As a newbie teacher, you might be thinking of how to teach and do that effectively. You might also be feeling less confident when you think of how to apply what you have learned in class in the field.
Don’t worry you are not alone in that situation. Every experienced and effective teacher has been in a similar situation at some point in his or her career.
Classroom management, as you have been taught, is key for effective teaching. You might be thinking of how to achieve that.
In this article, I will share with you some techniques that I have found to be effective in classroom management. I hope you will find them helpful.
What Are the Strategies of Classroom management That Really Work for New Teachers?
Classroom management is extremely important in every teacher’s job. Without that, you struggle to do your as expected. You might want to read this article for more information on its importance of it.
Due to that, let’s check out some of the strategies of classroom management below:
1. Philosophy of Education
I always recommend that you develop a philosophy of education even at the time you train as a teacher.
That’s important as you may even be asked to state your philosophy of education in a job interview.
But how will that help you become effective in classroom management?
It serves as a map guiding every aspect of your teaching methods. And classroom management is part of that.
Your philosophy of education may be congruent with that of your school if any. That’ll help you when implementing your techniques and strategies.
Check out these posts on the philosophy of education and how to develop one.
With it, you select the best classroom management strategies that resonate with your philosophy and beliefs of education. That gives you internal motivation to see through your strategies. This means being consistent in managing students’ behavior.
2. Classroom Management Philosophy
Classroom management philosophy consists of your beliefs, values, and principles regarding how student behavior must be managed.
That’s critical because it helps you to try, find, and stick to behavior management techniques that work for you.
Without that, you are exposed to applying contradictory or conflicting strategies to manage behavior.
Also, you will likely implement aspects of various classroom management models without fully implementing any fully. That can make it ineffective.
Refer to this post for more information on classroom management philosophy.
3. Strong and Positive Relationships are Key
Bonding well with students helps a lot in managing their behavior.
So you must work hard to develop strong and positive relationships with your students.
You are most likely going to experience good behavior among students you have a great relationship with.
Having great relationships with your students will help you in influencing them to behave appropriately.
Also, it improves communication between you and your students thereby allowing them to open up to issues bothering them. This allows you to look for solutions to help them.
Refer to this article for more information on how to build great relationships with your students.
4. Use Behavioral Contracts
To become effective in managing the behavior of students, behavioral contracts are key. Behavior contracts are contracts that you make with students to help them behave appropriately.
It contains both appropriate and inappropriate with their corresponding consequences (positive for appropriate behaviors and negative for inappropriate behavior).
It is constructed in collaboration with your students. They help you choose both positive and negative reinforcement methods for respective behaviors.
The behavioral contract will help you manage students’ behavior together with them. Because students are engaged in the process of developing the contract, they feel responsible and accountable for it. Find out more information on how to create behavior contracts for your students.
5. Make Working Classroom Rules
Classroom rules are as important to you and your students as laws are to every society.
Therefore, you must have classroom rules to guide behavior in your class.
They are important because it states clearly and concisely the attitudes or behavior that are acceptable and unacceptable.
It serves as a guide for behavior in the classroom.
Also, they allow you to be consistent when rewarding or issuing negative consequences for misbehavior.
Check out these articles for more information on why classroom rules are important and how to create them.
6. Develop Classroom Management Plan
Every teacher must have a classroom management plan.
It is important for you as it provides you with the necessary tools and techniques to manage behavior in the classroom.
It also includes pre-planned strategies that you can easily access when you need them. You will not panic when implementing them.
You become consistent when dealing with misbehavior as they occur.
Therefore, you must work hard to create one. Refer to this article for more information on what to include in your classroom management plan.
7. Use Time Effectively
Time management is a critical part of effective classroom management.
Managing your time efficiently at a personal level is imperative for your success in managing students’ behavior.
Proper time management allows you to get more time to plan your lessons effectively. That’s necessary because you plan for possible interruptions and misbehavior during the lesson. With that, you prepare beforehand on how to deal with them. This allows you to prevent problem behavior before they occur.
Another way it is useful is that you better use your time when you get the attention of students in your class. That is, it is always essential to make efficient use of time during lessons. This helps you avoid misbehavior.
For example, most students engage in problem behavior because they feel they are not anything or even bored. This is often due to the case that the teacher doesn’t utilize their time well and get students working.
Therefore, efficient use of time will be a critical part of your classroom management efforts and you must work hard to master it.
You may find out more information on ways to manage your time efficiently here.
8. Develop Homework Routine
As part of managing your classroom, you must deal with students’ behaviors towards homework. You may be asking why that is part of classroom management.
This is important because homework activities are part of your classroom procedures and routines. Due to that, you must manage homework effectively.
Homework instills in students the quality of accountability. That is necessary because it allows them to understand that they will always be responsible for their actions, whether good or bad. With that, students learn to put up appropriate behaviors.
It further develops students’ confidence and self-esteem. When students submit their homework, they develop a feeling of achievement and satisfaction. It also makes them feel they are part of their classroom. All these help develop their confidence and self-esteem.
