10 Easy Classroom Management Hacks | That Teacher Life Ep 47

now when I like to really use attack is when I have a student who I know is lying to me just be sure to reinforce that that spot is there for them to smell not to lick just saying your hair hurts go get a wet paper towel welcome back to my channel guys I have decided to do a miniseries when all kinds of different classroom hacks so this miniseries is going to include a video on classroom management hats organizational hacks and instructional hacks so I know that a lot of my viewers are soon to be teachers so they're either in their students teaching in college they're in high school and they know that they want to go into teaching or maybe even going through a career change as an adult even if you are currently teaching and you watch my channel I don't personally I can never have enough like tips and tricks to try out in my classroom because sometimes things just get stale and you need to change it up a little bit so in this video I'm going to give you guys my best 10 classroom management hacks that I personally have tried in my classroom and have worked really well now Fifty's our classroom management hacks I'm kind of avoiding the like mainstream classroom management strategy so you guys see all the time my class codes are like a clip chart things that you all know of I'm not going to include this in this video I want this video to include as many new ideas for you as possible I feel like when I was student teaching or even in my first year of teaching I would Google like classroom management strategies or classroom management tips but all the websites I came across had the most broad and just general tips that weren't helpful at all I would always come across things like be consistent or use proximity sync with so the students are misbehaving or teacher role procedures and hold your students accountable and yet those are all true those are all things that you need to do in your classroom for classroom management however when you're first starting out those things those statements are so broad and you really want to specific ways to handle certain situations or specific strategies that you can try out I feel like I go on Pinterest and I search classroom management and I find all these like really elaborate gimmicks which are adorable don't get me wrong but they all require so much printing and laminating and prepping stuff and honestly when you are a new teacher starting out you don't have that kind of time I don't know about you but I want things that are really easy to implement but also work really well so I want to do this miniseries I want to give you guys strategies and tips and tricks that I personally use so I know that they work at least for me but they require little to no money or press these are things that literally you can implement with your class next week if you wanted to because you don't have to press up ahead of time and you don't have to go out and buy stuff now the term a classroom management is super general and honestly a lot of it has to do with your preparedness as a teacher and the overall organization of your classroom however for the purpose of this video I wanted to give you guys ideas and strategies that focus on your students and controlling undesirable behaviors so I broke the classroom management hacks into it three categories behavior management tattling and question management and volume / noise management so the first category is behavior management and these are a few hacks that focus on controlling undesirable behaviors now before I get into the actual hacks I did want to just throw this out there because this is my personal belief behavior management should mostly be done to prevent undesirable behaviors rather than reacting to them hack number one mystery students so what I love about this hack is that it can be used in a variety of ways so the whole premise of a mystery student is that you randomly pick out one student from the class and you do not tell the class who that student is personally I use equity stick I just pull out a stick with my students name on it and then that will be my mystery student then you keep an eye on that mystery student so you can do it for the length of a lesson or you can do it for the length of the entire day and the student is focused and they are on task doing what they're supposed to be doing that soon would get some kind of a reward so maybe moving their clip up on the clincher or getting a piece of candy now if the mystery student for some reason does not earn the reward you do not tell the class who it is it remains a secret so if they don't earn it I usually just say we need to try harder next time hopefully the student can earn it the next time they get selected you also to do a mystery group or a mystery table personally my students sit at groups at tables so you would select one table and if all of those students remain on task and focus the entire group would get the reward what I love about that option is that it does encourage teamwork among your students you also can pick a mystery Walker so you can pick a mystery student before you leave the classroom keep an eye on that student in the hallways and if they do a good job they would then earn the reward hack number two camera the room now some of you may disagree with this hat and you may not want to implement it in your own classroom it does involve lying to your students but if you really think about it there are a lot of things that we do lie to our students about however there are different opinions on it so if you don't agree with this one I completely understand you can just disregard it so basically for this hack I tell my students at the beginning of the year that there is a camera in the room I do not tell them where it is and I love seeing them like looking around trying to figure out where it is but I tell them that it is always recording and if for some reason they are misbehaving and we have to pull the tape we have to go up to the front office and we have to get their parents to come in to review the tape with us now when I like to really use attack is when I have a student who I know is lying to me but I don't have any actual proof in their line and I need them to admit the center line to me now I fully believe in teaching your students to tell the truth because it's the right thing to do however you will still always have one or two students who do continue to lie no matter what so if I do have a student who I know is lying to me and I need them to admit it and tell me the truth I will take them out the hallway and I usually ask it to them like a question I'll say okay if I check the camera am I going to see that what you're saying is true I like asking it as a question because it makes them really stop and