Keeping the Magic
In Elementary Classroom Management
Presented by Kris Miller
Classroom Management Professor at USU
And Classroom Teacher at Birch Creek Elementary
Three Tiers of Classroom Management
Kristin L. Sayeski and Monica R., Brown (2011)
Sayeski and Brown have presented a response-to-intervention framework
that both special and general education teachers can use to develop
successful classroom structure and management.
Tier 1: Preventative Management for the General
Classroom
The guiding question: What is the core, behavioral curriculum in the
classroom?
Do you have a specific, concrete plan for each of the following?
Organization of the classroom:
• Seating – What does it look like and why?
• Student supplies – Are they easily accessible to all?
• Teacher materials – Are they stored near where they will be used?
Clear communication of rules and expectations:
• Positively stated rules and consequences – Have they been repeatedly
discussed and practiced?
• Are there visual displays of instructions?
• Are procedures outlined step by step?
Established routines and procedures:
• Morning routine
• What to do with homework
• Line-up procedure
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Transitions
End of day routines
Classroom jobs
What to do when students are finished with assignments
Recess equipment handling
Sharpening pencils
Restroom needs
Getting drinks during the day
High student engagement:
It is impossible to significantly improve student achievement unless WE
figure out ways to improve our teaching. – Dr. Kevin Feldman
ENGAGEMENT is observable evidence of a learner’s interest and active
involvement in all lesson content and related tasks, with clearly articulated
“evidence checks” of concrete, productive responses to instruction.
– In other words: visible participation.
In a typical classroom 20% of the students are responsible for 80% of the
doing! We are responsible for changing that!
• Dr. Feldman suggests three types of visible engagement:
o Are students saying it?
o Are students writing it?
o Are students doing it?
• Take It Seriously! Ensure that EVERY single student in the class
speaks, and often writes, at least one meaningful academic sentence
EVERY day! (Or in every lesson)
High expectations:
• Your students will give you exactly what you ask for if you are
consistent and supportive.
Positive student – teacher rapport:
Teachers who have positive relationships with their students had 31% fewer
discipline problems and rule violations over the course of a year than
teachers who did not. (Sayeski and Brown)
• Good morning circle: each child greets the one next to them, shakes
hands, and tells something about his/her day, feelings, plans, family,
etc.
• Sending positive letters and notes to students and their parents telling
of something good or thanking them for an act of kindness
• Add this phrase to the class promise or rule chart: “Because I am
important and I deserve a good day!”
• Positive note to end the day: “Play outside, read good books, and
remember your teacher loves you!”
• Making birthday cards
• “Smile until they smile”
• Correct in a private location
• Fair does not mean equal
• Create and use personally relevant class examples.
• Learn something about your students' interests, hobbies, and
aspirations.
Tier 2: First Line Interventions for the Minor Daily
Interruptions
The guiding question: What interventions or additional behavioral
supports are in place?
Surface Management techniques: (Sayeski and Brown)
• Planned ignoring – attention seeking behavior strategically ignored to
decrease reinforcement of the behavior
• Signal interference – nonverbal signals: bell, flicker of the lights, hand
signals and verbal signals: reminder of the rules, short chant to help
gain attention
• Proximity and touch control – presence of the teacher helps the
student to refocus, refrain, and reengage
• Hypodermic affection – more than skin deep, this is genuine affection
• Hurdle help – providing instructional support rather than a reprimand
• Antiseptic bouncing – non-punitive removal of the student from the
classroom on a neutral errand – use this one with caution!
• Regrouping – moving the players around in a positive way
• Restructuring – change an activity that is not going as planned in
order to avoid unwanted behavior
Changes in academic instruction:
• Review/reteaching of previous content
• Modified requirements on assignments
• Tutoring program
• Literacy lab
• Advanced opportunities for learning
Positive reinforcement system: (Jones and Jones)
• Activity reinforcement –
o List activities the students will find reinforcing.
o Develop a contract stipulating what they must do to earn the
reinforcement.
• Social Reinforcement – Refers to the behavior of others to increase
the frequency of a desired behavior.
o Be careful about not embarrassing a student by recognizing
them for their good behavior!
• Token Reinforcement
o These are more effective for increasing the intensity of effort
than for improving the quality of performance – better used
with routine tasks than with novel ones.
o Rewards act as motivators ONLY for those students who
believe they have a chance to get the reward.
o Rewards are more effective if they are given sporadically than
for every single instance of following the directed behavior.
