Classroom Management. Everything I have tried so far...

hey guys and welcome back to the lettered classroom if you are new to my channel welcome my name is Bridget Spackman and I am a multi-age classrooms teacher for upper elementary in Pennsylvania I also taught kindergarten for four years in Alabama and on this channel I like to talk all things management classroom and great teaching ideas so be sure to hit that subscribe button to get more of those in the future I am really really excited because I've been planning this video for quite some time and I feel like I've never been able to get it done but in this video today I am so excited to be sharing with you all of the different types of behavior management systems that I used over the past six years of me teaching and what's really interesting is that I've actually used something different every single year except for two years so it's gonna be interesting kind of seeing some of the different things that I tried and I'm gonna kind of talk to you guys about why I ended up changing things so hopefully you kind of get a better idea of it it's really fun and interesting to see all of the different types of behavior management out there at the beginning of the year I feel like a lot of the times we are all struggling with trying to get those behavior management systems in place and really making sure that our students are staying focused so that we can teach them all the great content that we have to teach them so I'm gonna go ahead and dive in so let's talk about my first year teaching my first year teaching I was in kindergarten in Alabama I was the fresh out of college I had never slept before so I did what pretty much everyone else was doing I think my first year was a lot about survival and so in my very first year of teaching I decided to do tah-dah so this is the behavior management system I used I think it clipped chart is just the classic behavior management system that is definitely out there I was Hernandez back then so I was Miss Hernandez as hikers and um I went with a classic clip chart with clip charts you have two different options you can have one chart that only goes down it's only the negatives which is what this was and then there are some where the kids have the option of also going up a couple of spaces I went with this one this was the classic this is kind of what everyone else was using so this was pretty easy for me to kind of figure out the kids all started on ready for a journey because we were hikers it was adorable and the kids had all of their little clips so they had their clips I had little names on it and I think at that time like I even had like little pretty clipart things that there had their names on it it was super adorable and the kids would clip down so there were different options here so that they had like three chances so ready for the journey is how they started every single day and if they had to clip down they were whoa watch your step like be careful you're gonna slip you're gonna fall we're all hiking right this was a you're gonna have about five minutes out of recess type of thing and then I can't remember exactly how much time but this one was maybe it wasn't five maybe it was like two minutes two minutes and then maybe five minutes was this one so this one was careful staying on the trail so then this was five minutes out of recess and then this one was they had to have silent lunch and we had to make a phone call to parent so this one was you've gotten lost but this is your classic like clip chart right everything has a consequence there was a consequence for each one the kids kind of knew exactly what was going to happen if they were to click down there was no type of guessing of well you're gonna do this or you're gonna do this you're gonna lose this it was very here it is point blank and they clipped down for the day they got to start at the very beginning every single day I mean it worked for me for my first year it worked for me kind of I will tell you that I am a very very lazy teacher which is probably not the best thing but I was really bad at putting the clips up and I was really bad about getting them to move their clip down so I would deal with the behavior and then I would forget to have them of their clip down or I wouldn't check them or it was just something I'm a lazy teacher y'all and I'm really really sorry but like so I did like this it just wasn't working the way that I wanted it to work I know a suit I mean it was super cute so this was it this was kind of my behavior management system in a nutshell it was just a clip chart for my first year nothing fancy so now let's talk second year so in my second year I went through some professional development the school offers some professional development and then they said you know what we really need for you guys to focus on the positives not the negatives so I thought oh my gosh I can't believe I've been doing this you know you just dive into what everyone is saying and it's almost like we always jump the gun like I'm always like oh I got to change it I got to do this because I heard this one person say this so I'll explain all that later on um so my second year I decided you know what I'm gonna change my system they're telling me that I don't want to show the negatives that I only want to focus on the positives so I decided to do one of these little hanging jewelry file systems you could do a hangar jewelry one I think there's also like actual pocket charts out there but this is the one that I used and this one is literally for jewelry but what I did is I put my kids names on it with a label I did this as an example they were much cuter labels back then so I had their names on little labels and this was only focusing on the positive every time I saw my kids doing something fantastic I would give them one of these little bitty popsicle sticks let me see it so these are little short ones that you can get kind of at Michaels any type of craft store they're these little bitty popsicle sticks they're a lot shorter than the other ones but the kids get to earn popsicle sticks so if I saw some money I would always have these like in my pocket and then I would just give them one they would go and put it inside their pocket chart and the entire time they're wanting to get a total of ten popsicle sticks that kind of brought into the thing of you can bundle them we can tally them that type of thing I got them into practicing math as well so I felt like oh this is such a great system because I'm also incorporating a lot of inside fit as well so this worked out good and I know you're probably wondering but what about those behaviors where