Classroom Management Plan
Student learning can be greatly influenced by the teacher, and by extension, the classroom environment. Establishing that environment is one of the keys to effective teaching. From day one, there needs to be built a bond of trust and respect between teacher and students - the teacher providing both compassion and faith in the ability of the students, while demanding they give their very best. This foundation establishes the teacher as a leader that students will want to follow on the path to success. An effective classroom management plan is necessary to create this “culture of success”. The classroom management plan starts with organization and moves on to cover discipline, motivation and last, but not least, instruction. I place instruction last, not because it is less important, but because effective implementation of the other three phases allows students to get the most out of the instructional phase.
Organization
The most important facet of organization is “planning ahead”. One cannot prepare for every possible event, but having the basics covered enables a better response to surprises and other unplanned events.
Start with the concept that everything has its place, including behaviors:
- Plan a place for paperwork
- student info files
- assignments in/out
- papers to be graded
- make-up work
- sub folder
- lesson plans
- fun activities folder
- school forms
- Provide set locations for supplies, displays, and other physical items.
- Develop behavioral routines for all basic tasks
- entering class
- exiting class
- speaking in class
- turning in papers
- expectations for pencils, restroom use, etc.
- returning from absence
- Determine floor plan and rearrange desks to improve teacher circulation among students. Ideal arrangement should allow for me to reach any student in the least number of steps and keep all students within two seats of walkways. My desk will be placed at the side or rear of class, depending on size and shape of room, to allow the students to be moved closer to the front of the room, and to keep the focus on the purpose of the classroom.
In order to begin establishing the culture of success the teacher and students need to get to know each other, I will pre-plan first week activities and discussions. These involve student questionnaires; interactive interest surveys; discussions of goals, learning and success; and time for student feedback and questions.
Prior to school starting, as a new teacher, I will tour the school building and understand where everything is located. I will make an effort to meet all essential personnel: peer teachers, administrators, office staff, custodial staff, library staff, technology/media staff, nurse, guidance staff and anyone else who can help me to better perform my role.
I will learn school policies for administrative tasks (hall passes, attendance, etc), grading, discipline, instruction, non-class periods, field trips, etc.
The goal of planning ahead is to leave very little to chance. Students will walk into a well-organized environment and already understand something about me and my expectations.
Discipline
Learning cannot take place until classroom behavior is managed. The teacher needs to establish a discipline philosophy such that the students know exactly what is expected of them and the consequences of choosing to do otherwise. My personal discipline philosophy that I will use in school is the same as the one I use for my own children. My statement to the class at the beginning of the year, to be repeated as needed to individual students, is “You are responsible for your actions and every choice you make has a consequence – good or bad”. I believe this statement is solid for three reasons.
First, an individual student cannot refute it when a disruption is phrased in terms of a choice they made. I wouldn’t be saying it if they hadn’t made a choice to do something. Second, through being consistent, from the very beginning, with consequences, good and bad, students will already know that “I say what I mean and I mean what I say”. Lastly, it can be applied to both positive and negative situations, learning and discipline situations, and school and life situations. A lesson in the power of choice would be one of my initial activities each year, improving the understanding of students and furthering the strength of my philosophy.
The goal of classroom management is to prevent most disruptions from occurring in the first place. This starts with organization. The teacher establishes his presence from the time the students walk into the classroom. The students are greeted at the door and assigned a task. The arrangement of the room will enable me to move about freely, using proximity to students to prevent disruptions from occurring. The daily activities are planned out to avoid having unmanaged time in between.
In the first week of class, the students and I will have a discussion about basic rules. These will consist of a limited number of ‘umbrella’ rules that cover a broad range of behaviors, such as “I will come to class on time, with the right materials and be ready to do my best”. The rules will be stated in the positive – “I will”, rather than “I won’t”. Student input (with prompts from me to ensure results) will be used in establishing the rules in order to get ownership and responsibility.
The keys to effective management of classroom behavior are composure, consistency and fairness. I will establish from the first day what behaviors are desired and which ones will not be tolerated. My response to undesirable behaviors will be calm, immediate, obvious, consistent and fairly applied. When the students understand that I means business, prevention of behavioral problems becomes the primary discipline tactic – eventually, my mere presence will enforce the rules.
When disruptions do occur, I will make dealing with them a priority, demonstrating that discipline comes before instruction, in order to ensure that instruction can be accomplished. I will use body language, eye contact and movement into a misbehaving student’s personal space to urge disruptors to get back on task. Continued disruption calls for more individualized intervention. I will discuss the problem with the student outside the purview of the rest of the class and try to determine the root cause. Together, we will work out a solution, consequence or incentive plan depending on the problem and the student’s level of cooperation. Escalating the stakes of these interventions and, if necessary, involving parents in the solution will ultimately eliminate most problems.
While the goal of classroom discipline is for it to be completely managed within the walls of the classroom, there may be occasions where a student is abusive, or a danger to themselves or other students and needs to be removed from the classroom. I need to know school policy and have planned in advance for implementing the ultimate level of discipline management, so that I can act quickly, with as little disruption of the class as possible.
While most of what the effective teacher does concerning discipline is based on creating an atmosphere that is based on prevention, I need to be prepared to demonstrate that I have a plan for disruptions and that they will be dealt with promptly and in a predictable fashion, thus building for future prevention. Other factors of classroom management that help to prevent disruptions are motivation and instruction itself. If the teacher can motivate the students and manage their learning time, they will be less inclined to misbehave.
