The New Year is a great time for a fresh start! While you’re putting away the Christmas decorations and setting your personal goals to practice self-care more often in the New Year, don’t forget to also think through your classroom goals. It’s sort of a time when everyone could use some classroom management tips. Winter break can be like a time machine that transports students back to a time before routines were established. If you want smooth sailing from January through the end of the year, take the time when you get back from break to reset expectations for classroom management!
Classroom Management Tips For Teachers
For many districts, winter break or holiday break is the first real taste of no school for an extended period of time. However, teachers hope that students will come back ready to learn and continue rocking and rolling, but that is often not the case. Classroom management can make or break a classroom, and it’s important to always keep high expectations. Here are three classroom management tips for the New Year:
Make time to catch up with your students
There will be so much to do when you return from break, but avoid the temptation to dive back into the grind. Take a little time during the morning of your first day back together to catch up with your students and hear about their breaks. They will have SO much to tell you! During our morning meeting on the first day back from break, I usually always had a circle share time where each student had the chance to share something they did over break.
You can also have them write about their break for morning work and turn it into a class book! Or have them share 3 things they did with a partner. If you live in a district where students may not have done much over break, gotten many presents, etc., share a special simple moment with your students to show it’s ok to just be home and relaxing. Make relationships a priority first, and then jump back into the schedule!
Model and review expectations
Take the time to model and review your expectations for classroom behaviors, rules, and routines.
Trust me, it’s a long haul from January to June if you don’t take the time to do this. Set the bar high, and you’ll be thanking yourself in February that you took the time. After modeling and reviewing the expectations, you should practice them…A LOT.
January is also a good time to adjust anything that wasn’t working well before the break. Don’t change everything, but having a fresh start can be a gift! If you need some proven strategies that work in the classroom, then you’ll want to grab my Classroom Management Bundle that has rules, attention getters, brain breaks, and more!
Be consistent
When you set your expectations, hold your students accountable to them. Mean what you say, and don’t give idle threats. After the break, students will often try testing the waters again to see how much they can get away with. Students need boundaries and flourish when they have rules and expectations that are given and enforced in love.
These classroom management tips may seem very simple and straightforward, but I promise they work! When I was a brand new teacher I thought I could just jump back into our established routine in January and everything would be fine. I learned the hard way during those early years that it’s better to take the time after winter break to catch up with students, model and review those expectations, and then to be consistent with implementing your expectations. So, save yourself some time and turmoil by learning from my mistakes and you’ll be ready to start a new calendar year with your students!
Must-Have Classroom Resources For The New Year!
I could give you all the classroom management tips in the world. But, having the right classroom management tools is always important. So, start the new year off on the right foot with these easy-to-use and effective classroom management resources I shared in this post!
- Click HERE for January Class Books
- Click HERE for the Classroom Management Bundle
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