In/Out Box

I love the idea of mail boxes but they take up a lot of space. If you don't have the space you can just get a crate and put file folders with each child's name on the hanging file folder and it is a great way to hand out papers or flyers. At the end of each day students can empty thier folder.

Floor Tape

In the younger grades it drives me crazy that they can't seem to remember ezxactly where their spot is on the floor for floor time. I took a long peice of masking tape and put the students numbers that they already know from their cubbies and wrote each number on the tape. That way they know exactly where their spot is. If you didn't want to do numbers you could do names or even just put x's down so they know exactly where to be.

Set Rules and Consequences

Set ground rules and consequences for breaking them. Establish yourself as the authority from day 1. Outline a few rules and then have the class make suggestions. Allowing them to contribute to the rules increases the chances that they will follow them and accept the punishment if they don't.

Brittnee McGarry

Positive Reinforcement

I am a firm believer in using positive reinforcement rather than punishment whenever possible. More often than not distruptive students are looking for attention. If you can show them that attention will come to them for doing what they are supposed to do, you will have less problems. This can be done in simple ways, like saying "I like the way Katie is working hard without talking to her neighbor." It can also be done in more material ways like choosing a "student of the day". This placement I am in a fourth grade classroom and I have instigated a "good sportsmanship" program because this class had problems with being good sports at recess and in the classroom. I believe this could be used in other situations as well. Have a form that students can fill out (so they are the ones catching others doing what they are supposed to) whenever they catch another student being a good sport (or whatever it is you are having them look for). Then on Fridays I read all the slips of paper and we celebrate all the students that are caught being good sports. Then I put all the slips of paper back into the bucket and I draw one- the person who was caught being a good sport and the person who caught them each get a candy bar. I also did something similar to this in elementary but we used lifeskills (integrity, responsibility, etc.) so each student writes what lifeskill they caught the other one using.

Find REASON for behavior!

In my first placement I was in a Jr. High. Sixth period had a reputation for being the worst class, and there was one student in particular that could be a real pain for my cooperating teacher. It was apparent to me from observing that the class and the student in particular knew that they weren't liked by the teacher. It was also apparent that this particular student needed to move and needed to talk- I found out later he had ADHD. I worked very hard throughout my time there to let the student know that I liked him, but that I also had high expectations for him and I wanted him to be participating in the lesson. I would call on him to help me with notes and point to things on the board for me, and he was also in charge of collecting papers. By the end of my time there he was one of my most helpful students and because he was focused it really directed the rest of the class as well. I think the key was realizing what he needed and developing that relationship.

Trays

I am teaching math at Fairfield Jr. High for my second placement. I teach two different subjects- Transition Math and Pre-Algebra. To make the most of class time, my teacher has trays (black for Pre-Algebra and silver for Transition) right by the door for the students to pick up worksheets, answer keys, etc on their way in the room. It is nice because I can set out worksheets and answer keys everyday after school and double check that I have all the materials I need for the next lesson. It saves class time and allows the students to come in and get right to work or grading the homework from the day before.

1st gRaDe lunch count and attendance:

My first grade cooperating teacher made a wall hanging with three paper plates. Each of the students have a clothespin with their names printed on them. When they come into the room their clothespins are on the top plate. One of their "morning jobs" is to move their clothespin to their lunch choice. The next paper plate is divided in half. Each half is a different color and contains a pocket where the teacher puts a small card with the lunch choice and a picture of the choice. (ex. mandarin chicken, picture of chicken on rice). The third paper plate is a home lunch option. Each day, before 9 AM, the teacher stands by the computer and the "student helper" stands across the room by the lunch count. The student helper reads the lunch count and tells the teacher the number of students eating what, so she can quickly Instant Message the cafeteria with the lunch count. The teacher also can ask the student helper who is absent and quickly take attendance.

lUnCh cOuNt

5th grade lunch count and attendance:

