9 Classroom Management Tips For Elementary Teachers: Its the small things...
Are you a new teacher? Or a seasoned veteran looking for some fresh management tips? The best thing about teaching is you NEVER stop learning! Learning a new group of kiddos names, learning about new learning styles, learning about the next greatest curriculum…learning new classroom management styles and so on.
New teachers, take a deep breath! Every year you teach gets easier AND you will change your management style/ideas/routines a million times between here and retirement. PLEASE don’t think you have to pick something and stick with it! There’s no predicting which routines and procedures will be a good fit for your classroom.
Hopefully these 9 tips will get your management thinking started!
PENCIL ROUTINE
This is a MUST for any elementary school teacher! Like Elephant (Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie books) always says “You must have a plan.” A plan for where to store sharpened pencils and whether or not you will allow students to sharpen pencils throughout the day.
In my room, we have a double tub: 1 side for sharp, 1 side for dull. My students are allowed to get up and replace pencils as needed. They ARE NOT allowed to sharpen at their free will. There are 2 bonuses to not using the sharpener during learning time: LESS NOISE and the coveted pencil sharpener job is always motivating for students to earn.
I found this beautiful tub at Home Goods.
LOST AND FOUND
Walking into any elementary classroom at the end of the day you will notice two things: a T I R E D teacher and miscellaneous classroom supplies scattered around the room. You will soon realize glue stick lids are priceless (If you don’t believe me, throw away all the lids you find, tally them for a month and then calculate the cost of replacing the total amount of glue sticks!) Enter…. the lost and found tub! It doesn’t need to be big. Just find an extra tub, slap a “lost and found” label on it, and now students won’t need to bother you with the “where do I put…that I found" questions anymore.
I bought this tub in the Target Dollar Spot around Back to School.
TRAFFIC PATTERN
As you and your students get comfortable with your classroom, you soon realize that accidents are guaranteed to happen. Whether or on purpose or on accident, kids bumping into each other always results in a distraction from learning time. Although these moments are teachable (manners are my thing) they also get annoying after the 37th time during one lesson.
Traffic patterns do need to be taught, but don’t require any prep other than a few strips of colored tape. Walk around your room, look for the most frequented parts of your room, and then come up with some practical traffic patterns surrounding that area. For example, I have students line up on a black line for the drinking fountain if they want a drink. The line is about five feet from the drinking fountain to alleviate the student getting a drink from being pressured to hurry and finish. I teach students to exit the drinking fountain area the opposite direction from the line. This circular pattern lets kids get a drink and then exit without having to pass the drink line of students. If you think this is sounding like overkill, trust me when I tell you it saves time and student distractions!
LINE UP SPOTS
Our lunch room requires students to line up in alphabetical order. After this requirement was established, it quickly became a school norm for students to always line up in the same order during every part of our day. Lining up at recess, lining up from PE, lining up to go home, we all line up alphabetically. The time and energy savings are enormous!
Cue in the line up spots: I print student number labels, laminate them, and tape them with clear packaging tape to the floor. With the numbers spaced far enough apart to allow students their own space, lining up for anything usually happens without a hitch. Well okay, honestly whenever you ask first graders to line up, too many students in one place always equals some distraction! However, at the least line order spots take away the “he cut!!” complaints as all students have the same spot every time. Pro tip for first year teachers: Spend Time at the beginning of the year practicing lining up. It will save you lots of headaches the rest of the year. Click here for the Student Number Labels available in my TpT store.
Student number line spots in my classroom.
STUDENT NUMBERS
To further add organization into my room, I assign all of my first graders a student number. I simply start at 1 and go down my roster. Students stay the same number all year.
Initially I really struggled with students numbers (maybe still do) for one obvious reason. When a new student enrolls or a former student leaves, it messes up the alphabetical order! But my borderline OCD aside, the organizational benefits far outweigh having a student or two out of ABC order.
