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Positive behavior in the classroom can make all the difference between an enjoyable teaching experience, and a teacher suffering from work related stress.  Having effective classroom management strategies really is that important.

So how exactly do you promote positive behavior in the classroom?  Below are three effective classroom management strategies that will reduce negative student behavior fast.

1. Be positive.

If you’re negative, then the students that you teach will also be negative.  And negative 
students are not well behaved students.  If you remain positive in the classroom, no matter how tired and stressed you feel, then you will have a better chance of promoting positive behavior in the pupils that you teach.

I don’t agree with the whole don’t smile until Christmas mantra.  Yes, you want to establish firm boundaries with the students you teach, but teaching with bubbly enthusiasm can do wonders for your classroom management skills.  Set clear limits, but remain positive while doing so, and your students will reward you with improved students behavior.

2. Highlight good behavior

How can students demonstrate positive behavior in the classroom, if they don’t know what it  is?  Find excellent examples of student behavior and then highlight it to the class. 

Highlight this good behavior, and explain why its good.  This can be as simple as praising a  group doing excellent quiet work, or a student who demonstrates constructive behavior with his peers.  Highlight good behavior and the behavior of the students you teach will 
increase.

3. Model good behavior

Like it or not, but in the classroom you are a role model.  And you’re a pretty influential 
one too.  So if you want to promote positive behavior in the classroom, then you better 
demonstrate as well. 

If students see you as moody, temperamental aggressive or worse, then you are not demonstrating the correct ways to behave in a classroom environment.  Show the  students how to behave well through your own actions, and your classroom will become a more peaceful place.

If you wan to promote positive behavior in the classroom then try these three top tips 
today.  Classroom management problems can be like a cycle.  When you experience poor student behavior you become negative, and the behavior gets worse.  Break the cycle today by being  positive and the students that you teach will reward you with improved behavior.

Wow, I have to say that I’ve managed to surprise myself with how well this blog seems to be running at the moment.  Day 2 and I’d had imagined crashing pages, broken links and worse….but at the moment the Classroom Management 101 blog seems to be running surprisingly well.

Fingers crossed that it continues that way in the coming days!  Fixing classroom management problems is one thing I’m good at.  Fixing broken websites is one thing I guess I’ll be very BAD at!

I hope that everyone is enjoying their weekend so far.  Here in the UK it’s a bank holiday tomorrow which means no school until Tuesday.  If you’re reading this from some place where you don’t have a day off tomorrow then I’m sorry to rub your noses in my good fortune!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend…

Wishing you a peaceful classroom!

If you’re stuck in a rut, with your pupils running wild, then you need to give your classroom management skills a top up.  Apply these three effective classroom management tips and notice an improvement in the student behavior  in your classes.

Number 1. Always Stay Positive – You’re stuck in a rut in the middle of January and what happens?  Yep, you become downbeat and negative.

But here’s the thing. If you’re negative, then your students will be negative too. And that will make classroom management even more difficult.

You become negative, and so do your pupils.  Before you know it you are in a terrible cycle that leads to poor pupil behavior and ineffective classroom management.

Take yourself out of the bubble and try and remember why you became a teacher in the first place.

If you can walk into your classroom with a smile on your face you will get a much more positive reaction from your students.

Stay positive and effective classroom management will be so much easier to achieve.

Number 2. Praise your students until you can’t praise anymore – Praise your pupils at every possible opportunity if you want to experience a positive learning environment. You need to train your students exactly how you want them to behave, and the use of praise is an excellent way to do this.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking.  Finding good pupil behavior is hard when you’re dealing with the worst kids in school.  But what you need to do is actively seek out good student beavior.  And then heap a ton of praise upon it.

And remember this.  Even the worst students behave for brief moments! Praise that good behavior and you are training the students you teach to behave like that again in the future.

Number 3. Use the language of choice –  Instead of telling children to do something, explain to them that you would like them to chose to do something. This subtle change in language is incredibly powerful and is sure to produce positive results.

An example of this would be explaining to Mike “I would like you to choose to sit down quietly”, as opposed to saying “sit down quietly”.

Classroom management is an incredibly subtle art, and small changes can have a huge impact on the relationship you have with your pupils.

Don’t believe me? Try it out tomorrow in your classroom. 

Use the language of choice and you will notice a huge improvement in your classroom management skills.  If you do it right that is.

After I posted my first post it occured to me that I didn’t really explain why I’m so incredibly passionate about promoting effective classroom management in the classroom.  Let me explain why.

When I started to train to be a teacher I was placed in a very rough, low achieving school.  Student behaviour was poor to say the least.  And the class that I had to teach my subject to 4 times a week were no better.  In fact, I’d go as far as to say they were probably the worst class in the whole school.  If not the whole world.  Okay, I’m exagerating, but it’s my story!

They were pretty bad.  Before I had to teach my first lesson I was up all night worrying about how I was going to control this rabble. Sorry to call them a rabble, but if you could see the class you would think I was being generous!

When the lesson came I was literally shaking with fear. My hands really were trembling.

 And so how did the lesson go?

This is the point where you will be expecting me to say that it went great, and that my amazing classroom management plan promoted excellent student behaviour.

Erm, well it didn’t! 

In fact, if I’m honest the lesson was a disaster.  I’d imagined some pretty horrible outcomes before teaching the lesson, but what actually happened was far worse.

So you may be wondering how did I go from a classroom management nightmare, to wanting to write a blog about classroom management tips and strategies.

