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This article discusses some of the key routines and procedures that classroom teachers should consider discussing with students. By establishing routines early in the year and practicing them regularly transitional times throughout the day will flow smoother. It also discusses how these should be created in collaboration with students so a sense of ownership and community can be build in your classroom

We have been discussing cyberbullying in a few of our classes and what to do when an incident occurs, but what about prevention? This website offers great ideas, complete lesson plans, and activity sheets categorized by grade. Each lesson/idea is developmentally appropriate and provides great ideas to get students thinking about proper use of the internet. The world is becomming increasingly technological and I think it's up to parents and teachers to take the time to teach children how to use the internet responsibly and safely.

This is an article written by Harriet Wall, a teacher, trainer, and consultant of behaviour management and restorative justice. The article, entitled "Restorative justice: behaviour and relationship management in schools" goes through what restorative justice is and how and why it can be effective in the classroom. The author offers some suggestions of how teachers can employ restorative justice and how they might already be doing so without knowing it.

Toronto krumping team Northbuck take their program "Kumping out Crime" into GTA area schools to give kids a creative outlet for their aggression. The program enrolls students in three-hour sessions after school that include tutoring, a free meal and krumping lessons. Northbuck also teach students about "leadership, co-operation, non-violent conflict resolution, and the difference between a positive lifestyle and drugs and alcohol." Principals who have invested in the program have noticed a marked improvement in their school's social environment including less prevalent behavioural issues and amalgamation of various racial and cultural groups.

When you feel like you are loosing them, get them standing and doing a Brain Break. They take only a minute or two, need no real preparation or fancy supplies and they can contribute huge dividends to your classroom management by allowing students to re-engage after a mental shift. They can be done with students of any age, usually make you laugh and challenge your brain often by crossing your mid-line thus engaging both hemispheres. They have even been suggested for use during exams and standardized tests. They are backed up by some action research I found on http://abllab.com/ which even shows some cool brain scans illustrating the difference in mental activity when someone was active right before or not! Definite food for thought to do more than your DPA to keep them engage, learning and not creating mischief!

This site provides a powerpoint presentation of the classroom rules found in Ron Clark's book "The Essential 55" (http://tinyurl.com/2fg7on8). Ron Clark is a famous American teacher who received the 2001 Disney Teacher of the Year Award, is the founder of the Ron Clark Academy (http://www.ronclarkacademy.com/about.aspx), and his life is featured in the film "The Ron Clark Story" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473389/). The rules here focus not only on developing and managing a classroom environment, but also encourage students to be courteous and contributing members of society. I highly recommend his book for the explanations of and the stories behind each rule. Pick and choose the ones you like!

From clean up songs and VCR freeze, to homework buddies.This website has creative and easy classroom management ideas that are effective for teachers and students. It offers tips for a variety of grades from K-6.

This site offers a simple list of ideas that are grade specific. This ideas will be useful to enhance the learning and organization of your space.

This is a cute video showing a fun and interactive way to get students to remember the rules of the classroom. Its a great idea for classroom management and a great way to incorporate music! :) In case the rules are hard to hear...here they are: Chorus:The rules, the rules, the rules of the Classroom 1) follow, follow, follow direction 2) feet and hands, feet and hands, feet and hands to yourself 3) Small voices inside, tall voices at the playgroud 4) work together, don't fight, or else you'll get in trouble Add your own rules to the song!

An article which outlines the history behind classroom management as well as giving an excellent definition of what classroom management stands for. Specific strategies are provided in this article with examples of what an optimal class looks like, and how to set expectations. Motivating students and developing relationships between teacher and student are heavily emphasized within this article. Last, the article states what to do in a certain troublesome situations and what positive outcomes may come as a result of certain actions.

This handy site proves that educational challenges are universal! It is run by UK teachers and has a number of articles on it from managing bathroom breaks to getting student's attention to detailed management techniques. There are lots of hands-on practical tips (and stuff to print out and use in the classroom too!). If you are short on time there are single sentence to single paragraph articles and for those with more time there is a 107 page article with greater detailed ideas. These have been submitted by teachers and they indicate the age range they are useful for at the begining of the articles.

