Classroom management is a critical part of education. We all have to learn to improve our abilities to manage the behaviors of our students.
This is because classroom management helps you motivate your students and promote lifelong learning. It also helps you to create a conducive environment for teaching and learning to take place in the classroom.
Due to how critical classroom management is, every teacher must plan adequately on how to get better at managing student behaviors in their classroom.
In this article, we are going to explore the necessary elements to be included in your classroom management plan.
The following are some of the elements that should be included in your classroom management plan. This list may not be exhaustive depending on what you want.
1. Your philosophy of education
2. Your philosophy of classroom management
3. The rules to govern your classroom
4. The rewards to be offered for desired behavior
5. Negative queen sequences
6. The components of a positive learning environment
7. Signals to be used
8. Your strategies engaging students during lessons
9. Procedures of utilizing instructional time
10. Your plan of communication with parents
11. Your plan of collaboration with your colleagues
12. Plan for documenting Problems
13. Plan for classroom arrangement and organization
What to Include in a Classroom Management Plan?
Having identified all these issues to be included in your plan, we need to look at them in detail. I will dedicate this section to that.
Your Philosophy of Education
Your philosophy of education consists of your beliefs, principles, and attitudes regarding how teaching and learning take place in school.
It is your beliefs values and understanding of how effective teaching and learning is practiced and conceptualized.
Now, why is it important? It is important because of the following:
1. It serves as a guide for you to teach effectively.
2. It helps you understand your students.
3. It helps you shape society and make it grow.
4. It helps you imbibe good values and ethics onto your students.
5. It stops you from being judgmental in how you treat your students.
Now let’s look at how it is important for classroom management. It is vital for the teacher because it gives a theoretical guide for his or her classroom management process. It helps you to follow through with the entire process of managing student behavior.
It also helps you to choose the appropriate classroom management philosophy. Notes, the educational philosophy of your school will guide you in selecting the philosophy of managing your classroom. This is why you need to have one in your plan of classroom management.
Without a philosophy of education, you will not be consistent in the classroom management strategies you apply, and It will make your management poor and ineffective.
For more information on the philosophy of education please click here to read our article.
Your Philosophy of Classroom Management
Classroom management philosophy consists of their philosophy and believes that guys classroom routines standards end rules for effective teaching and learning. It Shapes our day-to-day interactions with our students.
It is important to have your philosophy of managing student behavior in your plan. That is because it will remind you of all the necessary things to be used to make your classroom conducive for the learning of students.
For more information on classroom management philosophy, please check out this article.
Rules and Regulations
We need rules and regulations to survive in every social setting. School is one such social setting that brings together teachers, students, and other stakeholders for learning purposes.
Due to the above, we must have rules in our classrooms. It is also because not everyone will remember to respect the peace of the classroom.
So, don’t forget to include the rules and regulations that govern your classroom. I also recommend that you make rules in collaboration with your students for them to be effective.
The Rewards
For our classes to run smoothly, we must be able to motivate and encourage students to put up desired behaviors.
Just like some squalors such as Skinner noted, it is important to have both positive and negative incentives to reinforce students to put up the behaviors we want.
Without that, some students may not see the need to behave appropriately.
It is therefore necessary for you to include a list of rewards or incentives for putting up behaviors that are good for productivity in the classroom.
For it to be effective, I’ll comment you collaborate with your students to come out with appropriate incentives that can motivate them.
For more information on how to use rewards in your classroom please check out this article.
Negative Consequences
Just like the incentives for good behavior, it is vital to have negative consequences for inappropriate behaviors of students.
This is based on the belief That there must be negative consequences or punishments since there are rules and regulations in the classroom.
Students will not behave appropriately all the time. This is the reason why you should have a plan for dealing with undesired behaviors.
Therefore, include negative consequences in your classroom management plan from least restrictive to the most restrictive.
It is also recommended for you to consult students in choosing appropriate negative consequences for undesired behavior.
This is important because everyone would be aware of them and nobody will give excuses for not being aware of them.
Also, refer to this article for more information on punishment.