Contingency system:
• This is commonly seen as the flip-a-card system or the clipping-upand-down charts.
• These are very effective IF a couple of rules are followed.
o PLEASE put the chart where it is not obvious to everyone who
walks into the room! The students already know they are in
trouble. No one else needs to know.
o PLEASE make sure that if they reach the bottom level they
have an equal chance of going back up to the top in the same
day. Otherwise, they will continue to misbehave for the rest of
the day since they are already as low as they can get.
Home- School notes:
• Daily or weekly behavior progress notes to parents that must be
signed and returned to school
Tier 3: Intensive, Individualized Intervention for
Severe, Consistent Behavior
The guiding question: What individualized, intensive behavioral supports
are used for the most challenging of classroom behaviors?
• This step should begin with an assessment that consists of collecting
data on what specific behaviors are being shown, when they occur,
what is causing them, and what socially acceptable skills are lacking
in the student.
Self-monitoring strategies:
• Identify a target behavior.
• Solicit buy-in from the student on the advantages of self-monitoring.
• Determine how the monitoring will take place
• Determine the reinforcement that will accompany it.
Social skills instruction:
• Assumes that behaviors are learned and can therefore be taught.
• Social skills instruction should be customized to meet individual
communication and behavior needs.
• This cannot be considered successful until the skill is generalized to
new settings.
Support groups:
• Parent communication is essential!
• Use the resource of other grade level teachers in your building.
• Cooperate with special education and other resource teachers.
Crisis management or safety plans:
• Have a back-up plan to remove the child safely from the room or to
remove the other children to a safe location in case of an emergency
situation.
Functional Behavioral Assessments – Individual written agreements:
• Include specific behavior to work on – No more than one or two at a
time!
• Include exactly how it will be tracked.
• Include the reinforcement the student is working toward.
• Include signatures of all involved, student, teacher, and parent.
• Include dates for checking up or reevaluating the progress.
*** Student Engagement Ideas to Try in your Classroom:
1. Use a “magic hat” with numbered cards inside. Have a student draw
out a number card to determine how many math problems they must
do or how many sentences/paragraphs they must read before they get
to do the next movement activity.
2. Have students respond in a funny voice; cowboy, football, baby,
granny, spooky, opera, etc.
3. Plastic picnic plates are great for dry erase markers and can be used to
practice spelling words, addition/subtraction, factoring numbers,
geography bowl questions, etc.
4. Crazy straws, princess wands, witch fingers, popsicle sticks decorated
by the kids, glittery unsharpened pencils, and many more make great
pointers to help students focus on what they are reading in a book or
for reading the words in the room as they point to them.
5. Pipe cleaners with cheap plastic beads in sets of five or ten make great
addition/subtraction tools and the beads all stay on the pipe cleaner
instead of all over your floor!
6. Put dice or number cubes in a small, see-through Rubbermaid
container. They will be less noisy and won’t roll all over the room.
7. Put students into A/B partnerships with the stronger partner always
being the A partner. When reading difficult materials, have the A
partner read first to the B partner and then have the B partner read the
same material to the A partner. It still gives them practice but takes
away some of the performance anxiety.
8. Numbered Heads Together – Each student in the group has a number.
The group discusses the topic together and then the teacher chooses a
number to designate which student will share with the class.
9. Whisper the answer in your hand, on your arm, to your elbow partner.
10. Fist of 5 (0 – 5 rubric for any topic 0 = closed fist, 5 = full
confidence) Students show with fingers or fist how comfortable they
are with the topic or how willing they are to share what they know.
After having a few students share with the group, ask for a new fist of
5 to check for new confidence or knowledge.
11. Alphabet Summary – Use a preprinted sheet with A – Z going down
the page or a 3 X 5 card with two or three letters. Students brainstorm
what they know or remember using the letters to start terms, phrases,
or short sentences about the topic.
12. Found It! – Prior to having students read a passage with important
vocabulary terms, give them a list of the terms and have them scan the
passage to locate the key words. They should list the page numbers,
location on the page or the context, sentence, caption, part of a graph,
etc., where the word was found. The purpose of this is not to give
them a way to avoid reading but rather to give them pre-exposure and
familiarity with the tough words.
13. Quick Draw – Before beginning a lesson, choose key words,
concepts, or ideas that students will encounter. As each of these key
ideas come up in the lesson, allow the students to create a quick
picture that represents their understanding of the idea. Later, have
them share their understanding with a partner to solidify their ideas
and share their knowledge.