Several walls at Uintah Elementary are carpet covered. In my 5th grade classroom, the teacher has printed the food choices and the students names on laminated card-stock with velcro on the back. The "junior teacher" (helper of the week) gets to set up the correct food choices on the wall and as the students come in each day, they move their velcro name to one of three choices for lunch. (ex. spaghetti, grilled cheese, or home lunch.) This is a fast way to take attendance as well. As the students are completing their bell work, the junior teacher gets to Instant Message the cafeteria the lunch count and marks who is absent on our online seating chart. (My Student)

Classroom computers

The fifth grade class I'm in is a technology classroom with a computer for every two students. This makes it difficult to see students while teaching. The screens are in the way. In this classroom, they still have the towers beneath the desks and monitors on the desktop. My teacher handles this by having the students lay the screens down. This way the students can't "fly under the radar." I'm able to see exactly what they're doing. It works really well.

ABC Order

To help save time when entering grades, my teacher has set up a system of collecting papers. She chooses 5 students who are not close in alphabetical order. So one student from the very first of the alphabet 3 from the middle and one at the end. They are assigned to pick up certain students papers in ABC order. Then they put them all together and in just a matter of seconds the papers are all in order. This makes putting in grades so much easier and it takes less than half the time!
I hope that made sense :)

Calculator Caddy

In my math classroom, my teacher has a “calculator caddy”. It is a wall hanging with numbered pockets. In each pocket is a calculator. Each desk in the classroom is also numbered. When a student needs a calculator, they take the one that is the same number as their desk. It is very easy to see which calculators are being used and which ones have not been returned.

Managing Materials/ filing and math boxes

By my teachers desk she has a plastc filing drawers (can buy at walmart) each is labeled Monday to Friday. In each drawer is the papers she will use for that day. My students also have their own math box. The boxes are numbered and each student has a number. The boxes are not kept in desks to help ensure manipulatives being lost

Managing Materials/passing and collecting papers

The desks for my first grade class were set up in rows. The teacher would have the students leave their papers on their desks and she would collect them in order. This made it very easy to pass out the papers after they were collected

Managing Materials

My sixth grade teacher was very orgainized. What she did was print all her worksheets and gathered all the materials needed after school on friday and put them in the file holder. She had a file holder for for each day of the week. She would label the five file holders as: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. She would put all the assignments, materials, notes, etc, in the file holder. She would make sure that everything a student needed for that day was in the file holder, because that was also her absent folder. She made sure everything was in that file holder so if a student was absent there would be everything they needed for that day. Instead of the students coming up to her and asking what they missed they knew to go straight to the file holder. They would find everything they needed including notes for that day, and explanations if necessary. It was a great system and saved so much time.
Melissa Wiser

Time Management for Teachers

As a teacher, it is not only important to manage time for your students, but for yourself too. While I was teaching at a junior high, I learned how important it is to take advantage of my prep period. After a couple weeks, I got a system down. During prep, that is when I would plan my two lessons for the next day (since there were only two different classes). After school, I would stay and enter in grades for about a half hour to an hour. I used before school time, for students to come and get help from me if they were struggling. I also made sure that we corrected papers at the first five minutes of class. This way, I never took anything home with me. I made sure I got everything I needed to get done, during the day. By getting almost everything done at school, while I could, it made life easier on myself.

Mailboxes

In the second grade class that I was in, my cooperating teacher had a mailbox system. The mailboxes are individual slots where each student had their own slot with his or her name out to the side. When the teacher hands back papers or students are finished with an assignment that doesn't need to be graded, they know once the teacher says, "put it in your mailbox" to go and put the papers in to go home. The mailboxes save a lot of space because the students sit at tables and don't have a place to put their papers. When I have my own classroom, I want to implement the use of mailboxes because it makes for a great way to store papers to go home. It is also an easy way to pass back papers to students.

I am attaching a picture of what they are. This isn't from the class I was in, but it gives you an idea of what they look like.