You must, therefore, develop a clear and effective homework routine to help you become effective in teaching. Check here for some tips to help you deal with students who don’t do their homework.
9. Manage Transitions Effectively
Transitions are critical parts of the teachers’ job in the classroom. They involve the process of getting students to stop doing one activity and move to another.
Your ability to manage transitions will help improve your classroom management efforts.
It is one of the most difficult parts of classroom management for some teachers, especially among those who teach lower-grade students.
It is often difficult to get some students to transition to other activities, especially if they enjoy the previous activity.
Managing transition appropriately and efficiently is useful in preventing misbehavior.
Read here for tips on how to manage transitions efficiently.
10. Effective Commands
As a teacher, one of the things you will likely do much in the classroom is issuing commands. Please, don’t understand “command” in a negative way.
Teaching involves the conversation of issuing instructions, feedback, response, and many other forms of conversations.
These are often in the form of commands, questions, answers, explanations, and requests.
Therefore, you must be able to issue commands efficiently.
For example, if a student is found playing with a toy car while his or her colleagues are busy working on an activity. In this situation, you will likely issue a command to get the student to stop playing with the toy car.
In this situation, you must issue the command effectively, for your students to obey.
This post can help you understand and issue commands effectively.
11. Model Good Behavior
Modeling plays an important role in education.
It involves demonstrating what constitutes good behavior. That’s critical in developing classroom rules, procedures, standards, and routines.
After developing classroom rules, procedures, and routines model them for everyone to understand.
Modeling is a great way of explaining and teaching complex situations.
Modeling improves students’ comprehension. One of the major causes of classroom misbehavior is a lack of understanding of what is being taught in class.
Make sure you use modeling to your advantage to facilitate the understanding of students and to help you manage your lessons effectively.
12. Encouragement is Great
Encouragement is considered a more sustainable alternative positive reinforcement that you should use to get the best out of your students. Encouragement is the best technique to use when someone has done something not worthy of great credit. It helps motivate the person.
It also helps teachers to correct the mistakes of students in the best way. Encouragement makes students understand that making mistakes is part of every learning process. That allows them to correct their mistakes without losing themselves.
Using encouragement in motivating students helps students know the value in themselves. That is, it allows students to see the positive sides of themselves. This thus allows them to take more risks, explore more ideas, and put up more positive behavior.
Due to that, you must use encouragement as one of the strategies to get students to behave well and as expected. Get some tips on how to use encouragement as a classroom management technique here.
13. Use Non-Verbal Communication Too
Effective communication is essential for better classroom management. Both verbal and non-verbal communications are a great part of student-teacher interactions.
Non-verbal communication such as your facial expression, movements, signals, tone of voice, volume of voice, body language, posture, eye contact, touch, and space are great tools that you can use to aid the management of students’ behavior.
Don’t understand the usefulness of non-verbal communication techniques and means to getting students to behave well in class.
For example, my students understand that they need to stop whatever they are doing and pay attention whenever I standstill without any movement. Whenever I stand that way, it takes them between one to two minutes to give me their attention.
14. Be Consistent
Classroom management plans and behavior push you to be consistent with the behavior management techniques you use. So work hard to become consistent with actions regarding behavior.
Another point to note is that you should treat everyone equally. That means being consistent with how you treat each student if they behave appropriately or inappropriately.
I know it’s difficult to consistently treat everyone equally. This is because you will like some students more than others. Despite this, you still have to try your best to achieve that. Else, you will lose the respect of your students. You will therefore lose control of your class as a whole.
Please, find more information on how to become consistent in the classroom here.
Being consistent in dealing with behavior problems as well as students is another great strategy that you learn to use in your classroom.
First of all, you have to be consistent in the strategies or techniques you apply to behaviors. That is critical because students will be aware of the various consequences of each behavior. Therefore, they will not be taken by surprise when you implement one consequence or another.
One best way of remaining consistent in your decisions regarding behaviors is to develop classroom management plans and behavior contracts.
15. Give Effective Warnings
Warnings are part of the interaction between the teacher and the students.
As teachers, we are sometimes faced with situations where we have to issue warnings to students for being defiant or oppositional.
When you find yourself in that situation, you must give effective warnings to the students involved.
If your warning is ineffective or you issue it ineffectively, you will have problems getting students to behave appropriately.
For example, a student who engages in misbehavior must be warned to stop the misbehavior.
You might want to check out our article on how to give effective warnings in class.
16. Effective Temper Tantrums Management
Temper tantrums have been the cause of many problems for teachers in the classroom. A temper tantrum occurs when a student starts to continuously scream, yell, wail, and carry on, and doesn’t stop after a short period but carries on long enough to disrupt your ability to continue teaching your class.
In those instances, you are required to intervene to make sure the student calms down and doesn’t pose a threat to other students, yourself, or him/herself.
For example, throwing to the floor a pencil that he happened to have in his hand or kicking his desk (but not toppling it) while he is walking away from it. Instead, let’s consider temper tantrums as including more serious physical violence, such as throwing something at you, throwing something across the room, turning over a desk, breaking an object, hitting you, or thrashing about in a fit of anger.
