Are you struggling with classroom management and are looking for simple, practical techniques for classroom management that will increase student achievement and minimize classroom disruptions? As a teacher of over 20 years, having taught everything from bilingual geometry, Algebra 1, all the way to IB Math and Dual Enrollment College Algebra, these are the BEST tried and proven classroom management techniques.
Having classroom management techniques in place in your classroom will make teaching easier for you. If you’re like me and are teaching a content area where there’s a lot of curriculum to cover, then you want to make sure your classroom is running like a well-oiled machine so that you can deliver content without classroom discipline problems. In this post I am giving you the best techniques for classroom management that will make teaching secondary students easier.
You are going to learn simple things you can instantly do in your classroom that will make all the difference in your classroom management strategy.
After learning about all of these classroom management techniques, you can confidently walk back to your classroom with at least 3 clear changes that you will implement immediately to improve your classroom management.
This post is all about the best techniques for classroom management every secondary school teacher should implement.
Best Techniques for Classroom Management.
Classroom Management Techniques for the Secondary Classroom
1. Learn your students’ names.
From day one, you need to maintain a seating chart and make it a point to learn your students’ names. This will immediately get your students’ attention when they know that you’ve taken the time to learn their names. Granted, this takes time, especially during the first few weeks of school. The kids who are troublemakers, you will probably learn their names on day 1! But everyone else, it’ll take a while.
The best way to do this is to keep your seating chart in a binder or page proctor or even tablet if you’re more of a techy and keep it handy so that you can use it when you’re calling on students to participate. You can also use the seating chart to check attendance. I usually try on the first week to remember their names and I go around during the last 5 minutes of class and call them by name. They appreciate the effort and in no time you will know their name. Click here for a free seating chart that you can immediately use in your classroom.
2. Establish a rapport with your students.
When your students walk into your class, greet them. Ask them about their day. Pay attention. Do they play a sport? Are they on the school’s dance team? Do they have a job? Usually on the first day of school I will give each student a questionnaire asking them for their hobbies and their interests. I read them and at the beginning I still can’t match the information to their faces, but as the first month or two of school pass by, I reread them and then put a face to a name.
Establishing a rapport with your students will immediately let them know that you care and they will usually be more prone to paying attention and working in your class since they don’t want to disappoint you. Click here for an EDITABLE Parent Letter and Student Contact Information Form that you can use in your classroom to get this information from your students.
3. Believe in your students.
Believe that every single one of your students can learn, they can be successful, they can grow up to do great things. Yes, every student can learn. Even those that act like they don’t, are completely apathetic and don’t show any interest in your class. They may be preoccupied with other worries or concerns. But you can’t give up on your students or put them down. They’ll see right through it and they will not do any work for you. Students know when their teachers care about them. And it’s not because you tell them, “I care.” They just know.
Believe in your students. Sometimes as teachers, we’re the only ones they have left to believe in them.
4. Establish a fun and safe learning environment.
When you ask students to solve a problem, ask them to raise their hand if they have an answer in mind or on their paper. Reassure them that you’re not going to call them; that you simply just want to know who has an answer. And then ask for a volunteer to give you the answer or for the whole class to say the answer at once. Then ask the students to raise their hand if they got it right and give them an air high five. This small gesture motivates your students to learn.
5. Be aware of when you’re losing their attention.
I teach math and my first class starts at 7:15 a.m. I am greeted by half asleep students who lack the motivation and energy to learn. So listening to an hour-and-a-half lecture on math is very boring for them. Sometimes though, you do need to deliver content using a direct instructional model. But, be aware of when you’re losing their interest.
Break up the monotony with a funny story. “Omg guys, I totally forgot to tell you what happened to me last week when I went to Target…” and you will see their attention come back to you, they’ll even engage in their own anecdotal story that relates to yours, and then you can redirect them back to the lesson.
6. Break up class time into different activities.
In an hour and a half I can usually go over the answers to the previous night’s homework, give a short 15 minute quiz, present or review a lesson, and then have the students engage in a 30 minute activity that they can work with a partner or small group. That activity can be a coloring activity or task cards (even if we don’t do all task cards in class, we setup a rotation and they can usually complete a third or half of them and the rest they complete for homework). When students are busy and engaged in learning, it minimizes the number of discipline problems in the classroom. I use Fun Math Worksheets to break up the monotony of the class.
7. Have high expectations.
Kids like routine. The higher your standards, the more likely they are to rise to them. I don’t let students turn in work that they rip up from their notebooks and leave those edges on the sides. I give the paper right back to the student and ask them to cut them off. They know they cannot turn in their math work written in red ink or anything other than blue or black ink.
8. Use movement in your classroom – kinesthetics.
When I taught the students about transformations of functions, I had them get up from their seats and stand next to their desk centered in between the desks around them. So then I put a problem on the board like f(x + 2) and they need to understand that this is a transformation of 2 units to the left. So they move to the left two spaces. Then I do f(x) -1 which is a vertical translation down 1 unit, so they step back 1 space. When I teach them about vertical stretches and compressions, I have them raise their arms in the shape of a parabola, then I ask them to stretch and notice how their “parabola” – their arms – get narrower. Then I ask them to pretend that they’re holding a 300 pound weight that is pressing down on them. What happens to their arms? They get wider and lower.
