Blog Posts

Classroom Management

Denise Gagne

One of the biggest challenges every teacher faces is classroom management. Your most challenging class might be a kindergarten class with many behavior challenges or it might be a Grade 5 class with attitude. In this newsletter, I’m sharing some tips that have helped me with classroom management.

1. Seating Plan

Structure and routine can help children learn to behave appropriately in your classes. One of the easiest ways to introduce routine is teach the children how to enter and exit your classroom and where they should sit.

In my friends classroom, she assigns her students to one set of Wenger Flip Form risers. She has 5 colors, so they know which color they are on, and dismisses them or directs them to activities by color. The students with shakier behavior sit on the bottom of the riser. They have to earn the right to move to the top row of the riser.

In the classroom I visited this week, the teacher had put a large floor staff on the floor with velcro, and she had students sit on line 1, 3, 5. It was her 4th time seeing the students this year, so as she took roll call, she checked that were sitting where they were supposed to be sitting. I like to sit my students on risers or on the floor. I usually have 2 boys, then 2 girls. If someone is causing issues, I’ll switch the pattern for that child to 1 boy - 1 girl.

2. Rules

Make sure students know the rules - these are mine

Make good choices, always be responsible
Use good manners, be nice and be kind
Speak when acknowledged, always put your hand up
In the music room, always try your best
Care for the instruments and all of the equipment

I’ve made them into posters that you can put up in your room as a bulletin board and refer to often. They are in the Teaching Aids section of our website.

Music Rules Poster Pack

3. Consistency

I recognize that my own classroom management skills are not as strong as they could/should be. I just want to teach, and sometimes will ignore something that I shouldn’t ignore because I just want to get on the with the lesson. This is a bad habit - a consistent response to poor behavior, will be more effective in the long term than calling it out some of the time and ignoring it others. Good for you teachers who are able to be consistent!

4. Pacing

Maintain a quick pace in your activities, and make sure to have movement activities to use between seated activities. Engage the students – When students are engaged, they aren’t causing problems. When are students engaged? When they are “doing!” The teacher needs to remember to talk less and do more!

5. Learn names

It’s really hard to manage classroom behaviors if you don’t know all the students names. One of the first newsletters of the year was on name games. These are great classroom lessons, and are very helpful for you to learn names. The teacher I visited last week teaches 1300 children! I can’t believe she knew as many names as she did. Musicplay Name Games to use: Musicplay 3 - Number Concentration, Musicplay 5 - Concentration. In games like “Hey Betty Martin” substitute a child’s name for “Betty Martin” - another way to practice the names.

6. Time Out

If you have many behavior problems in your school, you may need to designate a time out area. If a behavior is disruptive enough to warrant a long time out, have the student fill out a time-out reflection (older students) or for your youngest students, note the problem and have them draw a picture of what they should do the next time. Copy it, keep a copy and send a copy home with students for parent’s signature. I use a time out only when absolutely necessary - a last resort. Most often, a gentle reminder is all that’s needed. I'll post the PDF files of these in the musicplay teacher's group on Facebook.

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This is another behavior note that I've developed.

Wouldn't it be a joy if we could just make music with the kids and not have to deal with any of this? In my current teaching role, I'm usually in a classroom with the regular classroom teacher, so I really don't have to deal with behavior much at all. I call myself the "Grandma Teacher" and I love it! I get the fun of working with the kids, without staff meetings, report cards, outdoor supervision, cleaning up vomit. Of course, there's no paycheck, but I love this part of my job!