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This site has a great explanation for this week's topic - restorative justice. It offers key questions to ask when using a restorative approach, explains the aim and identifies potential advantages of restorative approaches in a school setting. The site also provides excellent charts that outline which type of restorative approach to use in a particular situation and identifies the roles of the members involved.

Small ppt presentation from TDSB to introduce problems, strategies, and helpful resources. Good start :)

This website describes ten ways to create classroom rules with your students. It also suggests different rules that you might want to include. This might be useful for our classroom management plan assignment!

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.

Consistency, consistency, consistency! This article outlines some great tips on how to create a classroom environment that is under control, but also equally engaged. There is an emphasis on the need for consistency in terms of addressing behaviour, right from the start of the school year. "If other students see that you are serious about enforcing your rules, they will be less likely to test your limits. And test they will." Consistency in this case does not only refer to when you address negative behaviour, but also HOW. Students should feel that you're targeting the behaviour and not them. The article also provides some insight into how classroom set-up can affect behaviour (and how changing things around can better it), how using a variety of teaching strategies can help in managing your class, and how it is okay to ask for help in dealing with students with recurring problematic behaviours.

This handy tool helps you save time and energy by creating a classroom floor plan online. Be prepared to set up your classroom when you arrive by adding and moving around furniture on this web site and then printing off your floor plan and bringing it to school. Use what you have learned about classroom management to help set up your ideal classroom.

Regain control AND keep everyone entertained! Perhaps not appropriate in every school or classroom, but this teacher seemed to have fun with it. And his students even got in on the action by supplying more powerful 'weapons'. Apparently, it's not only good for cats. Who knew?

Fundamental classroom management techniques etc. I really liked this resource because it forces teachers to take a closer look at themselves (teaching style and how it contributes to classroom management problems etc) Topics listed in index are endless and USEFUL! Updated in 2009 -PDF available online.

This article talks about what they are doing in California to help new teachers with classroom management. Schools will pay for a supply teacher for the day while the new teacher observes a veteran teacher in the classroom. The best piece of advice that the article gives is a quote from a student. Take a quick read to find out what she says....

A collection of professional development resources to assist teachers with everyday issues that arise. Some of the resources include creating a discipline plan, classroom management tips and starting the school year off in a positive manner.