And here’s why.  Not long after the lesson I sat down with my training course leader and explained the whole story.  He listened, nodded, and was understanding.  And he gave me some great advice.  Really, truly great, classroom management advice.

He believed strongly in positive and proactive classroom management, and he explained in detail how to use this model to promote good student behevior. 

What he told me that day inspired me.  It truly did.

There was no miracle.  My lessons didn’t certainly become amazing, and I didn’t become a classroom management ‘guru’ overnight.  But when I implemented what he told me my classroom management skills improved hugely. 

And more importantly he sowed a seed soemwhere deep inside that made me want to learn more about this stuff.  And I did.  Fast!  On my next teacher trainee placement my skills were unrecognizable from the months before. 

I had literally turned my greatest failing into my greatest strength.

And I owed it all to my very generous, and very clever course leader. 

You see, we are all passionate about something.  I just happen to be very passionate about sharing classroom management tips and strategies. 

So much so that it provoked me to write a book AND to write a blog.

To this day I am as passionate about effective classroom maangement as I was after that conversation.  I’ve left my course leader’s name out of this blog for privacy reasons.  But he know who he is.  To you sir, I say thanks!

Classroom management isn’t really that hard.  It just seems hard when you’re struggling.  But it doesn’t have to be.

I just hope that I can help share what I learned with someone out there and make it all a bit easier for you…

Wishing you a peaceful classroom!

Welcome to the first post of my effective classsroom management blog!  Those who know me will tell you that this project has been a long time in the making.  In fact, I’ve been planning to launch a classroom management blog for a considerable amount of time.

Why? Put simply, effective classroom management is the difference between a happy teacher with high achieving students, and a stressed out teacher with students not achieving their potential.

Sure, there are shades of grey in the middle, but there is no doubt that effective classroom management is of critical importance when it comes to the enjoyment that you and your pupils get from your lessons.

Well, that explains why I think classroom management is important, but it doesn’t explain why I’ve decided to write a blog about it.  Next time you are on Google have a look how much good information you can find about effective classroom mangement in the classroom.  My guess is that you won’t find much.  I certainly can’t and I’m pretty good at finding things online

So since I like learning new skills so much, and since I’m so passionate about good classroom management, it seemed like a great project to take on. 

I’m pretty new to this blogging stuff however, so please be patient with me if things don’t quite appear as they should.  I already have enough problems with my girlfriend nagging me, without having hundreds of you emailing to tell me that I messed up my blog, in some weird technical way!

Hopefully over the coming days and weeks I can share my own classroom management ideas and tips, and in the process help you to make your classsroom a more positive learing environment. 

That’s the plan anyway!

The aim of this blog though is not just for me to have fun.  The real aim is for you to learn some new classroom management ideas.  So if there is anything that you would like to see covered on this blog, please get in touch and I’ll see what I do:)

Wishing you a peaceful classroom!

If there is one thing that I’m sure of it’s that a good classroom management plan can help reduce negative classroom behavior and also teacher stress. 

Innapropriate student behavior causes good teachers everywhere a great deal of teacher stress, and so it’s hardly surprising that teachers are searching online in their thousands for an effective classroom management plan.

Below are three of my top tips for implementing an effective classroom management plan today and ending inappropriate student behavior.

1. Praise your students loudly and praise them often.

The most potent tool at the dispoal of any teacher is the use of praise, and everything else comes a distant second.   Use praise wisely and you will no longer be asking the question ‘how do I deal with poor classroom behavior’.

2. Stay calm, cool, and collected.

If the pupils you teach can sense that you are flustered or starting to panic then it’s quite likely that their innapropriate classroom behavior will become magnified.  No matter how stressed out and frustrated you become, you must present an image of calm to your pupils at all times. 

3. Be prepared

Being prepared is quite simply a must for any teacher looking to be on top of student behavior in the classroom.  Teachers who excel at promoting good classroom management are organized and prepared at all times. If you want to promote posive student behaviour in your classroom then it’s essential that you are prepared too.

Above is a brief outline of three of my top effective classroom plan tips.  Following these tips won’t result in you having a amzing classroom management skills overnight, nor will they end teacher stress as a result of innappropriate pupil behavior. 

But if you follow these classroom management strategies you will most certainly see some improvement in the behaviour of your pupils.

Wishing you a peaceful classroom!

So what is effective classroom management, and how can it be used to reduce innappropriate classroom behavior?

With more and more teachers suffering an ever increasing amount of teacher stress at the hands of negative student behavior, it is of no surprise to find so many teachers coming online to try and find effective classroom management tips.

There is no doubt that effective classroom management can provoke positive behavior in the students you teacher, while at the same time helping to reduce teacher stress. 

Different teachers have different standards of behavior that they expect from the students they teach, and so ideas about what is inappropriate pupil behavior, and what is an effective classroom management plan varies from teacher to teacher.

In my opinion, classroom management is effective when you are able to minimise innapropriate student behavior, and promote a positive learning atmosphere.

How you achieve a positive learning environomnet in your classroom is secondary to actually achieving it. 

Some people tell you that in order to have effective classroom management strategies you must be a strict teacher.  Others will tell you that the opposite is true. 

It’s important to realize however that we are all professionals with different skills and different personalities.   Stop trying to follow one one good  classroom mangement model, and understand that we are all made different, and so we will all teach differently. 

Effective clasroom management will differ from teacher to teacher.  How the teacher minimises inaproprate classroom behavior isn’t that important.  What is important is that the teacher uses their unique skills to promote positive student behavior in the classroom.