Classroom Management Strategies for the average teacher
Sure, you make it through each day, and you feel your students are pretty good most of the time, but have you ever sat down and reevaluated whether or not your management style is good enough? It’s time to find out if things can be better than they are, even if you think they’re ok as they are.
Evaluating your Management Style:
Dec 11th
When setting up a behavior plan it is vital for the child to have a say in the rewards that he receives for success. This will make the reward a motivation for changing daily behavior and will encourage him or her to get back on track after a bad day.
Have a conference with the child prior to setting up the behavior plan and explain that there will be a plan targeting this specific behavior problem and that as the child improves his behavior, you want to provide rewards. Allow the child to provide input into what rewards he will receive for proper behavior.
Guide this conversation so that it does not turn into a pot of gold situation where you can’t assign homework or some other important aspect of learning. It is also vital that every reward is agreed upon by both the teacher and student and that those rewards are the only ones used on the behavior plan. Otherwise the plan will fail because the student will not find the rewards motivating.
Dec 9th
When a teacher is writing a behavior plan for a troublesome child, it can sometimes be a problem trying to choose what behavior to target on the plan. It is important to choose only one or possibly two major behaviors to focus on, this way the child will not be overwhelmed and will be able to succeed.
When attempting to choose the target behavior, think through the behavior problems the child has and list them. Then, order them in degree of importance or seriousness. If there is a behavior that is potentially harmful to the child or to other children/adults in the classroom, that needs to be the target behavior.
It is important to think through each behavior as well, because if a child throws chairs frequently, that may not be the best behavior to choose because by the time the child has thrown the chair he is already in a state of out-of-control anger. Finding a behavior to target at the onset of this anger is a much better place to focus.
Once one behavior has been targeted and improved upon, it is time to celebrate and move onto another problem behavior. Once the child begins to see success in one area, it will be easier to continue that success to other areas.
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