Classroom Management and Arrangement

Classroom management is hands down the number one aspect of teaching that I was simply terrified to face. 30 students, 1 teacher--- and that one teacher being just little 'ol me all by my self was just the scariest thing I could ever imagine. Lesson planning? Got it. Assessing students? Easy enough. Planning big elaborate projects and end of the unit field trips to places totally awesome? Love it! But getting 30 little squiggly guys and gals to sit quietly and want to listen to me? Yikes!

A year later, I am much less terrified. In fact, I know it will still be difficult, but I am excited to be able to run my own classroom management plan. I have run my own preschool classroom for a year now, but that was mostly assisted with my very hands on boss. It was a step in the right direction, but I am ready for the big challenge.

At Kimball Elementary I am a little bit closer to the real deal. My master teacher, Carrie Hale, has it down to a tee (I'm only a little jealous). She requires her students to be very well behaved in the sense that they must use very quiet voices (our classroom is right next to the library in an open-space school) and she is super against answering questions more than once. At the same time, she respects her students enough to allow them to get up and walk about class on their own. Students can get a drink of water or go to the bathroom without having to ask first, and kids with the jitters are allow to take a quick walk to the other side of the room.

On the first day of class, Miss Hale had her students meet up on the rug ("circle time" rug) for a class meeting. She helped her students create a list of classroom rules. She said that she puts all the ideas on the list, even ones like "We should get extra recess every day" (which, sure enough was one of the first answers). After she gets the looong list compiled, she talks to them about which rules were fair, which ones could work in the classroom and which ones can be combined by a bigger rule (ie no name calling and no fighting becomes 'treat others with respect'). By the end of the exercise, the kids have created and defined the same rule set that is seen in every classroom, but becuase they came up with the rules, it is more personal and effective.

Our classroom arrangement is pretty traditional. My MT has her room set up in 7 tables of 4 (one table is a bit bigger to fit all the students). Her media table is at the front, with the screen behind her. I think it works well, as most classrooms take this look.

What makes this set up work especially well is the way my MT uses her space. There are no walls in our classroom, so space is very precious. She has sight words around the classroom, hanging from the ceiling in posters. When I went in June, the sight words were everywhere. Vocab words were also strewn on everything possible. When I walked in the classroom in Sept, there were none. My MT introduces the words throughout the year. They have an ability to learn the word in context and then keep them in memory by posting them around the classroom.