With just a few weeks away before the school year starts for many districts all across the United States, teachers are starting to switch from vacation to planning modes.

There is a saying: “you can fail to plan but don’t plan to fail.” In the case of starting the school year off right, new teachers should plan a classroom management plan,(not one of survival) but one that sets the tone for an atmosphere of serious learning and student-teacher accountability throughout the school year.

For new teachers, that means that your first order of business should be developing a classroom management plan. This is the “blueprint” that gives students information on how you want your classroom to be run. You’ll find that presenting rules is not as automatic as you think. It’ll be a challenge for you to find the right “shoes” that suit your personality. This is the journey for every new teacher; for some it’s harder than others.

I’ve included some of my most popular suite 101 articles and blogs that have been helpful for new teachers. As a feature writer, I received comments and questions from new teachers all around the world about classroom management and issues of classroom organization. So I’ve included a few helpful links to help get you started. But, if there are any specific topics that you feel would be most helpful to you right now, (and I mean anything!) please leave me a comment with your request and I’ll see what I can do.

Rules and procedures. - Classroom Management

Have a positive support plan

Effective classroom management

Classroom management systems

The teacher as a classroom manager

Regaining class control

Classroom management styles

Teach rules in elementary schools

Procedures

Planning classroom procedures

How to teach rules and procedures

Classroom management programs

Checking students’ work

First Weeks of School

First days of school lessons

First day of school handouts

Back to school questionnaire

First year of teaching

Classroom organization

Diverse classroom arrangements

Blank classroom seating charts

Using a classroom seating chart

As you can see, everything MUST be spelled out for the students so that the lesson can flow smoothly. That little spark of not understanding will interrupt your ability to teach.

It’s really the classroom management plan that determines the outcomes for the rest of the year. Good luck!

Lesson beginnings are the trickiest for new (and seasoned) teachers to nail. Students can react adversely or positively. The difference between a poor and great lesson beginning is often how well classroom management and content are factored into those first ten minutes.

Here is a checklist to help you implement those great lesson beginnings.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT TIPS

1. Lesson beginnings work with the start of the lesson. Begin your lesson ON TIME.

2. DON’T start by taking the roll call. This is an easy way to LOOSE your students.. DO greet your students, (smile if you can) say “good morning.” Avoid any prolonged discussions with students. You can set a time to talk about this with a student after the lesson. (ie. talking about a grade, etc.)

3. Maintain eye contact as much as possible during those first ten minutes especially. It can be a great discipline preventer.

4. DO write your lesson beginnings on the board including the times, followed by other activities of your lesson plan. Don’t forget the date.

5. Lesson beginnings should be no more than 10 minutes long. Check off your lesson beginning as you transition to the middle (main) part of your lesson.

CONTENT TIPS FOR LESSON BEGINNINGS

1. Effective lesson beginnings should set out to engage ALL the students. In a brainstorming activity for example, stronger students share their answers while the more silent ones listen. In the end, EVERYBODY writes the brainstormed list on the board. In just one simple activity, students are speaking, listening to their peers and writing.

2. Great beginnings should activate the students’ prior knowledge. Again, a brainstorm activity is excellent because it makes use of what students already know before any new information is presented to them.

Anything that will help the students become motivated in the lesson or topic you is a great beginning activity. It sets the stage for the middle (or main) part of the lesson which should also be engaging.

Teacher talk: What kinds of lesson beginnings have worked for you? What was particularly challenging about starting a lesson?

As an American teaching Israeli students, I had to struggle with cultural differences of an Anglo-Saxon in a Mediterranean classroom in addition to learning the ropes of classroom management.

In many cases, there was a conflict between my cultural and classroom expectations. Israeli students are very verbal, opinionated and aggressive and at my last school they were spoon fed all the time. Over time, my ability to effectively run a classroom became much more challenging. I found that this cultural difference created a lot of struggle, heartache and dissatisfaction. The pressure continued and the tension even found its way into the heart of my family. Students’ opinions and whims always seemed to come first before I could even open my mouth to say anything. Many times I felt like a dishrag and yet, I had to move forward.