The Components of a Positive Learning Environment
Here, it is recommended for you to include the components of what you consider to be a positive learning environment.
This is necessary because it helps you to track your ability to promote positive learning in your class.
For every teacher to be effective, he or she has to have a conception of what is a positive learning environment.
Knowing this helps him or her to model students’ behavior to make sure the classroom is conducive for effective learning for everyone.
Therefore, make a plan of all the necessary components of positive learning to be established in the classroom for everyone to succeed in the classroom.
Signals to be Used
Effective teachers always use Signals that are culturally sensitive to help them manage behavior in the classroom.
Most often these signals have meanings that’s everyone in the class is aware of.
It is often selected by the teacher and used to model student behavior to understand them.
Examples of these signals are a tab in the back, a clap, a pause, etc.
These signals play important role in your ability to manage your classroom effectively.
Therefore, it is recommended for you to include these signals and their meanings in your classroom management plan.
Strategies for Engaging Students
I always believed that an engaged student does not have time to misbehave in the classroom.
If you appropriately engage students, they will be too busy and will not get time to disturb other students or do something that will disrupt the class.
So, make sure to have a plan of activities that will help you to engage your students adequately and appropriately.
This will pay off and will help you get peace of mind to teach effectively.
I often see other teachers crave to get the attention of their students. But after gaining it they do little to engage the students. Because of this, students go back and continue their misbehavior.
Therefore, you must have a list of engagement strategies in your plan.
Plan for gaining uninterrupted instructional time
During lessons, some activities go on which disrupt teaching.
It is appropriate for you to reduce the frequency of these activities to have uninterrupted instructional time.
Some of these activities are drinking water, sharpening pencils, bathroom breaks, etc.
It is important to have a plan to manage these activities. This will help you gain more teaching time.
Plan for Communicating with Parents
Parents are one of the key stakeholders of education. They play important role in educating dear children.
Teachers are encouraged to involve parents in managing the behaviors of their children.
Collaborating with them helps you to better manage and educate students.
It is therefore important for you to have a plan of how you will communicate with them.
This is because without a clear communication plan you may have difficulties getting them to take part in managing students.
Plan for Collaborating with Peers, when needed
As a teacher, you don’t operate in isolation. It is important to collaborate with other teachers. That helps you to share ideas on how to make teaching an effective and lovely activity for everyone.
I often collaborate with classroom teachers, as a subject teacher, to deal with specific issues in class.
Also, the other stakeholders such as the school psychologist help a lot in managing special behavior issues when they arise.
Therefore, make sure to have a plan of how to collaborate with him or her effectively with no problems.
Remember, collaboration among co-teachers is vital as experienced ones turn to guide the inexperienced to succeed in managing students.
Hence, have a clear plan on how to collaborate with your colleagues.
Plan for Documenting Management and Communication of Problems
You must have a system of how to keep records of problems. This is because you will surely encounter problems.
Document how the problems will be managed and communicated to other stakeholders if they are beyond your control.
That’s critical as you will have evidence and records of problems, how they occur, and who caused them.
It makes you not forget any detail in a problem.
And also, the records can serve as evidence in case you are taking on a problem with a student.
For example, I was reported to my school authorities for treating a student unfairly in my lesson. Fortunately, I have a diary in which I record everything that happened in a lesson, signed by the class representative and me. That became my evidence and the class rep was there to confirm all that transpired in class that day.
This process will save lots of trouble one day.
Plan for Classroom Arrangement and Organization
The physical environment of the classroom is essential in promoting positive learning.
With this, I often advise myself and my colleagues to put in place a room arrangement that is appropriate for effective learning.
It helps you prevent possible behavioral problems.
For example, some students can’t sit together or close to each other without interrupting the class.
I also utilize that to allow academically good Students to collaborate with poor ones.
Inappropriate class organization can therefore cost you a lot in your classroom management processes.
Conclusion
To conclude, every teacher needs to have a plan of behaviors of students that will be managed in class. This is because classroom management is the foundation for effective teaching and learning in school. We noticed from this article the necessary elements to be included in a plan of behavior management. Please, feel free to share with others to also benefit from this article. Thank you.
