Classroom Management:
Creating Productive
Learning Environments
What is classroom management?

Productive Learning Environment – a
classroom that is safe and orderly and
focused on learning
◦ Central to effective classroom management
◦ Students are well behaved, emotional climate –
relaxed & inviting
◦ Learning – Highest priority
What is a Productive Learning
Environment?

Classroom management – all the
actions teachers take to create an
environment that supports academic &
social-emotional learning
◦ Important – suggest that schools & teachers
are in charge & know what they’re doing!
 Contributes to learning and development
 Students – more motivated to learn
◦ Learn more – well managed
◦ Emphasize – respect & responsibility
◦ Avoid – criticizing
What is a Productive Learning
Environment?

Successful classroom management –
begins with goals
◦ Guide out actions

Classroom management vs. discipline
◦ Management prevents problems from occurring

Effective Classroom Management:
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Creating a positive classroom climate
Creating a community of learners
Developing learner responsibility
Maximizing time and opportunity for learning
Goals of Classroom Management

Creating a Positive
Classroom Climate
◦ Learners feel physically
& emotionally safe,
personally connected to
both their teacher &
their peers, & worthy of
love & respect
◦ Bullying/other harmful
acts – not tolerated
◦ Positive classroom
climate – essential

Creating a
Community of
Learners
◦ Positive emotional
climate = learning
community – a place
where you & your
students all work
together to help
everyone learn
◦ Involved all students
◦ Student help in
developing procedures
◦ Respect for all
Classroom Management

Developing Learner
Responsibility
◦ Helping students learn to
be responsible – one of
the biggest challenges
◦ Talk about it, teach it,
help students understand
the consequences for
behaving irresponsibly
◦ Ongoing effort

Maximizing Time &
Opportunities for
Learning
 Allocated time
◦ Amount of time a
teacher/school designates
for a content area
 Instructional time
◦ Time left for teaching after
routine management &
administrative tasks
 Engaged time
◦ Time students are paying
attention & involved in
learning activities
 Academic learning time
◦ Student are successful
while engaged in learning
activities
Classroom Management
Communicating Caring
 Teaching Effectively
 Organizing Your Classroom
 Preventing Problems through Planning

Creating Productive Learning
Environments

Caring – refers to a teacher’s investment in the
protection and development of young people
◦ Caring teacher – heart of productive learning
environment

Research – students are more motivated & learn
more in classrooms where they believe teacher
like, understand & empathize with them
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Call student by first name – learn names
Greet students every day
Use “we” & “our”
Nonverbal communications (eye contact, smiling)
Spend time with students
Hold students to high standards
Communicating Caring
It’s impossible to create a productive
learning environment without effective
teaching
 Close link between management &
instruction

◦ Plan for classroom management & effective
instruction
Teaching Effectively

Classroom organization – a professional
skill that includes:
◦ Preparing materials in advance
◦ Starting classes and activities on time
◦ Making transitions quickly & smoothly
 directions
◦ Creating well-established routines
 Turning in papers, going to the restroom, lining up
for lunch
◦ Essential for effective classroom management
Organizing Your Classroom

Developmental Differences in Students

Creating Procedures & Rules
◦ Different grade levels
◦ All students need caring teachers who have positive
expectations for them & hold them to high
standards
◦ Procedures – routines students following in their
daily learning activities (how papers are turned in,
when to sharpen pencils)
◦ Rules – guidelines that provide standards for
acceptable classroom behavior.
 When consistently enforced – reduce behavior
problems & promote a feeling of pride & responsibility
in the classroom community
Preventing Problems through
Planning
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Parent support – essential for student’s
cooperation & motivation
Benefits:
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More positive attitudes & behaviors
Higher long-term achievements
Greater willingness to do homework
Better attendance & graduation rates
Greater enrollment in postsecondary education
Strategies:
◦ Send letters home
◦ Maintain communication frequently
◦ Emphasize students’ accomplishments (newsletters,
e-mails, notes)
Involving Parents
Intervention – teacher action designed to
increase desired behaviors or to eliminate
student misbehavior and inattention.
 Moving near student, calling on
inattentive students to bring them back to
the lesson, removing student

Intervening When Misbehavior
Occurs
Stop the misbehavior quickly & simply
2. Maintain the flow of your lesson
3. Help students learn from the experience
1.
Three Goals of Intervening

Demonstrate withitness & overlapping
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Be consistent & follow through
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Keep verbal and nonverbal behaviors
congruent
◦ As a teacher – you know what is going on in your
classroom & main the flow of the lesson
◦ Overlapping – multitasking
◦ Enforce rules
◦ Keep words, tone and body language consistent –
NO mixed messages

Apply logical Consequences
◦ Use consequences that are related to the
misbehavior
Helping Students Understand
Interventions

Responding to Defiant Students
◦ Experts offer two suggestions:
 Remain calm & avoid power struggle
 Give the rest of the class an assignment
◦ Defiance often the result of negative studentteacher relationships
◦ Students – aggressive or impulsive and display
temper tantrums
◦ Student refuses to leave classroom or
physically violent – send a student to the front
office
Serious Management Problems

Responding to Fighting
◦ Incidents of student aggression toward each
other – more common than threats to teachers
◦ You must intervene – not physically- report it
◦ Goal – protect victim & other students
◦ Effective response
 1. Stop the incident 2. protect the victim 3. get
help
◦ Experts recommend involving parents & other
school personnel
Serious Management Problems

Responding to Bullying
◦ Bullying – a form of peer aggression that
involves a systematic or repetitious abuse of
power between students
◦ 44 states – passed antibullying laws
◦ Districts – zero tolerance policies
◦ Largely ineffective
◦ Threatens students’ feelings of safety &
security in schools
◦ Teachers – central to help eliminate bullying
Serious Management Problems