Hey, friends! I'm teaming up with my good friend Elyse from Proud to be Primary to bring you a whole slew of classroom management tips and tricks... plus, a bunch of classroom management freebies! This

Check out ESL Classroom Management Tips and Tricks if you want to have better English classes! Deal with disruptive students in style.

Have a chatty class? Do your talkative students get louder and louder during small groups until it feels like chaos? Do they talk when you'r...

Inside: Strategies for classroom management for substitute teachers

Have you used QR Codes in the classroom yet? Here are a few easy ideas that will get you started using QR Codes in your classroom.

A lot of teachers have had their fair share of disrespectful learners in the profession. At some point in your carrier you have met a learner who...

Learn how to get organized and set up a weekly lesson planning routine. Find out how Miss DeCarbo streamlined her schedule and maximized her time at school.

Classroom discipline is key to teaching.In this blog post, we will delve into what classroom discipline means and some essential strategies for achieving it.

Grab their attention, keep it, and have a great day!

Middle school veteran Jennifer Gonzalez identifies 10 ineffective habits new teachers often develop and proposes some better classroom management techniques.

Have you ever had a class that just tried your patience day after day? Have you ever felt like you could walk away from teaching forever tom...

Learn how to get organized and set up a weekly lesson planning routine. Find out how Miss DeCarbo streamlined her schedule and maximized her time at school.

Pass them on to your first grade teacher friends!

I so remember my first year as a new teacher! I wondered why I was even hired! (Did they not know that I didn't have a clue how to do ‘this teacher thing'?!) Yes, I had graduated with a degree, a teaching certificate, and had an idealistic philosophy of education (that had no basis in research […]

Photo Source: busyteacher.org Attempting to regain control of your classroom after the winter break? We found this poster over at BusyTeacher.org and thought it offered a great reminder of the various things you should do {and not do!}. The reminders are simple, but are designed to help you gain perspective and set about {or continue} managing your classroom in a positive and encouraging way! BusyTeacher.org offers this poster - and lots of other great resources - for FREE over at their website, so be sure to visit and pick up your own copy!

Even if you've been teaching a while, you might still experience moments when all of your classroom management tools stop working. This one cheap, quick strategy, using a simple blank notebook, can help you regain control in under a minute.

Do you struggle with classroom management? Here are four strategies that you can add to your toolkit that will make it just a little bit more effective.

Memorization can be such a helpful tool in life! Think of all the things you have memorized: math facts, phone numbers, states & capitals, Bible verses, months of the year, important dates (like your anniversary:), etc. Now image if you had never memorized them and how your life would be different. You may have to carry around a calculator, keep a detailed Google calendar set up with email reminders of important dates, the list goes on. In my time as a special educator, I found that many student

Everything you need to know about teaching 5th grade categorized and organized by topic for easy reference.

Chatty students? Try these 10 attention-grabbing tricks to quiet down your classroom! Teach them on the first week of school.

Contact Me Blog Shop Lesson Plans & Resources​​​​Engage Your Learners.My mission is

Have you tried Breakout Rooms on Zoom with your students? Breakout Rooms can provide increased opportunities for social interactions, teamwork, and much much more! Check out tips and tricks we have gathered over the past few weeks regarding Breakout Rooms: Establish expectations. Before you send students to a breakout room, set up some expectations! Consider using this resource. Establish roles. Give each participant a role/job while they are in a Breakout Room. Here are some types of jobs stude

I think it’s important to begin this post by letting you know I am a very effective classroom manager. It wasn’t always that way, though. When I first began my teaching career, there was a child in my class who made my life and everyone’s else’s life miserable. I decided to invite my mother, a …

Learn from other teacher what to do when students misbehave for a substitute and how to set substitute teacher expectations for students.

Do the students at your school use inappropriate language? Use these tips and strategies to help them decrease verbal aggression, cursing, sarcastic comments and more!

I share these stories because I suspect you have also had moments you’re not proud of, stories you’ve never told anyone; I want you to know you’re not alone.

It’s frustrating. You spend your entire prep-hour strategically placing students into groups. You teach, model, and role-play what you want them to do. You assign roles, provide clear objectives, and confirm their understanding of your expectations. You give them all the support you know ... Read more

Stay calm and teach on.

Everything you need to know about teaching 5th grade categorized and organized by topic for easy reference.

