How to Spice Up Your End Of Year Classroom Management

Disruptive behavior on the rise and you're wondering how to mix things up with your end of year classroom management?

Here's a breakdown of not only classroom management strategies I use at the end of the year, but also how to revamp your classroom management plan. I share my secret to finishing off the school year strong with clear expectations, procedures and strategies that will get your students excited about learning again.

These classroom management strategies will help you confidently minimize disruptive behavior, save time in the classroom, and be confident in your classroom management skills. 

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//  ABOUT

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

Helena: 0:00

So it's the end of the year, where everyone is starting to get a little bit tired of each other. Your students may not be listening to you and you're secretly counting the days until summer and you're wondering how can you revamp your classroom and spice things up, because things are getting a little stale. If this is you, today we're going to be talking about how you can use different strategies to spice up your end of the year classroom management. 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, actionable classroom management, social learning and teacher wellness strategies. You know that impact you want to make in the classroom. We're going to make it happen here.

Helena: 0:53

First strategy I want to recommend that you use when it comes to spicing up your classroom management is to figure out what you can do. That might be new Now. There's this common misconception out there that in order to have solid classroom management, you need to try something all year. If it doesn't work, especially at the end of the year, there's no point in trying to change it now. Now, while I don't think you should be trying 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 different strategies in a year because you know, if you're constantly changing and not giving it a fair amount to actually experiment with it to see if it works, your students might be completely confused and not know what the expectations are. But on the flip side, I recommend that the end of the year is actually my favorite and the perfect time to try new classroom management strategies, the reason being, if I figure out that something is working really well with my students, who are already pretty well trained and know the expectations in class if it works with them, I know I can probably try it for the upcoming year, whereas if I don't really know what the expectations are, or my students, you know, try something and they know the expectations and it doesn't work out, that's a good indicator that maybe trying something new or doing that strategy in the next year isn't a good idea. With that being said, I love to use the end of the year as an opportunity to harness my skills and figure out what does work for me and how I can use it for the upcoming next school year.

Helena: 2:30

Some strategies that I recommend doing and I personally like doing, particularly at the end of the school year, to kind of revamp and spice up my classroom management at the end of the year. The first one is VIP students. Now, vip students are those students who are following the expectations flawlessly and those students become the VIP for the week. Now, there's different variations of this, but when I do a VIP student, what I like to do is I like to choose anywhere from one to four students for the week to be VIP students, from one to four students for the week to be VIP students. They come in, they get to sit at a special table, they get special resources like smelly markers, maybe they get stickers, maybe they get a special treat or they get to eat lunch with me that week. Either way, having VIP students and introducing that at the end of the week really helps your students kind of revamp and spice up their classroom management and be excited to follow the expectations and finish off the year strong. So again, ideally you want to make sure that everyone, by the end of the year, becomes a VIP student, but incorporating this is a great way to get your students to continue following expectations when things are getting a little dry or dreary.

Helena: 3:42

The second thing I recommend, or strategy I recommend using particularly I like to introduce this after spring break is Secret Student. Now, how Secret Student works again different variations is where you write down the name of a student and you hide it somewhere and at the end of the day, if that student was following expectations, they get. Insert your positive affirmations or classroom management strategies here. If they didn't get it, I just like to say that, oh, our secret student didn't get it today, and then I, you know, throw away the name of the student. I don't announce it publicly, but that gives the opportunity for your students to follow expectations. They don't know who it is and so they're more likely to follow the expectations of the classroom. So, as a recap, the first thing I recommend doing to spice up your classroom management at the end of the year is use this as an opportunity to try something new.

Helena: 4:37

The second thing I highly recommend you do if you want to spice up your classroom management for the end of the year, is to revamp your expectations and procedures. Now I could be doing you a disservice if I didn't bring to your attention that perhaps one of the reasons things are getting stale and I'm definitely guilty of this is I haven't reviewed my expectations recently, so things have gotten a little more lax and my students aren't more inclined to follow them. So this is when reviewing and practicing your expectations are really important, and if you've had expectations that your students weren't able to uphold earlier, this is a great time to look at them and maybe revamp them a little bit. So when I am doing a revamp, I like to look at the procedures that we haven't been following. So, for example, maybe my kids are chatting in class, maybe they're chatting during home group, maybe they're getting up out of their seat during independent work.

Helena: 5:35

I will list out the procedures I want to work on and I will introduce, reintroduce those procedures and expectations. We'll review and practice it. I will discuss what it looks like, sounds like, I'll model it, we'll discuss what it doesn't look like and sound like and why it's important to follow it that way, and then we practice and practice and practice until we get it right. Some procedures you might consider revamping these are definitely not all of them, but some of them are your morning routine after lunch, recess routine, transitions I talked about that earlier attention getters, centers, hallway, etc. Now, all of these are different procedures and routines.

Helena: 6:14

I recommend revamping if you feel like they're not where you want them to be. In a previous week, I talked about how I personally run my transitions from one activity to another or one center to another, and what I love about them is my students know what to transition to without me saying anything. So if you want to learn more about that, I'll make sure to link it in the description down below. So, as a quick recap, the first thing you should be doing if you want to spice things up for your classroom management at the end of the year is use it as an opportunity to try something new. The second thing is to revamp your expectations and procedures.

