Classroom management is one of the more difficult parts of being a teacher. If you do not have a plan for how you will manage your classroom's routines, procedures, and behavior then you will be burned out within the first month of teaching. Having an effective classroom management plan is crucial to having a successful group of students because you can focus on enriching your students' education instead of disciplining them. In my classroom, I strive to have a positive learning environment that makes everyone feel welcome and open to sharing ideas. Because of this, I love the idea of letting students help make the classroom rules, and because you have a new class every year and have to make new rules together, you can have students sign the classroom rules poster at the bottom. By having students sign the classroom rules poster, you will then be able to hold them responsible if they break one of the rules by referring back to their signature, an agreement to follow the rules.

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Two major components to creating a classroom management plan is knowing what routines/procedures you will have in place and knowing how to deal with positive and negative behavior in the classroom.

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Routines and Procedures:

Having set routines and procedures is crucial to having a successful school day, and this is the utmost important when teaching younger grades. Predictability is good for the younger ages because it will decrease the amount of time spent transitioning from activity to activity, from class to specials, and so on. This is also why when you are planning your times for instruction it is best to consider all outside factors as well, like what time your school typically does assemblies/programs, weather, the time at which your students tend to be most focused, and more. When it comes to routines and procedures, it is best to keep them as simple as possible but also be creative with them. For example, when having students line up to go anywhere, sometimes calling them by the color of shirt they are wearing is better than calling them by class number because then students will not be so pressed to tell someone they are skipping in line.

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Another important routine to keep and be pretty non-negotiable with is your morning and afternoon routine. The mornings and afternoons tend to be some of the more hectic parts of a teacher's day, so by having a routine for students to follow, you can hold them accountable for when they are not following that routine since it is done daily. These kinds of routines should definitely be practiced and treated with importance so that you will not have to deal with behavioral problems later on in the school year.

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Dealing with Positive and Negative Behavior:

Positive Reinforcement is definitely my favorite way to reward students for their behavior. I much rather prefer calling out the students who are behaving well in class than the students who are not because 1) the other students will, hopefully, emulate that student's behavior, and 2) I do not want my classroom to have a lot of negative energy. Now, this is not saying that I will not address poor behavior because letting that go unnoticed in a classroom can lead to having no well-behaved students since they will think they can get away with anything. Keeping parents/guardians "in the know" about their child's behavior, to me, is the best way to deal with negative behavior like excessive talking, bullying other students, not doing classwork, etc. However, I also wholeheartedly believe that if a teacher should also keep parents "in the know" about their child's great behavior because they may be rewarded at home which can influence their actions even more. Also, when it comes to dealing with behavior, many schools now-a-days are implementing school-wide incentive systems, like school stores, to also help the teachers decide what methods they should use in their own classroom. I love the idea of that because then teachers will have a support system to back up their decisions of how to deal with behavior.