Maintaining Discipline

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Home : 2005 : April : 29

Maintaining Discipline
By Ginger

Maintaining discipline... something you MUST demonstrate from day 1. You cannot start now. You can, however, be prepared for next year.

Every classroom -- whether it is Kindergarten or 12th Grade -- needs a set of rules.
IT IS RIDICULOUS if you have more than 5 rules, because it is too many for students to be aware of.
Each year on the first day of school, I ask the students for some help coming up with classroom rules. You would be surprised at some of their ideas! You should write each one of their suggestions down on butcher paper or the markerboard. Then, once you have heard at least one from

each student, go through the list and come up with some general rules. In the last 5 years I have been teaching, I have used the same 3 rules: Be Safe, Be Respectful, and Work Hard. As you can imagine, you could put at least 10 different "specific" rules under each of those three general rules, but why? For instance, if you see a student chewing gum, then you can tell him that he is not "Being Respectful." If you see a student talking in class, she is not "Working Hard." Or, if you see a student running to line up for the bathroom, he is not "Beng Safe." Once students know these FEW RULES, they are more likely to remember them and less likely to break them.

Okay, once you have come up with class rules, you need to enforce them. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER let something go. If you see any of your students off-task or whatever, you MUST let them know that you have control, otherwise you will be pushed around for the entire year. If for instance you see Jimmy throw a crayon at Kyle, and you are working with another student, you must tell the student you are working with to wait patiently, and go over to Jimmy. Do not neglect or ignore this!!!

Now, you will have to come up with your own consequences, but here's how my consequences go. I have a clipboard with a page of student names, and 15 boxes next to each student. If they have done something against our three rules, I will either give them eye contact, or go over to them. And then I will go to my clipboard and give him/her one checkmark. By the end of the week, the checkmarks are tallied. When the students come back on Monday, I tell them how many marks they had (as a whole class). If they reach a certain number -- our class the number is "30", and there are 23 students-- then we will not have our fun activity for that week. We will wait until next Monday to have our fun activity. But you must be generous on giving the checkmarks, because they will take notice of this and stop with their troublesome behavior.

Some of our fun activities: Class outside (for 30-60 minutes), watch School House Rock, have free time, have extended recess, or even have lunch in the classroom. There are more, but I cannot name them all. To decide which activity to do, I pick three random students (this is easy if you use popsicle sticks with students' names on them). I ask what they each want to do. This way, there could be a maximum of three choices. Then, the class as a whole gets to vote on which activity they would like to do.

I see I have written far too much here! I could go on and on, but I think this is good for now. I hope this helps anyone struggling with classroom management.

By the way, students seem to respond better when there are positive consequences (like those I listed), rather than negative consequences (like taking away recess time or assigning extra homework). Why? Because some of the "trouble" kids are just yearning for attention, and they really don't mind getting in "Trouble." So, if you turn the tables so they can't get into trouble, it is kind of like reverse psychology!!!

-Ginger