Helena: 6:52

The third thing I recommend doing is focusing on community building. Now, I know I'm definitely guilty of this, but what often happens is we have this curriculum map and we are trying so hard to get caught up because random things happen throughout the year that made us fall behind, and so we focus so much on content that we don't give our students time to connect with one another and keep our community strong, which leads to problems with our peer to peer relationships. That's why it's easy to get wrapped up in content and why I recommend focusing on building community. Especially the last couple of weeks of school, make sure to take time to build relationships with each other. Now, some ways I like to do this. I could do a whole week content on how to do this and different things I do, but as a quick overview of some of the ones I like to do, especially if my students are having a hard time with peer-to-peer relationships, is a gratitude circle. This is where everybody where you sit in a circle and you pass the ball to somebody and you give that person a compliment, and then maybe you sit with your legs out and once that person gets a compliment and they sit crisscross, so everybody gets compliment. But a gratitude circle or compliment circle is really important.

Helena: 8:07

And then the final experiment I've talked about this before is cup stacking. I used this at the beginning of my first year of teaching, second grade, second year, second year, second year of teaching second grade and I noticed that my students had a hard time with being good, score spin ship. So what I did is I gave them a stack of cups and whoever could stack the cups the highest in two minutes won the competition. And the first time my students did it they were really not kind to each other and what happened is the cups would fall. So then we did it. We had a discussion after the first time and they made the realization that when they weren't kind to their friends and their peers, that their cups would fall and they ended up losing. So the second time, we did a second time immediately after, and every single one of the groups improved with how high they were. They were positive, and I just like using this as a good way to gauge how we're interacting with each other. So this is a really good activity to do towards the end of the year. So that is the next thing I recommend doing.

Helena: 9:15

If you want to spice things up for your classroom management at the end of the year. The next thing I recommend doing is, if something isn't working, simply change it. We talked about this earlier, but if you feel like something isn't working, then feel free to tweak it, revamp it or completely eliminate it. So this happened to me my second year of teaching. I was teaching kindergarten at the time and when I was student teaching, every single one of my teachers had used a clip chart. Now I was in my second year of using it and I absolutely hated it. I did not like it because what would happen was, every time my students had to clip down, they would become dysregulated and it wasn't actually solving the problem. It was just kind of like a band-aid solution. So instead I really pivoted in the middle or the end more towards the end of the year and I focused more on the procedures and routines and expectations and having high expectations of my students. But then I focused more on giving positive feedback to my students. In fact, I incorporated a super improver wall, which they talk about in full-length teaching.

Helena: 10:24

If you want to learn more, I'll make sure to put a link in the description down below, a link in the description down below. But feel free to ask yourself is what I'm using still working for me, or is it something I want to revamp, tweak or eliminate? Don't be afraid to get rid of strategies you use that no longer work for you. I have used almost every strategy that's been viral on TikTok and Instagram and all the socials, like Clipcharts, blurt Beans, desk Pets, you name it and they all just didn't work and by the end of the year I was done. So feel free to tweak what doesn't work for you and throw it out if it doesn't.

Helena: 11:03

The last thing I wanna recommend, if you need to spice up your classroom management, is to if you have chatty or disruptive class, that might mean you need more movement breaks. So here's the deal If we, as teachers, are feeling overwhelmed and that the year is dragging on and we're exhausted, it's probably our students are feeling the same way. That's why, at the end of the year, I like to give myself extra grace, extra forgiveness, as well as my kids, and I like to incorporate more breaks, especially like the last four weeks of the year. We take more breaks, we relax more, we slow down the pace and the rigor a bit, because we are all tired trying to get to the end of the year. I also like to incorporate more activities or projects like escape rooms, scavenger hunts, that kind of or project-based learning, things that tie in everything we've learned so far and gives my students more freedom and breathing room. So that wraps up all the things that you can use to spice up your end-of-the-year classroom management. And here's the thing the end of the year doesn't have to be a drag. With these classroom management strategies I talked about earlier, you can have an amazing and positive and upbeat end of the year.

Helena: 12:19

So here is a recap of the five strategies I recommended using if you want to spice up your classroom management at the end of the year. The first one trying something new. The second thing re-brand your procedures and expectations. The third thing community building. Number four eliminate strategies that just simply don't work for you. And number five more movement and projects. Give your students more breaks, give yourself more breaks and be kind and graceful to yourself and others. So that wraps up everything about classroom management at the end of the year.

Helena: 12:54

If you want to dive deeper into classroom management and you're looking to maybe revamp things this summer, I highly recommend you check out the Ultimate Classroom Management Guide. It answers the top 10 questions I get in regards to confidently mastering classroom management in the classroom. So make sure to download that guide. I'll put a description or a link in the description. The next thing I recommend checking out, if you want to take it a step further, is the Present Teacher Circle community. This community is a group of educators who are working together to work on different topics through the Thriving Teacher Framework.

Helena: 13:31

So inside the Thriving Teacher Framework we work on several things to have a successful first couple years of teaching. The first phase is classroom management. We also have communication, organization, planning and prepping, data and teacher wellness. So in there we cover way more in depth everything about classroom management. So if you want to join, I'll make sure to put a link in the description down below. As always, remember we are stronger together and I'll see you in the next one. Teacher bestie, 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, helena, aka the Present Teacher. See you next time, teacher Bestie.