The result was that I had to work extra hard to establish my authority as a teacher. Parents didn’t always support me. Fortunately, many teachers did. It took me many years before I could feel comfortable as a teacher in the Israeli classroom scene. After a long and hard journey, I EARNED my role as a classroom manager and more importantly, as a teacher. I had EARNED my bread and butter of respect.

The key to building any classroom management plan is to laid the ground rules and procedures and follow through with appropriate consequences. As a new teacher, you have authority and you are in charge. The key is to do this CONSISTENTLY and throughout the school year. This principle applies to both inexperienced and seasoned teachers alike.

In short, here are few tips and resources:

1. As a new teacher, you’ll need to spend 90% reviewing rules and procedures and 10% teaching. Read an article I wrote which gives you information on how to do this effectively.

2. Teaching effective instruction is an important part of maintaining a serious classroom environment for learning.

3. As a new teacher, you will need to be flexible. This means you will need to step back and reevaluate how effective your rules and procedures really are. Are they reasonable enough? Can they be implemented in accordance with a school policy? Do they help create a sense of order and routine while you can teach?

New teachers tend to adapt the authoritative style of teaching. (ie. “I say, you do”) Gradually, new teachers find their own voices in the classroom. Establishing rules and procedures is just one aspect to effective classroom management and instruction.

A few other links:

Teach rules in elementary school.

How do you manage your time?

Using a classroom seating chart

Teacher talk: What tips can you share for new teachers who are just starting to establish their classroom management plans?

Teachers are always asking me about differentiated teaching strategies for ELLs, and how to engage all the students in the best way they possibly can. Differentiated teaching has become a “hot” topic right now in the field of literacy and so, I’m doing all I can to keep up with the research trends and my own book writing on the subject.

Differentiated Instruction - not so entirely new

The concept of differentiated teaching is an emerging teaching concept in the United States, but in Israel differentiated teaching has been around for a while. From preschool age all over, students are already grouped in heterogeneous groups. First grade teachers should think strategically - long term differentiated teaching across the curriculum is a model for raising the standards within the educational system.

How Differentiated Instruction works

Differentiated instruction has become a target model for helping Ells progress, which is an approach that should be applied to all general education classes. The principle of heterogeneous teaching is one and the same in all content areas.

Try and think how to diversify that lesson and open it to engage wider groups of students. Conceptually, the idea of heterogeneous or differentiated teaching involves a main teaching technique:

Same input - different task. Teachers take the learning objective and adapt it to meet the three groups of learning groups - higher - middle and lower ability students. The idea is to engage all the students without recreating three different sets of lessons. This will quickly wear you out as a new teacher.

Materials in Action

For example, if you’re considering bringing in a reading passage on endangered animals, you’ll need three sets of tasks. Students who can read and understand much more proficiently can answer much in-depth and detailed questions (ie. searching for the main idea type questions) while the lower-performing students can be expected to skim and scan for basic information: name of animal, what does the animal eat, other names, location, etc. The middle performing students can answer ‘wh’ questions: who? what? when? where? why? how many? etc.

Here is a great all-in-one web site for differentiating instruction for English language learners arranged according to grades.

Good Luck! Hope you’re enjoying your summer.

Like many new teachers starting out, my biggest challenge and obstacle was dealing with classroom management. I’m not a patient person to begin with, and I often got very antsy when my Israeli students would disrupt, misbehave, not on occasion, but frequently enough for me to become easily distracted. I was still very much fixated on my lesson plan working. But I also wanted to build a manageable connection with my students so that I could teach and they could learn.

It was a hard and difficult journey, but the extra effort paid off. I call this work “the real blood, sweat and tears of a teacher’s life” that most people don’t know. All they see is the (paid) time off, the vacations … in short, the e-a-s-y life. Here are a couple of things that helped me during those first years.

1. Time out - learning how to take a step back, focus on my students and ask myself: what would be helpful now for them?

2. With more difficult students, I needed more case-by-case procedures. Tactics that work were conducting one-on-one tutorials, really listening to them, and providing a lot of positive reinforcement by calling their parents and working the positive reinforcement system to their advantage.

What worked for you as you were developing a connection with your students?

When I started teaching in 2000 at my last teaching post, I was taken on a tour of the school’s facilities, which you can see here. It would be a seven year journey in a school situated in the most beautiful piece of Israel countryside.

