Speaker 1: Hi ladies and gents, my name is Tom Gibson and in this video I'm giving you 10 classroom management tips in 10 minutes. Classroom management has a lot of nuance to it. So for each one of these, there are going to be situations where you're like, well, what about or I tried this, but let me know if there's any in particular that you have tried and struggled with. And maybe we can kind of figure out how to make it maybe a little bit more effective in your classroom. Additionally, none of these is a singular silver bullet to your classroom management problems. Classroom management and classroom culture are influenced by tons of different variables, but these are some of the classroom management techniques that have helped me create positive classroom culture in my classroom. Tip number one, have a seating chart on day one. Elementary, middle school and high school have a seating chart. Don't apologize for the seating chart. The students will complain, accept that complaint and say, oh, I know it's the worst, isn't it? And then ask them to go to their seats. The clearer you can do this, the better. So students aren't confused and don't know where to go because you don't want those first few moments on that first day to be a confusing experience for your students. So I like to project the seating chart on the board with the students first names so they know exactly where to sit. Don't be shy about changing up the seating chart if you realize certain dynamics are not working. If students ask, why did you move me? You say, I just thought it was better for the classroom dynamic. You don't have to give any more explanation than that. If students complain about a particular spot that they are sitting in, ask them to come talk to you after class or during lunch. Don't engage in that conversation in a public way. Hear the concerns, tell them you hear them and it's up to you. You can decide whether or not their concerns are valid or you can say, I'm going to go ahead and keep you in the spot for now. And I will let you know if anything changes. I do appreciate you bringing this concern to me. Tip number two, if you have classes that are more than 45 or 15 minutes, I recommend having a short three to five minute break in the middle of that class. It will cut into class time, but having a little bit of brain break will actually make the second half of your class more productive. Set an actual timer up on the board and then tell students that they have to be back in their seats by the time the timer gets to zero, or they are not allowed to leave next time we have a break as a consequence. Tip number three, greet students at the door every day, say their name, make eye contact with them, shake their hand or give them a high five or a fist bump. Tell them it's good to see them and mean it and welcome them into class. It creates at least one positive interaction that you have with every student that day. Tip number four, if you ask for the student's attention, do not start giving your instructions until it is silent. You don't have to look annoyed while you're waiting, but when you ask for their attention, just look around the room and wait until they have stopped talking. Because if you start giving your instructions when other students are talking, they are getting the message that they actually don't have to stop talking when you ask for their attention. Tip number five is related to tip number four. If you are doing group work and the students are on task, but the noise level keeps getting a little bit louder, but you're not sure what to do because they are on task, but they're kind of loud, write the word noise up on the board. If it gets too loud, erase the E. And then if it continues to get too loud, erase the S. And if it continues to stay loud, erase the I. All you should have left is N O. If you get down to N O, there is no talking for five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it is. And the students have to work silently. This is usually pretty effective because you are giving students those three chances. They are getting that immediate feedback when they are getting too loud. And they're a lot more bought into it because you didn't just say, all right, that's it. No more talking. Have a plan for what they're going to do, particularly if it's group work and they generally have to work together. What are they going to do for those three or five minutes that they are working silently? You can even say, okay, we're doing three minutes of silent work. Each of you is going to work on your individual part. You will be able to come back together and continue making progress once the three minutes are up. Tip number six is avoid redirecting students by name as much as you can. If you're waiting for students to get their supplies out, or if you're waiting for students to get in line, or if you're waiting for students to clean up their desk, use a tip. I'm still waiting for three students to get their folders out. Still waiting for two students to clear off their desk. And that causes all the students to stop reflect. Am I one of those students? Oh, I'm not. Okay. Or I am one of the students. Oh my gosh, let me hurry up. The less you redirect students publicly, the less opportunity you're creating for some kind of power dynamic or for the student to come back with kind of a snarky remark because they're a little bit embarrassed of you calling them out and generally makes things run a lot smoother. Tip number seven, consider doing Starbucks mode in your classroom. Starbucks mode is where the students can work wherever they want in the classroom with whomever they want. And if I can, I give them a list of things that they can work on and they can decide what order they want to work on it. Students are more motivated when they have more autonomy. And so before you implement Starbucks mode, go ahead and set the ground rules that if you are off task, I will ask you to return to your seat and work independently and then follow through with that. You don't have to be mad. You don't even have to call students out publicly, but just go over to say, Hey, you're a little off task. So let's go ahead and return back to our seat. Oh, please. Can I stay right here? I'll promise I'll keep working. Don't worry. You'll get another chance tomorrow. Let's go back and work at our seat for the rest of the day. Stay firm, stay kind, but stick to your expectations. I don't call it Starbucks mode. I just call it work mode. And I saw that some teachers actually call it Starbucks mode. So call it what you will, but just set the expectation and then follow through. Tip number eight, do turn and talk or