Using movement in your class will get their energy flowing and they’ll be more prone to paying attention for the remainder of the lesson. You can do a simple stretch break with them and that alone will get them back into learning mode. Here’s a lesson on teaching inverse, converse and contrapositive that really works in getting students to learn math from kinesthetics.
9. Don’t raise your voice.
When the bell rings and my students are still talking, I will start class in a calm manner and tell them, “Good morning/good afternoon everyone. Hope you’re all having a good day. Today our goal is to learn how to use the derivative to find the equation of the tangent line to a curve and then we will learn how to find the equation of a normal.” Usually once I start talking they start to quiet down and listen. Sometimes other kids will start telling the others to quiet down so they can listen.
In moments when this doesn’t work and the class is still not paying attention, I’ll look at them and say, “I’ll wait. You still have a quiz on this material and whatever we don’t cover in class you’ll be responsible to learn on your own, so I’ll wait.” And then once they quiet down I will begin teaching again. But I don’t yell. I don’t scream. I don’t lose my composure.
With really unruly classes, turn off the lights. And just stay there until they quiet down. Then turn them back on when they’re ready to listen (assuming your classroom won’t be pitch black when you turn off the lights. I have windows and the light from my Promethean Board).
10. Redirect and model proper classroom behavior.
When I used to teach the bilingual geometry class, those students had been out of school in Cuba or Venezuela or whatever their home country was for one or more years. So they had very little discipline and didn’t know standard classroom routines such as raising their hands before speaking or before coming up to the teacher. They would get out of their seats in the middle of a lesson to come up to ask me a question. I would have to redirect their behavior and tell them, go back to your seat, raise your hand, and when I am ready to answer your question I will call on you. Of course, this took practice!
Or when a pretty girl would walk in the door the boys would start calling them like the way you call a cat, pssss…and it would infuriate me! So I would tell them, in our classroom we don’t do that. Next time it happened, students had to face consequences. Little by little they began to distinguish between proper and improper classroom behavior. This article goes over ESOL Teaching Strategies.
11. Treat all of your students with respect.
Don’t talk down to your students. They are becoming young adults. They reason. In the high school level they start having jobs and responsibilities brought upon their home life or their own personal goals. There are things that these students are facing that you wouldn’t even believe. After teaching for over 20 years, I can tell you that I’ve seen a lot of students deal with many things in their daily lives: the loss of a parent or grandparent or friend, pregnancy, suicidal thoughts, parenthood, physical abuse, being kicked out of their homes because of their sexuality, and so much more that’s on their plate.
Do you think that students dealing with these issues really care about solving 10 math problems for homework?
They have bigger problems than that. Treat them all with respect. Make sure you hold them to high standards but also realize that there might be something else happening in their personal lives and that may be why they don’t complete homework assignments or they might have a job where they close the local grocery store and fall asleep because they’re so tired. Speak with them one-on-one on the side to see what’s going on. Be careful though, as teachers we have responsibilities and obligations to report any cases of abuse.
12. Establish routines.
Think about how you handle papers for absent students. Do you have a designated place on the wall or on a student table where students know that if they’re absent that’s where they will find the handouts/assignments they missed? Perhaps you have everything organized online in a Google Classroom or using Microsoft Teams.
Students need to know the exact procedures they should follow when they are absent so that it does not disrupt the beginning of your lesson the next time they come in.
What about a routine for turning in their homework or late work? Or how do students go to the bathroom? Do you have a pass by the door with a signout sheet for them to write down when they’re going somewhere? How do you handle tardies? How do you keep track of them. What’s your quiz/test makeup policy?
These are all everyday things that occur in a secondary classroom and you need to establish a routine for them that is clearly communicated to all students so that they become independent.
13. Walk around.
It’s such a simple way to get students on task. Proximity control really does work. When I see a student on their phone and not engaged, I walk around slowly towards them and look at them. They will usually put their phone away and pay attention.
Sometimes when I can tell that a student is just daydreaming or lost, I will walk towards their desk and point to the problem we’re on and tell them quietly, focus. Students don’t like to be yelled at in front of other students.
Proximity control is a great classroom management tool to redirect learning and get your students’ attention back on the task at hand. According to this article by Teach Hub, “Physical closeness to a student has been proven to redirect the student back on task. This type of strategy helps to increase student engagement while at the same decrease problem behaviors.”
I can remember when I was in a middle school summer six week class. The first three weeks of school we had one teacher and the second three weeks we had a different teacher, Mrs. Sanchez (to this day I remember her name). WOW! What a difference. Mrs. Sanchez was short and older, but she turned that classroom around so quickly. Mrs. Sanchez never yelled. She simply had routines and policies in place. She spoke with authority and was not intimidated by any of the other students who were over a foot, sometimes 2, taller than her.
You too can take control of your classroom by implementing these techniques for classroom management. Think of three strategies you read about and implement them in your classroom. You will start seeing a change in your classroom management. You can use these strategies with middle or high school students. Remember, believing in your students is a very powerful tool.
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