Your ability to manage these circumstances in your classroom is critical to your success in classroom management. Remember, these behaviors will occur from time to time, and you must be prepared to deal with them appropriately. Find some information on how to manage those situations here.
Time-out has been the best method used by most teachers when dealing with temper tantrums. Of course, not everyone has found that effective. This is large because some people don’t use time-out effectively. Check out our article on how to use time-out effectively in your classroom.
17. Manage Out-Of-Class Setting Behaviors
Students’ behavior is determined partly by the environment they find themselves. The environment is made up of the classroom, school, family, and societal settings.
As a teacher, you can only manage and/or control, to a large extent, your students’ classroom and school settings. So, you must try as much as possible to manage students’ out-of-class setting behaviors well.
This is because, outside of their classroom environment, students often exhibit more problems with self-control. The reasons for this are complex, but some factors are important to keep in mind.
First, a different setting does not follow the same patterns of behaviors and consequences that your student has become used to in your classroom, so he may be less likely to know what is expected.
In addition, many out-of-class settings inherently have less structure. For example, on the playground or in the cafeteria, there is less supervision and guidance.
Another important contributor is the increased stimulation that students experience in low-structure settings. On the playground, kids are running all around, talking and bumping into each other. This stimulates students to behave roughly and out of control.
Remember, most of the happenings outside the classroom will follow them to the classroom. This often may yield problem behavior. So, you must work hard to deal with out-of-class setting behaviors.
18. Collaborate A Lot
Try to collaborate with other teachers to manage the behavior of students. This is necessary especially when you feel you need help.
The experienced teachers in your midst can help you a lot when you get in touch with them for ideas on how to improve classroom management.
Also, make use of your school’s counselor if you need them. If your school has a counselor, engage him or her to manage behavior that is repetitive and chronic.
For example, you need him or her when dealing with students with autism, ADHD, ADD, and other psychological issues.
Just remember you can’t do it alone, therefore get help when you need it. Check here for some tips on how to collaborate with others.
19. Manage Interruptions Effectively
This might be related to other strategies mentioned already. However, I still have to emphasize the importance of this point.
You need to always manage interruptions appropriately and efficiently. This is because interruptions can mar the beauty and effectiveness of your lessons.
Imagine having a great lesson but all of a sudden a student starts to whisper to others. If that is left unattended, be sure he or she will succeed in getting the attention of the other students.
In that situation, the attention of the students will be diverted and that will diminish the understanding of students.
If you allow the interruptions to continue, all your lessons will suffer in the future. That is because the students will think you approve of whispering among themselves during lessons.
Due to that, you must work hard to deal with interruptions appropriately.
Find some tips on how to deal with interruptions in your class.
20. Don’t Forget about Culture
Beware of the culture of your students. Culture plays an important role in the interactions of people.
Culture defines and influences the behaviors and actions that are considered appropriate or otherwise.
You are going to diverse cultures in your classroom, especially in our today’s world. Because of globalization, your classroom may be full of students from different countries, regions, races, ethnicities, and religions.
In the light of that, you must work well to balance your classroom setting without compromising on anyone’s beliefs, values, and norms.
Treat everyone equally but be mindful of everyone’s background. Don’t make a rule or routine that undermines anyone’s culture.
Or else you will face behavior problems in your classroom. This will be a result of losing your respect. Read this post to understand the importance of culture in the classroom.
21. Use Positive Discipline
Always strive to utilize positive discipline when dealing with your students.
Positive discipline is a discipline type that relies on the belief that people behave appropriately when there’s mutual respect and trust among them.
That suggests that all your classroom management efforts must be respectful and promote responsibility among everyone.
It is contrary to negative discipline which involves angry and violent disciplinary procedures. It involves a full process of discipline including both positive and negative reinforcements.
With that form of discipline, the process and procedures of discipline are carried out in a respectful manner. The teacher is also kind, motivating, and encouraging to the students.
Find out why positive discipline is important and how to use it.
22. Teach and Teach Effectively
One of the best strategies to manage classrooms is teaching effectively. Teaching effectively gets students to adequately engage in the lesson.
That’s they do one activity and transition to another and other continuously. This doesn’t spare some time for students to engage in misbehavior.
Teachers who are well prepared for their lessons teach them effectively and therefore face minimum interruptions and misbehavior in their classrooms.
So, you must always prepare well for your lessons. That means getting all materials and resources necessary for the lesson to be successful and understood.
If you are less prepared, you are likely to run out of activities and materials allowing students to sit idle or not do much for their level. That makes them feel bored and gives them time to think of engaging themselves with other things or activities. That, therefore, disrupts you and or other students.
Don’t leave anything to chance. Just be well prepared if you want to reduce disruptions and misbehavior.
Final Thoughts
As a new teacher, you are often faced with classroom management issues. This makes many newbies teachers struggle through the school year. If you are one of those having a difficult school semester or year, the 22 strategies identified in this article will be useful to you.
