After you’ve taught your classroom rules, you will be tested.
Count on it.
Sometimes it will be immediate and sometimes misbehavior will trickle in later in the week. No matter, you must follow through precisely as you taught and promised.
Student breaks rule and you enforce consequence.
One follows the other like the forming and crashing of a North Shore wave. No hesitating. No reminding. No negotiating.
You’re an NFL referee calling em’ like you see ’em.
Once you prove that you’re all-in committed, the testing will stop. Every. Single. Time. Therefore, in this case, there is no reason to reteach. In other words, testing isn’t a reason.
The answer to being tested is consistent follow through.
However, there are two situations that do call for reteaching. The first I hesitate to even call reteaching.
It’s when you’re reviewing your plan.
For example, the second and third day of school (and more), it’s smart to review your plan in greater detail to make sure every student understands its ins and outs.
Daily review can also limit testing because it shows that classroom management is a priority.
The second situation is critical. It’s something many teachers either miss or misinterpret. It can also lead to disaster and total loss of control.
It’s when more than a small few students are misbehaving at the same time.
In other words, four, five, or even a lot more students begin misbehaving at once or one right after the other. In this case, they’re not testing you.
They’re misbehaving because you didn’t teach your plan with enough clarity, detail, and emphasis or you’ve already proven to be inconsistent. Either way, they’re misbehaving because they believe you’re a pushover.
Thus, the moment you notice multiple students misbehaving, stop everything, cancel whatever you have planned, and reteach your classroom management plan with greater boldness.
Reteach it with double the modeling, double the explicitness, and double the practice. Hammer it home.
Your students must know what does and doesn’t constitute breaking your classroom rules as well as you do and they must believe you mean it. If they don’t, then misbehavior is the result.
Now, it’s important to mention that there is a lot to this article and the strategies mentioned, all of which have been covered extensively on this website and in our books.
However, if there is something in particular of which you need clarification, please let me know below and I’ll put it on the list of future articles.
In the meantime, if you follow the path above and ensure all gray areas are removed and you prove that you do what you say, then you’ll have laid the foundation to a great school year.
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One thing I would like advice on from experienced teachers is on how to call on students to share. Let’s say you have a bellwork question for them to fill out on a notecard or post it when they come into the room. If I call on several students to read aloud what they wrote, what is a good procedure to keep other students from talking out of turn? It doesn’t work well to have all 4-6 students read it. Should I give them all 10 seconds to first share with the person next to them, and then call on two students who raise their hands to read it aloud? I put up a 1-2 minute timer on the board for them to write. How to get their attention (count down 3 2 1 and raise hand?) What do you think? Please give me any and all advice.
I like letting them share with the person next to them first, because that requires all students to participate, versus having just a few share and participate. If you’re short for time, after they’ve already shared with their partner, you could ask for just 1 or 2 people to share. Sometimes if I can tell they all already participated and there’s not too much interesting conversation to follow up on… I just move on after they partner share.
As far as keeping other students from talking out of turn, that is something you have to teach as part of your classroom management plan. You need to make clear that they should be listening and raising their hand not just when the teacher is talking, but when ANYONE, student or teacher, is sharing with the class. In my experience, students are more likely to interrupt their peers than me, so this is something you’ll really want to model and practice with them as you go through your classroom management plan.
For getting their attention, any signal can work as long as you teach it to them. I use this website’s suggestion of just saying “May I have your attention please?” but during staff meetings this week I’ve noticed the most effective one is “If you can hear me clap once, if you can hear me clap twice.” I think it matters less which one you pick, and once again just that you teach it and practice it with students until they know to finish talking and give you their full attention when you use it.
I’m assuming students are raising hands to share what they wrote. Often, this results in students prematurely ending their thinking at best and misbehaving at worst. An alternative is to have students put a thumbs up on their chest. (They can use the opposite hand from the one with which they write.) They can add more fingers to signify additional ideas. This routine allows others to continue thinking in silence and reinforces that quick thinkers should also continue thinking and indicate additional ideas by putting up extra fingers. I hope this helps.