Tables

In the second grade classroom I was in my cooperating teacher had her students at tables rather than desks. Not only does this allow for space in the classroom, but it is perfect for group work which we did a lot of. The tables worked great because the students didn't have a desk that they had to worry about keeping clean they just sat at there tables and their books and things were in their cubbies. I love the tables and hope that I can have them in my classroom. Now that I am in a fourth grade class with 27 desks and there just isn't much space, I appreciate the tables.

Timer

I know a lot of classes use a timer, and I have always been really good at just keeping time on the clock, but in 6th grade, we do so much group, and independent work, that it's easy to get caught up with one group and the time slips away. I use a small timer for every activity and it keeps us on pace, allows me to tell the students how much time is left and when times up, it beeps and the students know that the activity is over and I need their attention again. It has helped me so much in staying on track and at rounding up the students to move on. Transition time has been awesome.

Bookshelf

It's commonn for each classroom to have it's own bookshelf, but the 6th grade class I am in right now is the biggest reading class in the school. They read a lot. I have never seen so many books in one classroom and a row of bookselves, well, there just ins't room. So my teacher found this AMAZING bookshelf that is on a swivle. It rotates, so it take up about 3 square feet but is 4 different book shelves in one. She has a check out system on the top that the kids use when they check out a book from her. It works like a charm. I have students over there everyday picking out new books!

Papers

In my current fourth grade position, the students receive a "missing work" sheet each Friday. Most weeks they have time to work on some of these assignments while at school. The assignment description is written in a way that the students will know what it is. They are responsible to find their own papers. The classroom teacher has a bin where she puts the left over papers of each assignment. The students can look there for the worksheets they need. This leaves the teacher open to help student figure out how to do the work, instead of where it is.

Allison Jessop

Art supplies

In one classroom that I have been in, the students did not have scissors, glue, and other art supplies at their desks. Instead, each group of desks had a color assigned to them. When the students needed to use the art supplies, the student assigned as a "go-getter" would go to the counter. On the counter were corresponding colored cups container the scissors (also of the same color) and glue. The student would take this container to the desks and return it when done. This way, the students did not have these things to play with during the day and it was easy to see if all the supplies were returned.

Allison Jessop

Dealing with Non-Compliant Behavior

I am student teaching in sixth grade. They have a little bit of attitude but I have found that once you get past that, they are eager to learn and please you.

I have one student who loves to challenge authority. During a lesson, I had to ask him to please stop talking. He became quite beligerent. Afte I finished teaching, I asked him to come and meet with me in the alcove. We sat down together and I asked him what was going on. He just shrugged his shoulders. I then proceeded to explain to him why I needed him to not talk when teaching was going on. I explained that his brain could not be thinking of words to say AND listening to and learning a new concept at the same time.

He seemed surprised to look at it in this way. I then asked him if he would commit to listening when I was teaching and then I would allow the students time to talk quietly, while they worked together in partnerships to solve problems.

He agreed that this was reasonable. So what I learned from this was to treat students with respect, even when frustrated with them. They may be non-compliant but that does not mean you cannot reason with them. Helping them to understand why you are asking them to do something can make a huge difference in how they act. His behavior has improved and I look for positive things that he does to praise him on. Things are much better!

Chris

Making a schedule

One of the main ways I manage my time is by staying organized. I do this by using a teacher planning book which is simple, but breaks down each time segment of the day and allows me to know what time periods I need to plan for on a weekly basis. I review this schedule regularly and update it as needed. I can use this schedule to make my own daily 'to-do' list to take home at night so that I don't forget to prepare something. I find that it is easier to work on the plan book when I am 'in the zone' (in the classroom) because by the time I get home at night I am focused on everything else and it is hard to remember all the millions of little details I wanted to know to be able to prepare for the next day. I am attaching a picture of two of the pages in the plan book recently to give an idea of what I am talking about.