Motivation
Another key to establishing a culture of success in the classroom is creating an atmosphere where students want to learn and feel empowered to achieve their best. The teacher builds upon the foundation of trust and respect formed through organization and discipline and provides the motivation for students to succeed. Letting the students know from the first day that I believe in them and that they have the tools needed to be successful in my class – and in life – will help them to feel empowered. Early and ongoing interactive discussions of success, goals, choices and the charting of progress toward established goals will help to create a positive atmosphere. When we regularly talk about success and the students can see their own success happening, they will feel motivated.
Motivated students come to class ready to learn and become active participants in the learning process. Motivated students are less likely to disrupt the class and more willing to follow the teacher, even if they are uncertain of the path, because of the trust developed through the culture of success. To build upon the internal motivation my students develop, I will provide external motivation to keep the class interested and focused on the learning goals. These motivators will be in the form of incentives. I will incorporate a proactive incentive system for academic productivity and discipline management. Incentives will be provided to increase desired behaviors:
- Academic diligence and excellence (i.e. completing work correctly and on time)
- Responsibility/Cooperation (i.e. being in the right place at the right time with the right stuff, following procedures, not talking during work, etc)
The incentives in my classroom will primarily be based on preferred activities. These are subject matter related activities that offer a fun “escape” from the routines of daily instruction. Class input will be used at the beginning of each year to develop a cadre of activities. The structure of the preferred activity incentive is as follows:
- The class is given a base amount of preferred activity time (PAT) to start each week
- PAT is added in automatic increments each day if the class is in the right place at the right time with the right stuff
- PAT is added incrementally when the class finishes a teacher directive in less than the time allotted – lesson transitions, room clean-up, etc
- PAT is subtracted for failing to complete teacher directives within the allotted time
- PAT can be added when individual students adhere to the agreement made with the teacher regarding the omission of undesired behaviors
- On Fridays, the students and I will spend the accumulated time on the preferred activity
This incentive system not only improves behavior and motivates students, it develops important life skills. Like parents giving children an allowance of money to teach financial management, my allowance of time to the class will help them learn time management. They will learn how to make good choices, take responsibility for actions and be considerate of others. Since an individual’s actions affect the group, peer pressure will help to build these important skills. In order to have only positive impacts on their PAT, the group will jump in to help others that are endangering the incentive award.
This proactive incentive system adds to the organized and disciplined environment that establishes the culture of success by developing students who are motivated to learn and, through their actions, enable efficient and effective use of class time for instruction.
Instruction
Once the culture of success has been established as the foundation for learning, I am able to provide instruction in the content area to a group of students who are ready and willing to learn.
But, all students learn differently. Instruction must take into account the different learning styles and learning paces through differentiation. I will perform a number of pre-assessments to help identify students’ learning styles and readiness levels. Based on the results of learning styles and personality type assessments, I will incorporate strategies into lesson plans that benefit varying styles by ensuring that content is delivered in different ways. This not only helps the students by teaching them in ways that they learn best, but helps them to develop strengths in other ways of learning. I will use the results of readiness level assessments to provide content instruction of appropriate quantity and quality to ensure that the least ready students are challenged to meet the required standards and the more ready students are challenged to reach higher and develop more advanced critical thinking, problem-solving and reasoning skills.
My instructional style will be interactive – moving among the students. I will appeal to the auditory, visual and kinesthetic learning modalities by using Say, See, Do teaching - breaking a lesson down into to manageable steps: providing an explanation of concept, modeling the concept and then having students practice the concept, while I check for understanding. This cycle will be repeated for each step of the lesson.
I will build independence in students by practicing Praise, Prompt and Leave strategies. When a student gets stuck, I will note what he or she has done correctly and prompt them for correction of the next step and then leave while they try it. Having Visual Instruction Plans incorporated throughout the classroom will enable this to be done more efficiently and effectively. The student can be prompted to review the visual aid rather than receiving additional verbal prompting.
I will utilize frequent, informal assessments to determine students’ mastery of content and readiness for more formal, summative assessment. These informal, formative assessments will be used to tailor my instruction to ensure that all students are progressing to meet the standards.
To accommodate students who demonstrate mastery in different ways, I will incorporate varying types of assessments and varying types of questioning within assessments. Students will be able to track progress through the use of rubrics and grading. The grading policy will be open and discussed at the beginning of the year so that students know what is expected, can determine where they stand and be able to make choices regarding their progress. This will include policies for rubric standards, personal grade tracking, make-up work and retaking of assessments. I believe students should feel empowered that they have the ability to affect their performance in the class.
Life Beyond the Classroom
The world outside the school is increasingly more diverse and fast-paced. It is more focused on selfish materialism than on a foundation of positive values and respect benefitting society as a whole. The culture of success in the classroom not only enables students to effectively learn the content area, it helps build important life skills:
- Acknowledging and accepting individual differences
- Helping others
- Setting and achieving goals
- Positive decision-making
- Improved problem-solving
- Communication with others
- Individual self-esteem and confidence
- Work ethic and individual drive to do their best
- Organization, time management and planning
By creating the culture of success, I will not only have students that meet the educational standards set by society, I will be developing young adults who will become valuable and beneficial assets to that society.