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Why stay inside? Taking your students outside can actually improve classroom management and reduce behavioural problems by getting students interested and moving! This article lists reasons to take your class outside, tips for teaching a lesson outside and supplies you may want to take along with you! Happy exploring!

In part 3 of this free online resource the need for empowerment for students is featured. Offering authentic praise and encouragment is a proven way to encourage students to work hard and repeat appropriate behaviours. Tips on offering authentic and appropriate praise are offered in this section.

I came across this incredible free resource online. It is a mini-course about classroom management that takes a "needs focused" approach to prevent classroom managment issues and to deal with them effectively when/if they do arise. Part one focuses on the need of students to "belong" and contains strategies to build a "classroom community" including student meetings and team building activities.

A few tips on how to deal with disruptive behavior caused by troubled students.

How to get your students on board with how you want your classroom run. The checklist is a list of things that you should cover in the first day (e.g. washroom policy) and addition procedures, routines, and strategies.

Ontario Certified Teacher, Elona Hartjes (winner of a Teacher of Distinction Award), talks in her blog about some of the research behind using music in the classroom to promote student productivity. She relates it towards personal audio devices (ie. ipods) but this information is easily translateable to playing a CD in your classroom as well. If you are curious, she also has many more music related blogs, and other useful insights for teachers.

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.

In my last practicum, I was in a grade 5 classroom and students got a good amount of time during class for independent quiet reading. I always questioned how productive that was since it seemed to me that many kids were not really reading. This resource gives good ideas as to how to manage that time so that it is productive and how to make kids accountable for the time that is given to them for this activity.

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!

This blog post contains a list of the 10 best of Smart Classroom Management links for 2010. These links were chosen based on feedback and retweets(popularity). A great place to find the best links for 2010 from this interesting blog!

This article lists why you should not yell when you get angry. He gets to the point quickly and clearly. Also, there are previous postings listed below that you can view - various topics that look very useful for us.

This is a resource which is currently being used within my PDS classroom. It provides strategies and solutions for developing the whole student, classroom community, etc. I really like how this resource focuses the development of the child (character, etc) with a specific emphasis classroom management. Check out the table of contents for highlights of the book and see if you're interested.

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).

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!

This site talks about the negative expectations that many supply teachers hold as they walk into a classroom. It gives a few suggestions that will help in classroom management, such as attention grabbers and getting to know the school and the students, meanwhile maintaining organization in the classroom.

Here is a really cheesy song about five main classroom rules that I'm sure a lot of teacher would want in their classes. Although made with the best intensions I'm sure, it is (for lack of a better term) quite lame. When will teachers realize that kids can see right through this stuff? Instead of trying to water down our classroom rules, shouldn't we be making these rules explicit? While no one likes a stickler, students need to learn that certain rules are in place for certain reasons - not to hold people back, but to maintain mutual respect and to create a positive space. By throwing a lame video like this at them, you are settig yourself up to seem like the overseer intent on ruining everyone's childhood. Nevertheless the comments in the YouTube forum suggest many teachers are wanting to buy this song in MP3 format. I know if one of my teachers ever showed my class this, they'd be in for a long year...

This article looks at four areas of classroom management: -establishing classroom climate -conducting class efficiently -reaching all students -establishing discipline

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!

Some good ideas for getting student attention.

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