think about it and almost always they will say no and they'll actually tell me the truth hack number three smelly spots so I think this idea originally came from Sheila Jane teaching basically you get a scented chapstick and whenever you see a student who is on ten and doing a good job you walk by and you just rub a little bit of it on their hand that way they can continue to smell it while they are working now obviously you would want to make sure that none of your students have allergies and then it's not a problem with any of the parents however what I love about this is that you literally just need a chapstick and typically that can last you the entire year plus throughout the seasons you can get different sense to help keep it interesting and I know that sounds super weird and you're probably thinking why would kids care about that you'd be surprised how much just giving them a small spot on their hand that smells good really excites them plus when you introduce new sense they get super excited about it so trust me it does work it's basically like a scented sticker which I would be completely honest I still love to smell them as an adult so what I love is that it's right on their hand so it's super easy for them just to smell while they are working just be sure to review for that spot is there for them to smell not to lick just name hog number four secret symbol this hack is perfect for those students that are very impulsive and do not think about their actions before they do them basically you would meet with the student one-on-one and the two of you would decide on some kind of a secret symbol that you can use to get their attention when they are misbehaving rather than calling them out in front of the entire class now it can be something super simple like pulling on your ear or scratching your eyebrow but the students love it because it's something secret and special just between the two of you it's a great way to build a relationship with that student while also curbing their impulsive behavior the best part is you can use this with multiple students at the same time because you can have a different symbol for each of them but they will still think that it's something special just between you and them the next category is tattling slash question management so these are a few hacks that you can use to curb tattling in your class and also reduce the number of questions that your students are asking you because all of that can really take away from instructional time pack number five tattling response I know that tattling has always been a really big deal in my second-grade classroom and it's really hard for second graders to understand the difference between tattling and telling an adult about something when they really need to know so I personally have tried a paddle monster in my classroom you basically take like a tissue box you decorate it and if they spot for your students to write their titles and then they put it inside for you to read at a later time now I will tell you guys the first day that I implemented it this was my first year of teaching I remember we were doing social studies and we were talking about famous explorers and I was pulling kids up to the front dressing them up and at one point I used like raw rice as snow and I was like sprinkling it over top of their heads at the end of that day I had at least ten papers in my tattle monster telling me about this one student eating the raw rice but anyway I just like the tattle monster at first it did work however it very quickly lost its novelty it was really exciting to my students at first they thought it was really cool really cute they really played into it but it very quickly got old to them so now when I have a student that walks up to me to tattle on someone else my automatic responses always are you telling me this to get them in trouble or to get them out of trouble this usually stops right in their tracks and they have to really stop and think about why they are telling me this almost always their response is that they are telling me it to get them in trouble and to that I just say that I'm not interested in hearing it by asking them this question it has really cut down on the number of pedals that I get but also it has helped my students understand the difference between tattling and telling an adult when someone is in trouble and needs help pass number six ask me tax this hack is perfect for when you are working with small groups and you don't let your students coming up to you a million times to ask you simple questions basically you just assign one student in the class the role of teacher while you are working with your small group so you can make up just a simple lanyard that has a tag that says ask me on it or teacher and training something like that honestly what I do because this is easiest for me I just get that student my lanyard that has my badge and my keys on it my keys know that it is a really important job and it's something that they have to earn I technically pick students that I know that I can trust and I know will be able to actually help the students who need help now a lot of times that student who is helping will not get done whatever classwork it is that the students are working on however for me I don't really care about that because when they are helping their peers they are still learning now if it shouldn't have any question that the teacher and training cannot answer I usually tell them just to wait until I'm in between groups or I'm at a stopping point where I'm able to help them pack number seven hand signals one of the best decisions I ever made with classroom management my first year teaching was creating hand signals for my students to ask me simple things that they need all the time I teach these integrals to my students at the beginning of the year and we use them all year long so in order to use the bathroom I turn show me the bathroom signal which is basically just a thumb in between the first and second fingers this is American Sign Language for bathroom then to have to get a tissue they hold up one finger to ask to sharpen a pencil they hold up two fingers and to ask to get a drink they hold up three fingers so the way that I tell my students this at the beginning of the year to help them remember one means tissue because typically you just get one tissue two means sharpen a pencil because you're supposed to always have to sharpen pencils and three means get a drink because when you get a drink you count one two three in your head now as a student raises their hand and asked me for one of those things or they walk up to me and ask me for one of those things my response is always how you ask me and usually as soon as I say that they remember to use the signal but I do not let them go until they are seated