the kids were not doing the things that they wanted to do I got you covered I had this little system here and on this I had little tracking pages so on this little tracking sheet you're gonna see here that I had the kids needs on one side and then I had Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday up at the top then under each of those days for the kids needs they had W two three and four each of these stood for something to the W stood for a morning the two was I gave you you know some chances now I'm circling your two there were some type of the consequence to go along with it it may have been that they sat out for recess in May then they had a ton in lunch it's just dependent on I can't specifically remember exactly how I did that that part of it but there was a consequence to it and then three was you've had a lot of opportunities and then four finally is always a phone call at home to mom that we're just not having a very good day this is how I kind of managed my I need to keep a track of how you're behaving in the classroom and you're not making those good choices and then this was my display for wanting to show off the really good behaviors that I saw in the classroom so now I know what you're thinking what do they do at the popsicle sticks so the kids after they have bundled have two bundles so they have two bundles of five they would turn them in and they would get to go to the treasure box so I had a treasure box that back then which is actually now my son's toy box upstairs it's really pretty wooden one so they had to have ten popsicle sticks in order to be able to go to the treasure box and that they always love to go to the treasure box because I had all kinds of little toys in there for them so that's kind of the second year so for the most part I've really enjoyed this system I think the system was really nice because it didn't display the negative behaviors kids weren't you wouldn't have somebody walk into a room and automatically say oh I see Johnny's not having a good day he's on stay on the trail type deal which is never what you want you don't want it to be a spot where you're Shane your students so or that least that's my opinion um so I didn't want to have something that displayed in the negative behaviors so I got rid of that chart I liked this because it displayed positive behaviors and then I also had this little record of being able to track behaviors that I was seeing inside of the classroom as far as them meaning to make better choices and this was like a berry I have it on paper I can always go back and look at it it was a really great system for me incomes third year and I'm still a kindergarten teacher still in Alabama and the exact same school my third year and my fourth this was the two years that I actually did the exact same thing my third and my fourth year I absolutely loved I loved my system it worked so perfect for me and worked perfect for my kids it was simple it was easy it was nothing that I felt like I had to work for these I had to work for it like I had to remember to give these out which I'm never really good about it um I had to you know remember to Circle them down which again I'm not really good at I told you guys that I'm a lazy teacher and I really really am and if you've been watching my channel for a little while back when I first started blogging and talking about behavior management and I am even started my whole youtube channel and it was my last year in kindergarten that I did that you guys would have known about this so here's what I did and I absolutely loved it I had a communication folder back then and my communication folder was red but it was a lot like this it was these really nice folders it's called Nicky's folders if you've ever heard of them they have really great folders but it was red so it was my communication folder and inside of their communication folder they had something that looked like this and this was a simple behavior log and it had a calendar on it you know these are available in my store if you are wanting to go and get them so definitely go and check them out if you are liking this system so let me explain to you how this system worked at the beginning of the year I would always sent home a management plan so it looked like this here's this management plan what it does is it talks about some of the skills the behaviors soft skills that we want students to be able to do explain what I would do inside of the square and then it also talks down here just about how I grade them in their report card I felt like my first two years I was the one giving the roles I was the one that was I was always in the one and that was in control if that almost makes sense my third in my fourth year I focused more on I didn't really have rules I had school rules I used three school rules that you know that my school that I was at had already built it was kind of built into the student handbook and that was respect yours respect adults respect your peers and work hard three things that I felt like could fall anything could fall underneath it if a kid is throwing pencils well are you working hard no are you respecting your peers because you're distracting them no so everything and anything but fell underneath those three rules so I had those three rules displayed and then that was really about it I didn't build classroom rules with them but we talked about behaviors and it was more about making choices and it was more about let me help problem-solve let me help you with this so I also brought out two my behavior will which again is also another product that I had inside of my store if you're curious and want to go and check that out so I also had my behavior well and we went through him we talked about making choices and what are some of the better choices that we could make and we brainstorm and we problem solved I wanted to help kids be able to make choices for themselves and to teach them how to make those better choices I felt like my first two years I was always you're doing this wrong you're doing this wrong but I never took the time to really truly explain what they were doing wrong why it was wrong and what should they have done instead so my third and my fourth year I focused more on that which I felt like was so much powerful for them so where this law comes into play is that my school had soft skills that were on the report card and they were there were six of them it was complete assignments in a timely manner works well with others demonstrates self-control follows directions respects Authority respects peers so those were the six soft skills that I've reported in our report card so in my opinion I said you