By Presto Plans I first realized the power of bell ringers years ago, thanks to a particularly unruly class that would bounce off my walls after lunch. After consistently wasting the first ten minutes of class getting students seated, settled, and ready to learn, I decided to give bell-ringers a try. They were immediately a classroom game-changer. Bell-ringers—sometimes referred to as “warm ups” or “do nows”— are questions, tasks, or other warm up activities that students complete at the beginning of class (or when the bell rings, as the name suggests.) They jump start student learning, calm classroom chaos, reduce uncertainty, and make transitions smoother, all the while allowing the teacher to maximize their time and maintain their sanity. I’m here to share the benefits of using a bell-ringer routine in your classroom, tips and strategies to implement them effectively, and answers to your most commonly asked questions. I'm also sharing free bell-ringers that will last you a couple months! 1) Extra time at the beginning of class Bell-ringers give teachers the gift of time. In those 5-10 minutes, you can take attendance, get papers ready and/or passed out, prepare tech, catch up with students who have been absent, or even prepare for your next period. 2) Improved classroom routine and classroom management As students transition from class to class, they tend to get amped up from hallway antics. Bell-ringers improve the transition back into the academic setting and establish a consistent routine and minimize classroom management issues. There is a lot of uncertainty in a teenager’s world, and though they may not admit it, students crave predictability and routine. After the routine is established, you’ll even find that students will get started on the bell-ringer BEFORE the bell even rings, as they know exactly what is expected of them. 3) A chance to practice ELA skills and assess and review standards By using bell-ringers at the start of class, you are taking advantage of an extra opportunity to practice the ELA skills and meet standards you have been diligently working on throughout the year. Bell-ringers are perfect for putting what you’ve taught to the test in a creative, fun, low-pressure way. Given that they aren’t heavily graded on the bell-ringers (or not at all), the pressure often associated with other tasks is alleviated. 1. Mix up your bell-ringer each day If you are using the same bell-ringers every single day, students will likely grow tired of them. I like to have themed days for each of the bell-ringers that will address a specific skill. Below are some of the types of bell-ringers you might consider using: Improve word choice Locate figurative language Have a short discussion with a partner Watch a short video clip and write a personal response to a prompt Infer the meaning of new words in context Correct grammar errors Have a mini-debate with a partner Use a picture to spark narrative writing I liked to use each of my year-long volumes of bell-ringers to have different activities for each day. You can try four free weeks by clicking on the image below to see if they might work for you. 2. Give students a fun challenge Another way to mix up your bell-ringers is to set a challenge at the start of the week and have students progressively work towards a solution on Friday. My favorite way to do this is with escape room bell-ringer challenges. When you use an escape room bell-ringer, students are given a back story on Monday where they find themselves in a situation (dungeon, alien planet, military bunker, scientist study etc.). They work with their group for the first 5-10 minutes of class to progressively move through different floors, rooms, chambers, and cells each day to solve ELA related puzzles. Their goal? To successfully escape by the end of the week. Want to try a bell-ringer challenge with your students? Grab a free figurative language bell-ringer activity below as a fun way to start one of your classes. 2. Model a Good Response Spend the first days explaining the daily bell-ringer activity for that day and even show them what a strong response looks like for each different bell-ringer activity you do. Taking this time at the beginning will get you better responses from the students as the year goes on. 3. Set specific expectations and procedures From day 1, you’ll want to demonstrate exactly how things are going to play out. Start by literally walking them through the process of entering the classroom and retrieving their bell-ringer booklets or binder. Once they are completed their work, you might think of getting them to hold onto their booklets and putting them back at the end. I would recommend not doing this as typically someone will accidentally take it home or the booklets will get destroyed since they all are eager to leave and are throwing the booklets on the shelf (real life teaching, right?) That’s why I would suggest you establish a system for collecting the bell-ringer booklets after they are done, and go through it with them a few times to practice. You wouldn’t think something as simple as collecting the booklets would be an issue, but having a plan makes things run so much more smoothly. If you use a standard classroom set up (desks in a row or pairs): Have each row turn around to collect the booklets from the row behind them and move them all forward until they are in the front row. Select one student to collect them all from the front row and put them back in the proper spot. If your desks are set up in groups: Have one member from each group be responsible for collecting the booklets, and have all groups pass them over to the group closest to where to store them. Have one person put them all back. On the first day, I practice this 2-3 times and set a timer to see how fast they can do it (I tell them they are in competition with the other classes). This makes it fun, but it also establishes a routine, and set a precedent to strive for throughout the year and it makes collecting the booklets quick and efficient. 1. Should I grade bell-ringers? Won't that make more work for me? Listen, the LAST thing I want to do is add more paper to an English teachers' pile! Bell-ringers are a type of formative assessment that do not need to be graded. They are a quick way for students to practice and develop ELA skills. I did add a quick check rubric on the bottom of some of my student handouts because I personally used this to keep students accountable and motivated to complete the work to the best of their ability. I would tell them that one week out of the month would be graded, but they wouldn't know which week (insert evil laughter 😉). This lessened my grading, but I also liked peeking at them monthly to see who was completing the work well and where I needed to focus my instruction. 2. How long should you spend on bell-ringers? For me, bell-ringers would typically take an about 5-10 minutes to complete. The time will vary depending on what type of bell-ringer you are completing. Some people like a quick 5 minute bell-ringer, others like to dive in a little deeper and spend more time as it pertains to their lesson. If students are improving the word choice in a passage or practicing labelling figurative language, it may only take a quick 5 minutes. However, if they are discussing an ethical prompt or watching a video clip and writing a response, it may take closer to 10. It's important to remember though that sometimes your students will be totally engaged in a bell-ringer, and you may end up spending more time than you thought on it. This is not wasted time! The content still relates to your curriculum and helps students hone their writing, reading, speaking, and listening skills. Sometimes an unplanned part of a lesson is where the best learning happens. 3. How do you manage all the paper? Here is my fool-proof system. A word of caution: don't let them take their bell-ringer binder home! It's an absolute nightmare waiting to happen 😂. Have each student purchase a small 1 inch binder to hold all of the bell-ringer response sheets (or use a three-clasp folder). Have students write their name in big bold letters on the spine (or the front if it is a folder). Having a variety of colors of binders/folders is better so they can find theirs more easily. Put a bookcase somewhere near the door of your room. Assign each class an area of the bookcase. Tell students they will grab the binder when they enter, and it will go back on that shelf when the bell-ringer is done.! This makes it easy to find their binder the next day. 4. Will using bell-ringers help my classroom management? Yes, routines are your friend! I learned fairly quickly in my teaching career that expected procedures are necessary for survival when it comes to classroom management. Bell-ringers set the tone in the first few minutes of class and help students transition back into work mode after a break period. I was literally wasting the first 5-10 minutes of class quieting my students down and preparing to get started. After starting a bell-ringer routine, they immediately started working when they entered! 5. Should I do bell-ringers every day or just on some days? Personally, I think it is better to bell-ringers every day and stick to the routine. When you are always skipping the bell-ringer or only doing them here and there, students lose that consistency, and you won't see the classroom management benefits. You can certainly make it work if you don't want to do it every day, but if you do this, I might suggest writing on the board or projecting a slide to say if there is a bell-ringer that day. This way you don't have to constantly answer the question, "Is there a bell-ringer today?" Still have questions about using bell-ringers successfully in the classroom? Don't hesitate to reach out! I'd love to hear from you. Need more bell-ringer ideas? The bloggers of the coffee shop have you covered! Growth Mindset Bell Ringers from The Daring English Teacher Daily Career Writing Prompts from The Classroom Sparrow Independent Reading Prompts from Room 213 Bell-Ringer Journal Prompts from Tracee Orman Collaborative Bell-Ringers from Nouvelle ELA

