Back to School Classroom Management Tips

Where has the summer gone? It’s almost time for back to school! And I’m joining up with some fellow bloggers to share some back to school classroom management tips to help you have the best year yet!

Make sure to click the link on the bottom of the blog post and hop through everyone’s posts about tips for classroom management.

Tip #1 Table Mat Strategy

I’m guessing you probably already know how crazily busy our classrooms can be. And for us, a lot of our students struggle with transition. And that’s why my first tip today is going to be talking about the table mat strategy we have for transition.

This strategy has been one of the most successful things we have ever implemented in our classroom. And students of all abilities respond really well to it. They know what the table mats are – and get especially excited when the party one comes out!

What Is It?

For each different session throughout the day (arts and crafts, cooking, literacy, numeracy, snack, choice, iPads etc) there is a different table cloth. You put the table cloth on the table when it’s time for that activity. 

For example, when it’s our art session, we put this table mat on the table:

So that the table cloth also links in to the theme of the activity. 

  Another example is our math table mat:

And this is the one they get the most excited for;

As you’ve probably guessed it means party time! We have parties to celebrate birthdays and special occasions. 

Tip #2 I Am Working For

This tip is going to be your biggest life saver. Because I know it is for us! It’s called the ‘I Am Working For’ board. And you can find it here.

What Is It?

It’s a reward system where students can watch and track how close they are to receiving their reward/choice item. Students earn their tokens in different ways – this is up to you, but mainly after completing a set piece of work/period of time of work.

This board comes in different levels so you can work your way up with students to achieving more tokens before they receive the reward.

They come in;

• 3 tokens,
• 4 token,
• 5 tokens
• 10 tokens.  

It comes with different ‘tokens’ such as the good job and thumbs up shown in the image above as well as a wide range of different choice symbols for you to use instead of the above shown train – or you can use images of actual objects in your classroom that the student is interested in.  

This can either be carried around with the student to different work activities or left at their work space to go back and fore to.

I would recommend that you make them achievable so that the child has their reward at least a couple of times a day – if the reward is too long away, they may get fed up of trying to achieve it.

Taking Away Tokens

I have always been a strong believer in not taking away tokens once a student has achieved them. To me, it’s like telling the student ‘no matter how hard and good you worked this morning, it’s irrelevant now because you’ve done this.’

Doing this, will break the trust and confidence that the student has with you. And that’s going to put a strain on future techniques and strategies that you try with them. Along with possibly the relationship you have with them too.

What you can do, is tell them to work extra hard to get their next token.

Before hopping on over to the next blog, feel free to enter the rafflecopter below for your chance to win my ‘I Am Working For’ resource. 

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