know what if I'm putting in a report card I also need to make sure that I'm keeping track of it and I'm logging some of this information so that when I'm putting down their score as a 3-2 or 1 in their report card I have evidence to back it up so I put those down here at the very bottom those were the skills that we I had to report on the report card and I said you know what you guys are just gonna keep this in your folder and every day at the end of the day if you had a really great day I'm gonna give you a stamp a smiley face you're gonna have it signed by your parents so that I can see that they saw how you were as far as your behavior that day and then that's really about it if a child was not demonstrating one of these down here at the bottom so if I had given them plenty of warnings if we had two already talked about it if I already showed them how to make a better choice and they were still not doing it I would just say hey Johnny I want you to go bring me your red folder I've given you plenty of opportunities so they would go give me their red folder I would sit down with them for a minute and I would say listen Johnny this is what I'm serving here's what you're doing right now I've asked you multiple times to be able to stop doing this I need to report this to your parents at this point so then I would simply either put a number in there or I would write what the what the behavior was depending on what I needed to tell parents so I would write it in one of the little days and then parents in the little square that's inside of each day were just initial and then send it back to me here's the part which was like magical for me I had data binders and in their data binders there was a spot for me to be able to keep all of these behavior logs so when I sat down for conferences I would say oh look we started off in August then it's you know August September I'm noticing Oh on Fridays we were having really days or maybe it was every other week and it's the exact same situation that we're having over and over again I would be able to show these to parents and I would have evidence to back it up because they initialed it I did it every single day and it worked magically it was absolutely perfect for the way that I like to lazy do things and then it also worked for my parents because they were always in the know and I don't know it just it was like a perfect system for me I absolutely loved it and at the end of the day y'all I had my kids working like robots like they knew I would have one table go and grab their folders out of their mailbox they would take a seat they would open it up then put their heads down they would have this outs for me to just go stamp it and then they would go and pack up like it was like well-oiled machine I was so happy with this system now I know you're wondering probably well where's the reward systems for the calendar here's how it worked if the kids were able to get five once they got five they received a star so I had little star stickers now they did not have to get them in a row but every five smiling faces they would get to go get a coupon and the coupons for different things it was bringing a teddy bear you can bring in a pillow you can have extra recess you get to listen to music while you work you get to use the iPad for the day if there was a ton of different options that the kids were able to use there very similar to the one that I'm about to show you here like I kept it in a little box like this that you can purchase at Michaels but the ones that I had last year I don't have them anymore I'm sorry but they had little pictures on them and the kids were just able to look at it and be able to pick it out and take it home so it was every five smiling faces so I had just like little stamps that I would use and every after every five I would put a star on it and that would show that that was their fifth smiley face again it didn't have to be in a row I didn't want to punish them for not having a good day like they're not perfect they're they're never going to be perfect and I didn't want them to think only the perfect kids are gonna get rewards I wanted to say you know what you got five smiling faces yeah we had a couple of days that were ruff but I really liked how you turn those around and you were to have able to have more more happy you know smiley face days so every five smiling faces I was able to give them a start and they would get to go and grab a coupon which the kids really really enjoyed so I would always just have these out and I would have like when I would walk around at the end of the day to kind of give them their stamps if I signed their folder they would have it down if I looked at it I said all right you can go pack up I didn't give them anything because it had already been signed that day I would stamp the other kids give them their little smiley faces and I would count one two three four five and they would I would give them their sticker star and the kids were always really good about it they would say it's my pen it's my fifth one it's my fifth one they were always so excited about it but I would always have my little coupon box opened up like it at my smuggler table and the kids would just go and grab it themselves and I would just trust them with it and they were really good about it Bridgette why did you get rid of it well I'm about to tell you I had to get rid of this because I then after my fourth year moved to Pennsylvania and I am now in a school district where they like to have consistency which I completely agree with and I love the consistency I love that my students can go to a special area teacher and they're gonna have the same behavior systems as I do and my school's behavior system is classdojo if you're not familiar with classdojo it is just an online program where you are able to log and talk you know kids can earn points and kids can have points taken away based on different behaviors you can very specifically put what type of behaviors you're looking for so if I only wanted to focus on the six for the report card I can definitely add those in there everybody can see it the kids can see it the parents can see it you can send messages to them it is a really really great system I had struggled my last year with using it because again I'm a lazy teacher I'm not really good about stopping and logging those things because in my head I'm in the moment I wanted to teach I'm like doing stuff I'm walking around I'm helping students I got time to sit and put things in but I have gotten better about it I'm kind of trying to teach myself and put myself into the habit of doing it and this year I've actually been doing pretty