Classroom Management

Teachers have to have an effective classroom management plan. Otherwise, the students will go crazy and it will be easy to get buried in all the paperwork! There are a lot of parts involved within a classroom management plan, a lot of different things to consider. Everyone has their own plan that will work for them. You could use someone else’s plan as a guide, but it really should be individualized to your teaching style and preferences. Within the following paragraphs, we will be discussing how to organize procedures and resources, arrange the environment, design a learning center, anticipate and handle problems, and monitor student progress throughout the year.

Organizing Procedures and Resources

Being a teacher, you will come across a ton of paperwork and things that you need to keep for future reference. The list of these things goes on and on. You will have to keep track of your policies and procedures for the school that you work at, lesson plans and items that go with them such as worksheets, tests, and books. You will also have to keep track of all of your supplies all year round even though you may not use them all year round. In order to help you not get buried in all of the paperwork, there are numerous organizing tricks you can use. In order to organize your policies and procedures for the school that you work at, I suggest keeping a binder specifically for those papers. I would keep tabbed dividers to organize the different sections and/or keeping a table of contents so making references is made easier and less time consuming. Beyond that, you will also need to keep track of your originals in order to make copies, lesson plans, and grades. I found a wonderful resource that teachers can use which I will be referring to during my future career as a teacher. It is atozteacherstuff.com. There are some great tips from teachers about the three things previously mentioned. Amelia Whitaker suggests marking all of your originals with a yellow highlighter so as to not give them away to students or have to scramble find another copy. A highlighter does not show up when making a copy and makes it easy to distinguish your copies from your originals. Regarding organizing all of your originals, Molly Jones suggests color coding your files by subjects; have a certain color for each subject. This makes finding things for activities with certain subjects much easier and faster. This same tip can be spread to lesson plans as well; you can choose a different color to keep your lesson plans in. You could also have a binder specifically for lesson plans. Michelle Adams suggests a great idea for grade books. Record grades for assignments by the content of the assignment. Keep track easily (she suggests by highlighting) of who did not pass the assignment so as to easily see what needs to be reviewed or modified. It also happens to benefit and simplify parent/teacher conferences and report cards (A to Z Teacher Stuff, 2009)! These are not the only tips available from this web site; there are many more, so go take a look!