Thanks for this article. Where things get out of control for me is with being inconsistent because I didn’t see things. When I explain something, I formulate fresh (you somewhere even say this is good) and adapt to questions that come from students (raising hands of course) to clarify, or I ask them questions to see if they understood. Such a conversation puts a considerable cognitive load on me, in a good way, but I can miss other things. It has happened that someone starts making nonsense while I answer a more difficult question and I only notice when a victim starts complaining. I’m not sure how to improve on multitasking, explaining as well as noticing everything going on on the side when I teach. I basically would need to give them everything in writing to be free to observe. Would you do that for a while at the beginning of the year, or do you recommend something else to train the multitasking of teaching and observing?
Also, they do think I’m a pushover just because I’m friendly, many appreciate this but some take advantage of it. There was a class where I would not even have gotten to model anything. Maybe also there, having the whole rules intro as a backup in writing ready to hand out might be smart. But I don’t know. Thanks!
We just finished first week of school and I spent the first two days really driving home the rules and then we had a quiz about it on Friday. It really drove home that I think they are important.
I wrote all my rules, redlines, and major procedures on one page front and back. Told them to keep it with them always because we would be reviewing it every Monday, especially after a long weekend.
Redlines are the major things that trigger an immediate school-level disciplinary action called a “yellow card” that carries an hour detention. Red line means they don’t get a warning, or what I call a yellow flag (one step before a yellow card). Things like lying, cheating, stealing, cuss words, name calling, bullying in any form, even “defiance” which I defined for them as disobeying a directive- which can be a small request that isn’t done like closing your laptop or getting back to being on task.
It’s been great. I also implemented something this year where I found out the ASL hand signal for “stay” which looks like the hang loose sign—in my class, if I use that and wiggle that at a kid, it means stay after school and come see me. All they have to do is report what they did wrong and what rule or redline it broke.
That way I can still be pleasant with them, carry on with my lesson without having to stop, say a word of correction, or showing any anger. I put the onus on THEM to figure out what rule they broke.
I was in the same situation- too nice and they took full advantage. Now I can be as nice as I want to be, keep a great classroom management plan in check and the kids actually respect you more and like you more.
I like the idea of a quiz, and I might add that this year! I would also use the quiz to find specifics I need to clarify and reteach (third grade). Thanks for a great idea!
Wow, these ideas are awesome. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Sadly, detention is not a thing in my country. I can’t even take 5 minutes aways from recess.
I think it is important to allow students to share out their thoughts and to be held accountable for doing the bell work. All students need the opportunity to practice reading and speaking what they wrote…so yes sharing (helps with oracy and speaking) with a shoulder partner is ideal. A suggestion is to have one person from each table group (who is willing) to share out to the whole group. Possibly, once the timer goes off, pencils down, turn and talk to your shoulder partner. Once the buzz of sharing dies down, then ask for one person from each table group to share out. Also, you can try inside/outside circle where students rotate sharing with various people.f
Was curious, does this apply to kindergarten as well, or do we have to approach in a different way since this is often their first time in school? How strict, how lenient, is there a different approach for K?
thank you everyone, very helpful thoughts. I love having my students have an immediate warm up where they write for 2 minutes when they arrive for reading intervention, and keeping everyone listening and fingers following along as we read together. I appreciate the tips on turn and talks
So I anticipate if I am consistent and pervasive with MY classroom rules and expectations, there will be the day administration visits for the 5×5. I already know that their wonderings will go to PBIS, which is a district initiative. I think PBIS does more harm than good. How can I respectfully deflect their efforts to guide me into PBIS? How do I sell them on the benefits of rules and consequences vs. the notion of usings rewards for the inherent routines that I am seeking to establish and maintain?
https://smartclassroommanagement.com/2017/01/28/how-to-teach-at-a-rewards-focused-school/
Thank you for your reminder of Smart Classroom Management. As always your article is beneficial.
To Ms./Mr. Wanderdust, To call on students to share, plan a system of management such as getting popsicle sticks and put every students name or number on one of the sticks, place the sticks in a can. Tell the students one or more students name will be drawn each day to share with the class. Once a student has shared, put his/her name out of the can until all students have shared. Then start over or Choose a few names each day starting with the first or last name on the roll. continue until all students have been chosen. Then start over. You may also request volunteers, However, record who has volunteered and when in order to include all students. From Verlyn Brown