This lesson plan comes from two educators in Alberta. In the lesson students learn about the concept of justice circles through role play. This helps students to learn respect for others in the classroom. Justice circles are similar to the classroom meetings in the previous post, however, justice circles are more focused on allowing the victims and offenders to get a better sense of one another. The goal is to resolve conflict while remaining respectful to all involved. In this lesson plan students role play different situations in a justice circle. Additionally students also write about one participant and what his or her involvement was in the justice circle. They then have to reflect on the process and why it was or wasn't effective. This lesson will help students understand how restorative justice can provide a support system for both victim and offender and how that is different from retributive justice.

I have never seen a classroom like this, the teacher uses gestures to have students remember the concepts she teaches (this approach is used with the AIM French Program). Each idea has a concept- she is teaching Order of Operations so she has a rhyme to remember the order and then a specific gesture for each operation. Classroom Management Techniques include: -Teacher gains student's attention by saying: "Class" in various voices and volume Students respond by saying: "Yesssss" in a similar voice and volume as the teacher -Periodically throughout the lesson the teacher claps or snaps and says: "Teach" Students then turn to each other and repeat the concept that was just discussed using gestures

A fascinating experiment in which Sugata Mitra attempts to solve the conundrum that the best teachers and schools aren't present where they are needed most in the world. He installs a computer in highly impoverished areas and gives students unsupervised access to the web. What he found was that children the world over have an inherent desire to learn and will latch onto their interests and teach themselves with little to no need for supervision. Just goes to show that if students are engaged in the material, the teacher need not focus on discipline and can instead serve to stimulate students' inherent curiosity.

This is a link to a collection of informative, motivational, and humourous quotes. Take some time to scroll through them! Although they may not overtly relate to classroom management, they do make you think about the importance of teaching, and can help to develop one's teaching philosophy. Here is one that made me think: "In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less." Lee Iacocca

An interesting study on how gender can affect teaching style. The start provides with some background information on gender studies which I was a little surprised by. It states that "a man's world focuses on competition, status, and independence", and "a woman's focuses on intimacy consensus, and interdependence." The second part is a case study on experienced and inexperienced male and female teachers that is worth a read.

There are a number of classroom management ideas presented at this site which is geared towards substitute teachers and therefore are not about how you want to set up your perfect classroom but more about how to gain and maintain control over a class of students that have never seen you before. Some really good suggestions here.

Since many of us may be venturing in to the substitute teaching role at the beginning of our careers, I thought this was a great site that organized classroom management strategies based on grade levels for substitute teachers. There is everything from effective tips to strategies for gaining attention. There are also great links in the left hand column for books that kids love, curriculum activities and games, discipline techniques as well as interview tips and questions.

How will YOU get organized? Visit this link to read up on tips for organizing your teacher's desk, materials you'll need to get started, setting up your files, and organizing weekly materials, among other tips. There are some pictures so that you get an idea of how these ideas are implemented in the classroom. If you click on the "Weekly To Do List" and the "Personal To Do List", you'll open up PDF files with templates for you to print and use. All of these tips come from an actual teacher, so these are things that work and make a difference in how smoothly your class runs.

This is a section of a website designed for teachers by teachers. It has been going for 15 years and has a section on classroom management. This article is posted by a teacher in Ireland and lists some organizational practices aimed at new teachers (some are common sense but good to review). There is another post further down on this site titled IDEAS FOR NEW MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHERS GRADES: 6-9 in this one, I love the idea that classroom management involves personalization to be successful.

For any teacher anxious about going into their first classroom, this article gives a step-by-step checklist for a new teacher to review in order to make sure their class is prepared for an excellent classroom management start to the year. Categories examples would be room environment, what rules to set, initial supplies needed and Student prep (name tags and seating arrangements).

This site has a list of 41 links that are topics relating to classroom management. It is put together by The Teacher Development Network. The site is organized similar to our Diigo group but more concise. There are small descriptions of most of the links. Some examples of topics are: Classroom management plans; Bullying in school and what to do about it; Conflict Resolution; Managing classroom behaviour; Discipline techniques that backfire; Classroom leadership and Engaged learning. This would be a great site to check out for a wide range of classroom management ideas, as well as behaviour and discipline plans.

Although this is a little bit old, it still applies. Harry and Rosemary Wong talk about the differences between classroom management and classroom discipline. They discuss the fact that many new teachers have difficulty distinguishing between the two, leaving them with the complications of trying to resolve behaviour problems and little time to structure a classroom management plan. The article talks about different procedures and routines, as well as misconceptions that new teachers may have.