think, pair, share as often as you can because your students are probably going to be talking in class. So you might as well give them as much opportunity to talk about the things that you want them to talk about the content that you have for them as much as possible. So the general idea of turning talk or think, pair, share is that you take a few moments to answer a question independently on your own, walk around and make sure that everyone's answering. If they don't know what to write, just tell them to put a guess. Then turn to your neighbor. What did you write? Did you guys write the same thing? Did you answer in the same way? Then as a group, let's hear a few of the answers that you guys have. And so if you're building this in every couple of minutes, students are thinking and then talking to the person next to them. And then you guys are talking as a group about it. They are getting that opportunity to talk and to verbalize. And it's a lot less of just them sitting and getting bored and then kind of wanting to talk about something else that is off topic and off task. Tip number nine. If a student says or does something disrespectful to you or to another student with everything you have, do not respond in kind. Do not respond in a disrespectful, snarky, angry, frustrated way because it will make things worse. Avoid any type of engagement confrontation in front of the rest of the class, but politely and genuinely politely ask them to step out into the hall. Could you please step out into the hall? Why? I didn't do anything. I understand. Would you step out and we'll talk about in the hallway? I don't understand. I didn't do anything. Why are you sending me out in the hall? This is the third time I'm asking you please step out in the hallway. You can be firm, but be polite. If you engage in front of the class, that student will have all the more reason that they do not want to back down. They do not want to seem weak in front of their peers. And so if you remove them from that situation and have that dialogue and that conversation out in the hall, they're not trying to save face. And then if they do continue to be disrespectful, the other students aren't seeing that and all they know is that they said something disrespectful. They got sent out in the hall and the teacher addressed it, which communicates to them that disrespect doesn't go unaddressed in the classroom. Because if you start something in front of the rest of the classmates, it's not uncommon for them to start ganging up on you. And now instead of dealing with one student, you've got their friends or other students like, yeah, he didn't say anything. I didn't hear him say anything. Why are you being so unfair? You're all, then you're working in a really, really crappy situation that nobody wants. No teacher wants to be in. It's exhausting and it just makes things worse. So as much as you can have this conversation out in the hall where that classroom dynamic is not there to heighten the situation. If you are feeling frustrated and angry with that student, wait till you've cooled down a little bit before you go and talk to that student. When you go talk to them, when you get out there, you can ask them, do you understand why I sent you out here? They may say yes, they may continue to be defensive. If they're putting up a little bit more resistance, tell them it's okay for them to be frustrated. It's okay for them to be bored. It's okay for them to think a lesson is lame. It is not okay for them to behave the way that they behave. It is not okay for them to talk to you the way they talk to you. It is not okay for them to talk to their peers the way they talk to their peers and it's not going to be accepted. Tell them that you respect them and tell them this only if it's true and you expect respect from them as well and you expect other students to treat them with respect and expect them to treat other students with respect. Then work to restore. Ask them why they said or did what they said. Genuinely be curious. Not, so why did you do that? Why did you do that if you knew it was unacceptable? But I want to know why you said what you said. What was it that was frustrating you? Having this conversation with them out in the hall is not going to solve all your problems and it doesn't mean that everything's going to be perfect and restored and you guys can go back into the classroom together and everything's fine. But it is so much better than engaging in some kind of power struggle in front of their peers and you are reiterating expectations to them and you are genuinely being curious about what it was that caused the incident. And tip number 10 has to do with that last tip. I have a hall refocus sheet that I have my students fill out. If they ever get sent out in the hall, they can do that while they're waiting for you to come out and it says what happened, why did it happen. A lot of the reflective questions that force them to stop, think about what they did, and begin to restore the behavior. And it also serves as documentation if you have a student that's repeatedly sent out in the hall. You could say we've got this situation where we sent out for x and then it happened again two weeks later and then again a week after that. On the back of the refocus form, you can jot some notes down if they weren't being completely candid in their reflection so that way you have a little bit more of the full picture when you look back at your documentation. If you'd like that hall refocus form emailed to you, it's a google doc, so if you'd like to tweak it, you can. I will email it to you. Just go ahead and put your name and email in the link down below to get the free refocus sheet. It will sign you up for my newsletter, but there'll be an option if you only want the refocus form but don't want to get the newsletter, you can go ahead and unsubscribe from the newsletter as soon as you get it. So that was 10 classroom management tips. Hopefully it was under around 10 minutes. It's hard to say because I haven't edited yet, but we'll see. There are tons of classroom management tips that I did not get to. Let me know in the comments down below what your top classroom management tip would be for other educators and what's been the most fruitful for you in your classroom. If you'd like to stay in the loop with any upcoming videos, I create content to help teachers do innovative work in the classroom, so hopefully this dive into classroom management will help you do just that and open up more time to do innovative work. Go ahead and hit subscribe. My name is Tom Gibson. I hope you learned something today and hopefully I will see you in the next video.