12 Classroom Management Strategies Every Teacher Should Know

Picture this: you turn to the board and the classroom suddenly becomes a battleground. Paper airplanes flying over your head, students pinching and poking each other with their stationery, and they don't listen to a single word of what you're saying to them.

This scenario is a nightmare for every teacher out there. So, how can you cope with this situation? Of course, you can't just assemble them with a loud, passionate chant, right?

Children go through a lot of behavioral changes as they grow up. As their mentor, you need to understand them and come up with some strategies that keep them on their toes.

Let's have a look at some classroom management skills to help students enhance their academic and behavioral learning.

12 Classroom Management Strategies for Teachers

Here are some skills and strategies that will help you maintain discipline in the classroom and help your students learn in a more meaningful way.

1. Be Authoritative, But Not Unapproachable

If you're a students' favorite, you most probably have been treating them as your friends. While that's a good thing, you still need to maintain an authoritarian personality, as they need to know that you’re in charge of the classroom.

For that, you need to add a bit of an authoritative tone to your friendliness. Students usually see their teachers as role models, so you need to be that, no other choices.You need to alter the way you speak. Add confidence and certainty to your tone, and set boundaries for students. They can be friends with you when it's appropriate; otherwise, you need to show them you are in charge. This way, you can gain their respect and make them listen to you.

2. Trust Students With Responsibilities

The old-school technique of taming down the naughtiest child in your class is giving them classroom responsibilities. Of course, that's like asking a thief to guard a bank, but the situation is different, as this is with students and not actual thieves!

When a teacher trusts a student to be responsible for the classroom management, they feel valued and motivated to give their best. Maybe not just to impress the teacher, but to prove that they are useful if left in charge.

You can also gain students' trust by involving them in setting up classroom management strategies. This will help the classroom to come to a list of mutually-agreed points together.Believe us; you'll be surprised by the results of this strategy. Not only will you see students following the guidelines, but you'll also have an ideal classroom rules list.

3. Always Embrace Students' Ideas

Students can't just memorize long equations without finding any fun elements. This is why "teachers of the year" always include interactive sessions, funny examples, and the latest slang in their lectures. Teachers who don't do so usually create a block with their students, which restricts them from gaining their trust. Students also respect those teachers that make them feel valued and listen to their ideas. This is why you should involve students in setting up your classroom and ask them how they want their classroom to be managed.

You can also ask students to volunteer in classroom affairs, explain a certain topic in front of the whole class, or do a presentation. You can learn their thing, and they will learn yours. Win-win!

4. Set Clear Expectations

Insufficient information, boring course outline, and miscommunication are the major setbacks for student learning.

When they spot any of the above issues in action, they instantly lose interest in the classroom, let alone the teacher. You need to tell your students your course plan in the introductory class to fight this challenge. Carry them with yourself from the beginning of your course and establish learning and behavior expectations for them.

By doing so, students will be more attentive in your class and try to understand the concepts. You can then evaluate if your teaching method is working or not for all your students. If it's not, it's never too late to modify it.

5. Make it Fun

With students, there is no one rule for all. Everyone thinks differently, and hence, processes differently. This is what successful teachers keep in mind while developing their teaching approaches.

In this era of virtual classes, engaging students is the biggest challenge. So, to prove yourself the best teacher out there, you need to think out of the box. Add personalized learning, fun and easy projects, interactive group activities, game-based classes, and other communicative and collaborative learning techniques to amp up the environment of your lectures.

Simply think unconventionally, make the classroom room environment fun to excite students!

6. Control Your Emotions

Controlling your emotions is the key to success, whether you're a teacher, a businessman, or even an actor. When it comes to losing your temper and punishing the class with consequences they didn’t deserver, listen to Elsa from Frozen and just let it go!

If you are struggling with a specific student’s behavior, speak to him/her individually instead of addressing the entire classroom.Otherwise, it can hurt your relationships with the students and jeopardize the relationship you've built over the years.

7. Show, Don’t Tell

Young kids learn and pick up all sorts of things from adults. They imitate their parents' speaking style, physical behavior, language, and manners. When these kids start coming to school, they see their teachers as a parent figure and begin imitating them.

If you want your classroom to showcase good behavior, you need to model that behavior. Refrain from using mobile phones, speaking to them rudely, and doing something that doesn't check with your classroom guidelines. You can also go the extra mile and conduct a mock session with your students to ask them how they can keep teacher behavior accountable as well.

8. Encourage Them With Positive Words

A healthy classroom environment exists when both parties, teachers, and students, coordinate and complement each other. Positive words have a great impact on students. When they see their efforts are being appreciated, they automatically tend to work harder. Even if they don't do well, you have to encourage them to do better in the future with positive words.

Reward good performers with a bonus or a pre-decided gift such as a sticker. When other students see this becoming a ritual, they work even harder to be the ones receiving these gifts.

This strategy also creates healthy competition among students. Here are 12 different ways you can praise student work!

9. Utilize Technology to Automate Your Work

Do other teachers seem to get twice as much done in half the time? Do you have trouble communicating important information to the entire classroom because of lack of time? You me be underutilizing technology to help you in the classroom. There are many tools available that you may not be aware of.

Speak with your fellow teachers to find out what tools they’ve used successfully. Then, consider what areas in the classroom aren’t running efficiently and start researching for free tools to help you. Get tools such as Text Blaze to help you automate lesson plans and grading tasks, another must-have online support is Google Classroom. Whatever technology you need to manage a classroom better, it’s out there.

Text Blaze is a must-have Google Chrome extension for every teacher. By smartly using Text Blaze, teachers will save up to 10 hours every week that they would usually spend on repetitive tasks such as grading papers or filing student reports.

For example, perhaps you use the same template each time you plan lessons on Google Docs or have preferred ways to praise student work on reports.

You can automate this work using a Text Blaze Snippet with just a few clicks.

10. Don't Stick to the Same Routine

Exact same routines often leaves the students feeling bored. Whether it's you or your students, you need to go with the mood of the class, since every day is not the same. Some days students are in the full mood of studying, and the other days, they feel down.

If it's the first case, you're good to go. However, you can just modify their normal routine in the second case. For instance, you can take your class out from the room's boundaries or use games and activities to give your lesson.

Simply speaking, be more flexible, and adjust your teaching strategies according to the class requirements.

11. Take Bad Behavior Into Account Immediately

Some students like to whistle, throw paper airplanes, use smartphones, and laugh at jokes during class. Although this behavior is pretty common, it should be addressed from the very beginning.

Many teachers tend to ignore such behavior in class, but they don't realize that it's not just a one-time thing, but the first example of what can be a year-long issue of acting out. When such students see that you're not calling out their bad behavior, they start doing these acts again and again.

To address this behavior, you need to identify its triggers—either it's a result of your teaching technique or the student's personal issues. Once you spot the exact trigger, you can then improve it by addressing it politely.

Remember that there's no room for misbehaving in the classroom, even if it's just for fun.

12. Opt for Peer Teaching

Peer teaching refers to pair high performing students with struggling students to help them do better. For example, you can make multiple reading groups of two such students and ask them to coordinate and work together. When your students act as a team, it becomes easier for you to guide and tame them according to the classroom guidelines.

Conclusion

Managing a class full of kids is no joke. It's not hectic just for newbie teachers; even seasoned teachers sometimes find it hard to settle down the chaos and deliver their lectures. Of course, no one is born with superpowers to charm the students.

Effective classroom management is a detailed process that requires strategies to succeed. Luckily, you can reap better results from the strategies listed above.

Want to turbo charge your work with templates and snippets? Text Blaze is the fastest way to do that.

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