14. Circle, Triangle, Square – Give each student a 3 X 5 card or paper.
Have them draw the three shapes with room to write in or next to the
shapes. Next to the circle they will write something they are still
unsure about. Next to the triangle, three things they have learned, and
next to the square, something they agree with or believe in.
15. Keepers and Wishers – Each student has two post-It notes, one
labeled keepers and the other labeled wishers. On the keepers note
they will write something from the lesson that they will remember. On
the Wishers note they will write something from the lesson they wish
they knew more about.
16. Coded Reading – Before reading a passage, especially non-fiction,
provide students with codes to use while reading. Codes could
include:
• ! for something they find interesting,
• ? for something they don’t understand,
• A speech bubble for something they’d like to talk about,
• A lightning bolt for something that strikes them as important.
Etc.
17. Top 10 List – Have students list from 10 to 1 the items they believe
are important about what they are learning.
18. 2 Truths and a Lie – Have students write three statements about the
topic being studied. Two statements will be truths about the concept
and one will be untrue. Pair the students up to see if their partners can
detect the untruth.
19. Four corners – Before the lesson, place a picture in each corner of the
room, animals, methods of transportation, directional signs, etc.
Periodically throughout the lesson have the students go to the corner
of their choice and discuss with the other students in that corner a
prearranged quote, topic or question that you will ask them about the
topic. You may have them bring books, handouts or other materials to
the corner to support the discussion.
*** Brain Break Ideas to Try:
First you will need to train your students to respond to your prompt of
“Brain Break” by standing up, tucking in their chairs, and freezing with
hands at their sides.
When you are finished with the activity, you will need to train them to
respond to “Stop, sit, and breathe”.
1. :Tootie Tah”
CHORUS: A tooty-ta, a tooty-ta, a tooty ta-ta!
A tooty-ta, a tooty-ta, a tooty ta-ta!
Thumbs up CHORUS
Thumbs up, Elbows back CHORUS
Thumbs up, Elbows back, Knees together CHORUS
Thumbs up, Elbows back, Knees together, Feet apart CHORUS
Thumbs up, Elbows back, Knees together, Feet apart, Bottoms
up CHORUS
Thumbs up, Elbows back, Knees together, Feet apart, Bottoms up,
Head back CHORUS
Thumbs up, Elbows back, Knees together, Feet apart, Bottoms up,
Head back, Tongue out, CHORUS
2. ”Double double, this, this,
Double double, that, that,
Double this, double that,
Double double, this, that.”
Whenever you say “double”, you tapped the side of your fists with
the other persons, when you say “this” you clapped your hands with
theirs, and when you say “that” you’d clap the back of your hands
with theirs and you go faster every time.
3. Over, Under, Around and Through:
Teacher decides on a pattern where students go over, under, around
and through imaginary or real objects. Lead the line of students
around the room, following this pattern.
Example – Over a sea of sticky peanut butter, under a cherry tree,
around an ice cream cone, and through a sea of Jell-O.
4. Heart Smart
If the teacher calls out a habit that strengthens the heart, students will
respond by jumping (or doing that action) for 15 seconds.
If the teacher calls out a habit that weakens the heart, students will
respond by falling down or squatting for 15 seconds.
4. Stop and Scribble
The teacher calls out a physical activity such as jumping, twisting,
jogging, etc.
Students begin doing the activity and continue until the teacher calls
out a spelling word.
Students stop doing the activity and write the word correctly on a
piece of paper or white board.
Continue until all spelling words are written (or math problems are
completed or paragraphs of history read.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sayeski, K. L., Brown, M. R. (2011) Developing a Classroom Management
Plan Using a Tiered Approach. Teaching Exceptional Children, Sept/Oct, 8
– 17.
Jones. V. F., Jones, L. S. (2000). Reinforcing Behavior. Comprehensive
Classroom Management Creating Communities of Support and Solving
Problems. Boston: Allyn and Bacon
Harris, B. (2011). Battling Boredom 99 Strategies to Spark Student
Engagement. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.
Dr. Kevin Feldman – Director of reading and intervention Sonoma County
Office of Education and an independent consultant who works with schools
and school districts on improvement strategies.
http://wiki.kcls.org/index.php/A_Tooty_Ta_Ta
http://www.mamalisa.com/blog/double-double-this-this-handclappingrhyme-with-youtubes/
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-hhp/exss/upload/energizers_for_grades_k_2.pdf