well with it so I've been very happy with myself so I know what you're asking is how did I like manage everything with it so we decided to do classroom dojo and the kids could earn points if they were showing different things like pride or if they were showing some of the behaviors that we were seeing like working well with others there being a leader that type of thing I would award them point if they were doing things like that were not acceptable and I've had still had those opportunities to be able to discuss with them problem-solve with them use the wheel of choice with them and they're continuing to make some of those behaviors I would mark their points away from them at the end of every week we have black folders this year at the end of every week we had a dojos log so this is what the dojo logged looked like and it was every single week it was completely written out what we would do is we would have the weekly percentage we would write it in on Fridays then we would have our initials to show that we are the ones that wrote it in and then we would have parent initials to show that the parents saw it and any comments that needed to be in there were written in there and this was something that they kept inside of their folder every single day now here's where we kind of did something a little bit extra with it because we wanted to give them some type of like rewards because of it we decided to do dojo dollars it was guess like a classroom economy system that the kids would be able to get awarded money if they received 90 if they received a hundred percent that week they would get three dollars okay if they received a 90 to a ninety nine percent they would get twenty dollars eighty to eighty nine percent they would get one dollar anything below 80 percent they got not so we gave them dollars they would then get to turn those dollars in to receive coupons in these coupons they were priced two different things you know having lunch with the teacher so the teachers would buy them pizza that was like a $30 having extra recess was $20 but the kids would be able to go out and they would be able to purchase coupons to be able to earn things some of these were as simple as you can buy to get a coupon to get a new gel pen or a mechanical pencil or something to that extent some of them were like you could teach morning meeting you get to plan morning meeting you will get to listen to music you get to bring a pillow just different things that we thought the kids would really really enjoy um I will also say again I'm a very lazy teacher I didn't do well with this I would forget to do it on Fridays or it would get really busy on Fridays and it just wasn't something that I was really good at doing I will say that I don't do this anymore so we do not do dojo tellers anymore and I am very very happy with it so I have tweaked a couple of things with it we no longer do dojo dollars because y'all I couldn't do it like I can't keep up with it the kids couldn't keep up with their money it was just a hot mess so we no longer do dojo dollars we still do the percentages but our calendar looks a little bit different and this is just a blank calendar at the end of the week it's very similar to the ones that I used in kindergarten it has a spot for the me to be able to put in the percentages for their classroom judges at the end of the week which now I have created a very nice little system for Friday mornings in their morning message I tell them that they have to turn in their black folders into me and so I have their folders pretty much all day long sometimes during my last special at the very end of the day I will really quick write their percentages down give them their folders then they will go and start to get packed up for the end of the day now here's what we do as far as rewards for them at the end of the month if they've received 80% or higher we're gonna have different options for them so there might be one room that might have arts and crafts there might be another that will just go out and have recess extra recess time and then there will be one room where if you know who have room in E we don't have well we'll have to stay and it just work and they will not get the option of getting the reward so it's a little bit easier because then way I don't have to keep up with anything the kids don't have to keep up with anything it's something that happens at the end of the month super easy nothing crazy which is what I like it works perfect for me that is pretty much it that is my behavior management system I like what we're doing this year it's pretty easy it keeps the parents and the no it's very consistent with everyone that's in the building so the parents kind of are already really used to it it's not like I have to sit here and explain everything to them but I also really really really loved my system that I used my lap my third and fourth year in kindergarten I would really like to know what system that you are using inside of your classroom so be sure to leave a comment down below let me know what kind of behavior management system you are using down at in your classroom right now also let me know which one of these systems that you like the best I can't believe I've had like so many different management systems over the years but you have to kind of work with things and tweak things and figure out what works for you as a teacher as a person because we're all different and we all don't need to do it the exact same way I would never expect everyone to do it the way that I'm doing it right now so I would love to know what you guys are doing be sure to leave a comment down below if you are new to this channel please make sure to hit that subscribe button also make sure to hit that Bell so that you can get notifications for when I upload new videos so thank you guys so much for watching this video be sure to give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed listening to me and my behavior management systems over the years give the video a thumbs up guys and I will see you guys later on [Music]

Channel: The Lettered Classroom

Views: 19,850

Rating: 4.8955455 out of 5

Keywords: classroom management, behavior management, classroom rules, teacher vlog, A day in the life of a teacher, school rules, primary school, elementary teacher, a day in the life, education, elementary school, lesson plan, new teacher, reading, writing, education videos, kindergarten, teacher, 4th grade, middle school, tips, teaching, pocket chart, clip chart, behavior strategy, how to control your classroom, classroom tips

Id: -KwJG9reigo

Length: 25min 44sec (1544 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2017