Homework Folder

My cooperating teacher gave each student a folder at the beginning of the year. The students bring the folder to and from school every day. The parents are aware that the folder is coming home. The students bring homework home along with notes from the teacher and notes or announcements and reminders from the school. I think it is a wonderful idea to have a homework folder that the teacher and parent can use for communication. The teacher will also randomly reward students for bringing their folder to school.

Managing Materials

In my first grade student teaching classroom, we had a LOT of math manipulatives. My teacher had "math manipulative bins." These bins were placed in a low traffic area and stored before and after math. The bins were not assigned to specific students. So using them during math was hasstle free.

NCBehavior

There for four ways that you can use to deal with non compliant behavior:
1. Teacher praise and attention for positive behavior, for students who exhibit non compliant behavior because they thereby gain the teacher's attention.
2. Guided practice and reinforcement, for students whose noncompliance is due to inability to understand the content or meaning of the request.
3. Grandma's rule, which uses a highly preferred activity to reinforce compliance to the disliked activity.
4. Behavioral momentum, which involves building a momentum of compliance to get the child to comply with a request that is probably not going to be readily accepted.

I found these ideas on this website: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED361973&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED361973

The full text is available in PDF format here if you are interested in reading more.

NCBehavior

I had a young man in my class that wouldn't do anything that you asked him to do. It wouldn't matter what you threatening him with he just wouldn't do anything. He'd give you a look that just made you want to scream, but you couldn't.
I found out that this student had a lot of problems at home. He needed the attention of being asked to do things, he needed the attention of being scolded in front of the whole class. When I realized that attention was what this boy wanted, I did what the textbooks said to do. I changed the negative attention into positive attention. Every single time I caught him doing something that I wanted him to do, or just doing it in the way I wanted *Like raising his hand QUIETLY* I would praise him, and then call on him for the answer. This didn't change everything. I then decided to make up the game where if he did some work for me, he would be able to come and talk to me for a little while. Then it became he could only tell me one thing, and I would tell him one thing. Then it became he had to complete the entire assignment. I even went as far as to let him tell me something before he went out to recess, if he had been participating in class for that whole section of time beforehand.
I can't tell you what wonders this worked. Of course I still had to remind him from time to time, but the reminders were things like touching his shoulder, or walking close to him and making eye contact, or just reminding him of the page number that we were on.

Direct Link to Article

Okay, here's a direct link to the article: www.ldanatl.org/aboutld/teachers/understanding/compliance-school.asp

LDA Article on Non-Compliant Behavior

I found this really good article on non-compliant behavior and some strategies to help determine the cause and how to deal with it. It was written by LDA (Learning Disabilities Association of America) and was published in 2010. If you go to ldaamerica.org and do a search for "non-compliant behavior", it is the first article that comes up. I wanted to post it here, but it's in PDF format and is copyrighted, so I didn't know if I could. The article talks about non-compliant behavior mostly as it relates to students with learning disabilities or AD/HD. It made me realize that it may not be that the student isn't being compliant because they just don't want to work. Maybe they are unorganized and can't figure out how to get started. Or maybe they are easily distracted and can't get assignments completed. This article gave me some good insights and great ways to help students become compliant. Hope you like it. I'm going to try some of the strategies with my non-compliant student this week. We'll see how it goes....

Non-Compliant Student

I have a non-compliant student in my 2nd grade class. The first day in class I could tell there was something going on with him. He refused to do most of the assignments the teacher gave. Sometimes he would pretend like he was working, but when it was time to turn in the assignment, there was nothing on his paper except for his name. Other times he flat out refused and spent the time laying on his desk or bothering other kids. The teacher made him stay in from recess to complete any work he didn't do in class, so I brought him to the back table to see if maybe he just didn't know how to do the work. That was not the case at all. He is very bright. I didn't have to really help him with the content, just offer some encouragement and all of a sudden he started working! Later I found out that this student was going through some very rough times in his life outside of school. His father had left the family and they had just lost their home. He was waking up in a different place every day. He had no stability in life outside school. I think we know that typically, kids at this age want to please their teachers, so if you have a student who is non-compliant, you can be pretty sure that there is some other issue that needs to be dealt with. In this case, this student just needed to feel loved and safe. He just needed some attention. In other cases, students may not understand the content and rather than feel embarrassed or ashamed in front of the class, they will become defiant or non-compliant.

