and error of trying to figure things out and learning how to do things quickly without someone to go to for support. That's why I created the present teacher circle. The present teacher circle is a monthly community where we master all the different components to having an effortless year and to save time as a new teacher, including how to manage your classroom, how to take care of planning and data in a time efficient way, how to plan quickly and efficiently and prepping without staying on the weekends to do it, how to organize your classrooms and resources so you can use them next year, how to have excellent communication with admin, your team and families, and all about taking care of yourself as a teacher. So if this is something that you want support and I want to invite you to come join us inside the present teacher circle where we support each other in this, and it's really a lot of fun. It's really everything I wish I would have known as a first through five year teacher things that would have saved me time in the long run. So if you want to join us, I will drop a link in the description. But, as always, remember we are stronger together.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining me here. What classroom management strategies or trending strategies have you used that didn't work? Let me know, either by sending me a DM or in the comments down below. What questions do you have about classroom management? Let me know, because I'm really excited to continue making content about this topic, all right, with that being said, as always, remember we are stronger together and I will see you in the next one. Teacher Bessie Bye. 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. Melana, aka the president, teacher. See you next time, teacher Bessie.