Hi friends! I have been working hard all day on this blog post and I hope it helps you in your support of GT kiddos in your classroom! As the GT teacher for my grade level, I'm expected to take 18 hours of training on supporting GT kiddos, and I just finished last weekend. It was, truly, an amazing training. It was LONG but I learned SO much. I even posted a few things on Instagram as I heard them! The trainings were led by Dr. Joyce Juntune and she is a stinking genius.Many of the things were things I knew, but needed affirmation. Some of them were things I was hearing for the first time. But it was all powerful! As I've spent the last few weeks processing what I learned, I have tried to put lots of new things into practice. Some of them can be very difficult, as each district has their own (or none at all) program for students identified as Gifted-Talented. But I hope I can give you some ideas that can work in any classroom, in any district! We all hear this often...and I think we believe it's true. It's just so easy to forget. When they're constantly saying "I'm done" it's so easy to hand them more of the same type of work. I have tried to be extra aware of this in the past few weeks, especially when I think about how fragile some of our kiddos are. We never want them to feel like they are being punished for being smart. Because the truth (I believe) is that when they start to see this, they will just start to play not as smart! They will easily make the connection...when I finish my work quickly and do great on things, I will get more work. So...in my experience, they will start making mistakes...start trying to act like they DON'T know. Just to avoid more work. This is important to remember, and I don't believe it's true of every GT student. But for some it's incredibly true. As teachers, this means that they won't do things to please us. Their major motivation is learning...that's why they come to school. Not to please teachers, or make friends, or even get good grades. Their goal is to learn new things about things that matter to them. We must remember this when they seem hard to motivate. It's possible their lack of engagement is because we haven't found that thing they want to learn more about! :) Kind of along the same lines, some GT kiddos really really struggle with the expectations of school. Of course this is true of LOTS of children...special ed, gen ed, etc. We have to TEACH them how to be kind, how to be respectful, because sometimes they truly don't know. Of course this is true of all children. :) In my experience, GT kiddos need the most help dealing with people or ideas that they think are "dumb." I am constantly reminding them "we can't say that's a stupid idea, It's hurtful." They aren't trying to be hurtful...they just see it as a stupid idea, haha!! So we must teach them how to control their words and their faces! Fortunately, we have reason on our side! Because these little ones have such high IQs and abilities, you can absolutely reason with them when you need something. You can sit them down and ask "what consequences will this have?" And they will listen! If you can reason with them, and help them see why something MATTERS, you will have a lot better luck! :) NOW this next statement...is for EVERY student. EVERY day. in EVERY situation. I believe relationships are one of (if not THE MOST) important factors to student success. If you can get these kiddos on your side, life will be a LOT easier. But you can not win a power struggle with them...you have to show them you care...and THEN you can help them. They must know you care about them, understand them, and appreciate them for all their unique talents and abilities! As you can see, our GT kiddos actually develop differently than other students. It's why we so often hear "they are SO emotional" or even "They have tantrums!" They can't help it...we have to teach them how to MANGE that. I believe all students should have choice as much as possible. But for some, choice can be overwhelming...or even take away from the learning target. But for our GT kiddos, they thrive on choice. I give it as much, and as often as possible. If you're ever unsure of how to support them, ask yourself how to involve inquiry in their learning. They will immediately be engaged because they develop their own questions! It's easy to think about the highest achievers in our class. Their work is the neatest, they probably write the most words, and they get 100 on everything. Of course they need to be served! But our GT kiddos might also look a little different. And they BOTH need our support. This is an example of 2 sweet girls in my GT group. Their work looks COMPLETELY different, but they both show amazing thinking. The top one...I should have prompted her to write more. But the vocabulary usage and thinking is top notch! We do a LOT of reading response with my GT group. Here are some things they have done after reading a book independently (that they chose) but you could also do these with a Guided Reading text and let them choose the product they would make. The top 2 are sequels and the bottom is a power-point presentation about the book. Conferring is another part of my day that allows for easy differentiation. For most my students, I meet with their Guided Reading group 4-5 times a week. But for my GT students, I meet with their groups 1-2 times and confer individually with them. Here's an example of notes I take and a task I gave this little one to work on for the week. Another fun activity that I gave to all of the Enrichment kiddos in 1st grade...they are our "high-flyers" that haven't been identified GT yet. But my GT kiddos participate too! You can click the image to grab your own copy. They chose a word (their name is usually easiest) and added up the sum. It's especially motivating when they can choose their own word. It would be overwhelming for most of my kiddos, but super fun for advanced students! And finally, here are some ideas for changing a "normal" task into something perfect for your GT students. You can also grab that by clicking the image! How do you support GT students in your classroom? Does your district identify them? I want to hear! :)