Managing Materials

I'm not sure how this would work in an elementary classroom, but it works very well in my junior high class. Each student is responsible for grading their own homework. After homework is graded, the students figure out their percentage and place it in the tray for their period. While the students are working on their homework for the day, I record their scores in a grade book before putting them in the computer. I have a folder for each period and each days homework is placed in the folder. After recording the homework, I pass back the homework from the day before. The students always get their homework back everyday. I don't have a huge pile up of papers to pass back and students can keep track of their scores, too. I also print a status report every Wednesday after school and pass the reports out to the students every Thursday. The reports shows what scores they have received and also shows what missing assignments they have.

Team Work

I really have liked how the teams in my school work together. I love how they plan every week...together as a team, and also how they split up copying materials with the team. For example, in my sixth grade team I am in charge of getting all the math worksheets, or math homework, done for the team each week. Another team member is in charge of printing all the reading worksheets. And so on. I like this way of working together mostly because it helps the whole team be on the same page during the week and it also helps the team teach the topics in a similar time frame as the rest of the team. It has really helped my preparedness each week with my materials.

Teachers Materials

I really like my teachers way of preparing his needed materials for the week. He prints them off on Friday during teacher prep time and then has simple manilla folders each with a day of the week written on them. He puts his papers or needed lesson plans, activities, anything he needs for that day, and then after class he puts the next days folder up front on his stand where he teaches from the most. I have used this the last week during my all day teaching experience and it has worked very nicely! Brittani

Desk Checks

I like having the older grade students sit in rows facing the front of the room. While I was in the 5th grade, I found a problem that every day after school I needed to rearrange the desk to be lined up straight. Throughout the day the desks were always getting bumped or moved and at the end of the day the desks were all over the place. One morning I put pieces of tape under the corner of each desk. Throughout the day before we went to recess, lunch, PE, Computers, etc. I would ask the students to do a "desk check." They would quickly check if their desk was lined up with the X. If not they would move it back. It saved me a lot of hassle after school.

Desk Cubbies

If you get tired of have dirty desks. Try this:

Personal cubbies for each student to put their books, folders, papers, pencil boxes, etc.
So when they are at their desk they only have the things they need and you won't have to worry
about kids getting into their desk during teaching time.

Then you can have tables in your room, instead of desks that can get moved and bumped around the room.

Odds and Evens

Sometimes you finish a lesson a little early and there are five extra minutes left before recess or lunch. Five minutes is too much time to waste, but too little time to start another lesson. I think that it is a good idea to have productive energizer games ready on the fly when there is a bit of extra time. One energizer game that my 3rd grade students liked is called odds and evens. Students stand up and walk around the room until I say stop. The person they are standing next to is their partner. Between the partners the students decide who gets to be odds and who is evens. Then the students say "one, two, three," (in rock, paper, scissors fashion) and hold out a number with their fingers on one hand. They take the two numbers and multiply them together. If the product is odd, then the odd person gets a point. If the product is even, then the even person gets a point. The person with the most points wins. After a few tries with one partner have the students find a new partner and play again. This game could be adapted for younger grades by have the kids add instead of multiply.
My students liked to play this game. It was a good way for them to get up and move around, it filled up the time gaps that I encountered, and it gave my students a chance to practice their multiplication.

Timer

Obtain a simple egg timer (one that doesn't need batteries) for your classroom. Set the egg timer for however long you want the students to work on an activity or assignment. When the timer goes off the students know they should be finished. This helps the students and the teacher know exactly how much time is allocated for the activity at hand. This is a simple way to keep time from slipping away and keeping the day on track.