Back-to-school time is upon us. As we prepare our classrooms for a new group of students, it’s essential to remember that the foundation we lay in the first weeks of school will help us build and establish a warm yet structured environment where every student can be successful!
Back-to-School Classroom Management Tips
Whether you’re a seasoned teacher or just starting your teaching career, these back-to-school classroom management tips will surely equip you with the tools you need for a fantastic year ahead. Let’s dive in! Here are six back-to-school classroom management tips to set you and your students up for success:
1. Build positive relationships
Get to know your kids and let them get to know you. One of the most important ingredients in a classroom is the relationship that is built between the teacher and students. Your students must know that you care, believe in them, and are always in their corner! Take time each day for the first couple of weeks to build in daily “get to know you” activities. The bonus is that you’ll still incorporate important standards into your lesson plans, like listening and speaking. You can also tie in reading and writing standards when you use activities with a great read-aloud or project.
One of my favorite activities that I did during the first week of school is this getting to know you show and tell bag! You can read all about it and grab the FREE download for the bag HERE! Building that relationship is probably one of the most important back-to-school classroom management tips I can give any teacher.
2. Smile on the first day
I remember some veteran teachers telling me not to smile until November. I understand why they said that, but you can still smile while establishing boundaries and positive rapport with your students. Love those kids. Show them you’re excited to be here. Make school a place they want to be from day one! One of my favorite tools to use in the classroom to create a positive learning environment is these Classroom Cheers!! They bring smiles, joy, and confidence as students get to celebrate each other with a fun cheer!
3. Make a list and check it twice
Teaching routines and procedures can feel overwhelming at the beginning of the year, especially with younger students. Make a list of everything you need to teach for procedures and routines so that you don’t forget something important in the hustle and bustle of the first week. Then, keep the list and add to it each year. This will save you so much time!
4. Teach, then model
When it comes to back-to-school classroom management tips, this is a big one! It’s important to take the time at the beginning of the year to set classroom expectations. You’ll want to teach the expectation and then model how it should look. From coming to the carpet to read to be a good listener to participating in writing workshops, to getting students’ attention without yelling—set your students up for success by teaching and showing them what it looks like to be an active learner in the classroom. After showing your students, also let them model it for their peers—they love getting to be the teacher and it also promotes students’ ownership of learning. If you want to add some fun in, you can pretend to do something the wrong way and have your students be the “teacher” and teach you the right way to do it! Just don’t ever have your students do it the wrong way as that completely goes against what you are trying to do!
5. Practice, practice, practice
Once you’ve taught and modeled the expectations, you’ll practice them until they become part of the natural routine and rhythms of the classroom. Trust me, practicing lining up ten times on the first day of school will feel redundant, but your future self will thank you for taking the time! In first grade, it took us weeks of practice to build our stamina for independent reading, but taking the time at the beginning of the year paid off dividends later in the year.
6. Be consistent
Kids flourish when they know the expectations and have a teacher who consistently manages the classroom with love and respect. Mean what you say, and don’t be wishy-washy. Kids can smell hesitation a mile away and will take advantage of it. Student success is the ultimate goal of everything we do in the classroom. This is one of the reasons I loved our classroom rules!!
These classroom rules are life rules that kids and adults should live by! Plus, every single behavior can be pointed back to! For example, why do we raise our hands? Well, because it’s being respectful and treating others the way we want to be treated. It also is being responsible and making a good choice! If everyone is talking at the same time, we can’t hear what everyone says. It’s also showing that you are ready to listen and learn! I’m telling you, having consistent expectations applied in love is one of the biggest things you can do to have a successful year! Establishing and maintaining a safe, warm, and structured learning environment is one of the ways we set our students up for success!
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