in their seat showing me the symbol hack number eight nurse alternative I know personally I have a lot of frequent fliers in my class that ask to go to the nurse at least ten times a day I have a pretty good sense of when a student actually needs to go to the nurse and when they are asking to go just because they want to leave class and I am not sending my students to the nurse unless they really need to go because they are going to miss a lot of class time so these are my go-to things when a student is asking to go to the nurse all the time and I do not want to send them first of all getting wet paper towel is my response to almost every single ailment that they can possibly complain about oh your head hurts go get a wet paper towel your finger hurts go get a wet paper towel your hair hurts go get a wet paper towel I hope they will tell them to go get a drink or try to go use the bathroom especially if they are telling me that their stomach hurts now if they continue to complain after Ganaway paper towel after getting a drink then I give them an ice pack that I got from the dollar store now this line fact is not kept in a freezer or anything it's literally kept in my desk drawer it's not cold however most of my students are magically cured once they get my ice pack so this is still complaining but yet I know that they're actually feeling fine then I will tell them that the nurse was at lunch and she hasn't gotten back yet and I would literally tell them that the entire day long or I will tell them that I emailed the nurse about their ailments and she has not gotten back to me yet sometimes I will even offer to email their parents about their many ailments that are keeping them from doing their best at school and oftentimes the response to that is that they suddenly feel a lot better now obviously don't get me wrong if a student is clearly sick or I feel their forehead and I can tell if they have a fever I will send them to the nurse but these nurse socks are basically just for those students who complain day after day all day long because they want to go to the nurse because they need attention or because they just simply want to leave class the last category is volume / noise management so these last two hacks are focused on controlling the noise level in your classroom hack number 9 noise letters I'm sorry using this hack my first year of teaching and it works really well when you need your students to really focus on an activity and you need to keep the noise level to a minimum basically you have the word noise on the board and each time your class gets too loud you take away or erase a letter starting with the e once the e s I have all been taken away and all that is left is the word no that means that there is no more talking and for some reason your class continues to talk and you have to take away the Oh or the end then you get some kind of consequence like taken away recess time basically gives the students three chances to control their own volume before you implement no talking or give out consequences now personally I used phone letters that I gotten from Walmart and I just had magnets on the back and I stuck them up on my board and I would take them off as we win however you can definitely just write the word toys with the dry erase marker on the board and erase the letters as you go I love it this pack is super easy to implement but it also serves as a visual reminder to your students now there are also a ton of noise apps and websites that you can use to control the volume of your students and you can use that with the noise letter so you could show the app on your phone just under a document camera or you could pull up the website on the computer and if their noise gets to a certain level on the tracker then you could take away a letter hack number ten sand timer I love using the pack again when I'm working in small groups because it really helps my students to focus on their work and it really cuts down on their talking all you need is one of those one minutes and timers that you can find at the dollar store you would pick a well-behaved student to start and they would stand with the sand timer in the front of the room and turn it upside down so the sand starts to flow while the sand is falling they are going to be looking around the room for another student who is focused and working quietly once their timer runs out of sand and they will pass the timer to that next student they will take it up to the front of the room but same thing they will flip it over and they will look for the next student I thought that my students could be the one monitoring the class but I also love that they are only away from their work for one minute at a time so it does not distract from their work again you would be super surprised how badly your students want to stand in the front of the class with a SAN timer just because it makes them feel special alright that's all that I have those are my ten easy to implement classroom management hats I hope you found at least one of them helpful and you can use it in your classroom my next tech video will be on organizational hacks and that will go live the next Sunday at 7 a.m. if you enjoyed this video and you did find it helpful please give it a thumbs up that helps it to be able to reach more teachers and it helps me to know how engaged you guys are with my videos and what kind of content you are enjoying I also would love to read your comments if you have tried any of these hats let me know what you think or you have something else that you wanted to add to the list I would love to hear that as well although don't forget to subscribe to me so you do not miss any of my future videos thank you so much for watching I will see you in my next video and until then happy teaching thank you so much for watching all the way to the end for supporting my youtube channel I appreciate it more than you guys realize if you want to check out any of my older videos you can use the two links right down here and if you want to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any future videos you can use the link right over here in the description is the link to all of my social media sites my teachers pay teacher's store and Mike Amazon store and I will catch you guys in my next video

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 742,741

Rating: 4.8748074 out of 5

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 2nd grade, teacherspayteachers, teachers pay teachers, tpt, pocketful of primary, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom management, classroom management hacks, classroom hacks, classroom management ideas, classroom management strategies, teacher hacks

Id: SfyBApCF41c

Length: 15min 52sec (952 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 02 2017