Being a Casual Relief Teacher can be stressful! We've got expert tips, ideas and resources to make your life as a CRT easier and far less stressful. In this post, we cover behaviour management and the best ways to stay organised as a Casual Relief Teacher.

We've created some infographics for our school community on the use of @Zoom. Expectations while in Zoom and Tips & Tricks for meetings. Thank you to our Innovation Activators @laurenangarola & @mmckellar1 for creating these types of docs for us. @DAAElementary @gems_daa #edchat

Tips and tricks to write a killer BIP! How to define the behavior, analyze FBA, and design interventions. Free printables too! Supports Autism Teachers!

Advice for teachers having to deal with a large hour study hall. How to wrangle 90+ students without losing your cool. A list of a few practical strategies for classroom management.

Helpful tips to running a successful Llt Circle in a secondary ELA classroom.

As part of our twilight INSET programme this year I am delivering a CPD session on marking. It’s a great opportunity to bring together lots of ideas from lots of superb bloggers, teachers and…

A SWOT analysis helps identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Here’s a step-by-step guide to SWOT analysis, along with examples and templates.

Some texts are just hard for students to get into. The Mind's Eye strategy tackles that problem head on, grabbing students' attention before they read a word.

Have you ever had a class that just tried your patience day after day? Have you ever felt like you could walk away from teaching forever tom...