In an Edutopia article, Tyler Rablin, an instructional coach and former ELA teacher for Sunnyside School District in Sunnyside, WA, looks back at his career and offers 11 of his best classroom management techniques.
1) Be at the same height as the student
I found it so helpful to attempt to be at the same level as a student I was trying to talk to, especially for a difficult conversation or in attempting to redirect a student. Positioning myself at the same level as the student helps to defuse a possible power struggle. It sends a cue to the student that we are working together.
2) Get student input on attention-getters
My students knew I love birds, so every Monday a student would identify a bird, we would look up that bird’s call together, and our attention-getter for that week was that call. If you’re into music, you could have students identify a song for a lyrical call-and-response attention-getter. A colleague was really good at using affirmations with her classes as the attention-getter.
3) Have students pass back anything without a score
Calling people by their name has a huge impact on classroom culture, and it also activates parts of the brain responsible for attention and engagement. My trick for learning names is to have students fill out a small note card with their name and a few details about themselves that I collect and pass back repeatedly throughout the first week. If I have papers to be passed back that don’t have scores, I have students do it.
4) Create positive peer pressure with Google Classroom
Google Classroom has a feature where you can click on an assignment and see how many students have and have not turned it in yet without showing any names. I found this to be really valuable when I assigned work to be turned in by the end of class. I would project that count on the board and occasionally give updates as to how we were doing.
Be sure it’s just a subtle nudge, a reminder of what they are aiming for.
5) Use the 2×10 strategy
In the 2×10 strategy you intentionally have a two-minute conversation with a student for 10 days in a row. Positive student-teacher relationships benefit learning and classroom behavior, and this strategy helped me really target my efforts
6) Say “Thank You” during a request, not after
Whenever I asked a student to do something like sit down or put their phone away, I always included a thank-you in the request instead of waiting until the action was completed.
This sent the message that I trusted the action was going to happen. And it helped me avoid sounding overly authoritarian or controlling. Also, “Thank you” often signifies closure, so no reply is needed. This helps manage classroom public dialog and relationships.
7) Use “And” instead of “But”
“But” negates whatever came before it. I first noticed how this can impact students when I gave them feedback on their writing. I would say things like, “You are getting better with your transitions, but they still could be a bit smoother.” I found that students weren’t appreciating or valuing what came before the “but,” so I switched to using “and.” It was amazing how differently students received the feedback with that small change.
I started using this as a classroom management tool, especially during difficult moments. If a student misbehaved, I would have previously used a side conversation to say, “I really like having you in class, but that kind of behavior is unacceptable.” Switching to “and” in these moments really helped the student see that both things were true: I did really enjoy having them in class—and their behavior needed to change.
8) Instead of “No,” try “Can You First…”
When asked for a restroom break, I started replacing my “no” with a “can you first…” phrase—like, “Can you first get three sentences of your writing down?”
This taps into the power of self-efficacy. A student who does this before taking the break is more likely to make decisions that contribute to success in the future.
9) Give students a chance to name their behavior
To a wanderer I used to automatically say, “[Name], sit down at your desk.” That interaction was a teacher-generated decision, and students would often push back—and my response could actually increase the amount of disruptive behaviors in the future.
What I found to be more useful was to say some variation of “[Name], what do you think needs to change about what you’re doing right now?” I preferred to do this as privately as possible. It puts the onus on the student to identify the behavior that is expected of them in this situation and name it.
Extra motivation comes by using the “thank you” mentioned previously, by saying something like, “Thank you for doing that,” when they have identified the behavior but haven’t started doing it yet.
10) Lead by example
Four years ago, I started having students place phones in an assigned slot in a calculator holder when they came into my classroom. I anticipated resistance, so the first slot was labeled “Mr. R,” and my cell phone went in there at the beginning of every period.
This little move is a large part of why students didn’t resist the policy. This same thing applied to any silent reading or writing time in class: At least for the first bit of it, I would engage in the activity with them. It sent the message that I thought it was important enough for me to do it, too.
11) Practice the art of noticing
Sometimes I got so negative about a class I struggled to see the positive things happening in the room, which impacted the culture of the class. I put a sticky note next to my computer and wrote down three positive things every day during that class. Eventually I changed to writing three separate sticky notes each day, one each for three students, to tell them what I appreciated about them.
This changed everything for me with my most difficult classes. It rewired my thinking to help me look for the positives more often, and it made a huge difference in how those classes functioned.
Edutopia – George Lucas Educational Foundation