Which means…. labels. Label everything in your room with student numbers instead of their names. This will be a game changer!! So simple for students to help you put away lost journals or workbooks using student numbers. By the end of the first month, every student knows each others number. You can add student names alongside the number if you are wanting to personalize it further. Click here for the Student Number Labels available in my TpT store.
My student storage tubs from Walmart.
CRAYON BOXES
A random management tip that supports all classrooms: the snack box containers from the Dollar Tree. These snack boxes fit a 24 pack of Crayola crayons perfectly, they are 2 for a dollar, and they last several years! I print a label, stick it on the box, and replace the label yearly so the snack box looks new each year! So easy for kids to open and close and so much better than keeping the original crayon boxes. Click here for the Crayon Labels FREEBIE in my TpT store! P.S. they fit a deck of cards too!
I buy these snack boxes from the Dollar Tree.
WOW WORK
Students work so hard on a daily basis. There is nothing I love better than showing off their amazing work to principals, parents, other staff and any random adults who visit our classroom. It took me a couple years to figure out how to show off student work in a manageable, consistent way.
Year 1: I would tape random projects throughout the room just as decoration.
Year 2: I laminated sheets of paper and taped work to it, changing it up maybe three times the whole year.
Year 3: Students would put work they deemed worthy of the wow wall on my desk and it was promptly lost or forgotten.
Year 4: I finally got smart.
My wow wall is really simple and functional. I keep it at student height to allow for student independence. First, I laminated colored card stock that matches my classroom. Then, I hot glued it to unused cabinets lower to the floor. (Hot glue will DEFINITELY peel paint off the walls so you will need a different way of securing to a painted wall). Next, I printed and laminated student numbers to glue above the card stock and then stuck a prong paper fastener onto each one.
Finally, I bought a 2 hole punch and I have never looked back! Kids punch work they want to show off, hang it themselves, and are VERY proud when they get comments on their amazing work!
Wow work from my amazing firsties!
SMALL GROUP INTERRUPTIONS
Small group reading lessons are hands down the favorite lessons I teach during my day! There is no other time in my day when I see so much of each individual student and their capabilities. Interruptions are inevitable and often unnecessary in my first grade classroom. While I am teaching those few students, the remaining kiddos are doing individual literacy centers and they just love to ask me mundane questions about how to do their stations! To help prevent these interruptions, my policy is for students to leave me a note when they need help or are missing something from their reading center. Sometimes, they will leave a note and I won’t have time to get to them! Somehow, though, writing me a note and knowing I might come help them usually prevents interruptions to me precious small group time.
Grab this cute “I’m Teaching Leave a Note” sign from my TpT store! Print the poster, post it near your small group teaching spot, and model/teach how to use it properly!
My “I’m Teaching: Please Leave a Note” sign in action in my first grade classroom.
STUDENT FILES
Papers, worksheets, art projects, important information notes, etc. Where to put student mail?? I have tried a few systems and my current favorite is a tub with student files in it. Originally I had a crate with hanging files- what a disaster! The hanging files were guaranteed to fall in every single time a student tried to put their work in.
In my current student mailbox tub, I have laminated folders with student numbers as my labels. I have used it for two years now and was able to reuse the same folders. Students file their own work and we take the work home each Friday. The best part is this is a mobile system: I am able to move to it a place in our classroom that makes it easy for students to line up and file their work regardless of what we are doing!
I found this smaller file storage tub at Big Lots.
Management styles and strategies are best implemented when they fit into your teaching day and fit your current students’ needs! An encouraging remark I got from an experienced teacher during my first year of teaching was to always make changes to better fit your current group of kids. In my inexperience, I was under the impression that I had to find my management style and stick with it. But that is just not reality! Especially in the world of teaching. Kids change, you will move classrooms, curriculum changes… one student moving into your classroom in the middle of the year can flip your management style upside down!
Hopefully you can take at least one of these management tips and put it to good use in your classroom! If not, keep researching! You will find systems that work for you are your students.
Thank you for reading! If you have any questions please email me at teachingprimarywithkatelyn@outlook.com
:) Katelyn Nevala