Every year, I participated in an orientation that took place during the last week of August along with 130 other teachers. From year to year, there were a few new faces. Most of the talks were frankly uninspiring about the same topics regarding reinforcing learning habits. I cannot remember any single topic that was so useful for my teaching only the connection with the English staff and the feeling that “we’re in it together.”

The Israeli-Lebanese war of the summer of 2006 changed all that “feeling of togetherness” of the small kibbutz reality into an illusion. I, my husband and child left our small kibbutz on the northern border and lived for 34 days as refugees in other peoples’ houses closer to the center of the country. (The distance between the farthest tip of Metulla to Eilat is approximately eight hours) All we had was a green suitcase filled with diapers and toys and a toothbrush and a few clothes. All throughout that time, I wondered if we would come back to a beautiful renovated kibbutz house - still standing. I wrote in my journal every day alongside the beach in Caesaria, which is home to one of Israel’s famous poetess Hannah Senesh of kibbutz Sdot yam. We took trips along the beach and wondered if the rockets would come as far as those blue crystal waters with the huge electrical plant acting as a target reminding us how close we really were to reality.

When the war finally ended on August 18th 2006, I had managed to get the sand out of our suitcase and the muck from our travels. Prior to that, nobody knew if school would open or not. I figured that this would not be a normal school orientation even if school in fact, did open. The result of that last week of August was story after story relating to the power of human strength and endurance of 130 teachers in times of war. It was my first experience because I had endured the war of its pre-middle-post parts just like a lesson only I learned a lot more than a lesson. School psychologists were available to discuss the tragedy of two of my former students’ who were killed in that terrible war and how to deal with the psychological aftermaths. Nobody had answers. Many teachers broke down. But again, the human strength prevailed and we managed to get our feet in the classroom come September 3rd.

As a group of English teachers, we agreed we would discuss the war, its facts, circumstances, personal anecdotes only if students initiated the need. We all craved for a routine - a return from the living dead and for many, from hell. The entire country was in shambles, millions in mourning and suffering from shock.

I remember that I wasn’t the same teacher not then and not now. In front of seventh, eight, ninth, tenth and twelfth graders, I bravely discussed how I and my husband and then one and a half year old son coped with the war. With my matriculating twelfth graders, I read them bits of my journal which later became a published piece for a creative non-fiction contest, which I entered and won. You can read what I wrote here.

Students all looked to me for answers and asked me questions mainly concerning the more subtle details of how I coped. I told them that part of me wanted to go back to the States. Classroom management and lesson planning were not the first priorities anymore. My values of teaching had shifted from myself and right to my students. They too, like myself, needed a guiding word. I was there to give them hope. And we learned how to cope and hope together even though I didn’t have answers.

Since I’m spending my days now building this blog, I sometimes begin the day with a self-doubt voice in my head. But instead of putting the focus on my audience of teachers, I put the focus on myself. Then I heard Suzanne Lieurance’s words, my writing coach, who affirmed that this habit of thought often gets in the way of who we are and who we are aspiring to become.

The same principle can also be applied to teachers especially new teachers. I remember those first few weeks. I was so conscious of myself and the words I used. I had everything written down. When a student misbehaved or a lesson part backfired, I allowed myself to focus on a series of “what if’s?” What if the class goes out of control? What if I cannot finish the lesson? What if I am not a good teacher? and so on.

This puts the focus right back on you.

As a new teacher, you will have both good and bad days. It’s hard though to remember the good days. On the bad days when the lesson does not go according to plan, still continue to focus on your students. What’s going on?

Perhaps that student could use an individual student plan. Perhaps that same student can be your helper? Now, look to your teaching. Maybe you can diversify your teaching by including more opportunities for pair and group work?

The most important thing is to focus on your students, today!

I am busy finding ways to entertain myself this summer. Since writing about new teacher support, I can only be reminded about those eleven years of summer vacation and how fast they went. I hope that you use the time of the summer vacation wisely because it passes so fast. That’s not to say not to enjoy it, but to also know that all good things do come to an end. By the second or third week of August, I am already thinking of the beginning of school worksheets and classroom procedures and getting psyched by teaching. I need though a good month of complete rest and downtime from the adrenaline I exerted all throughout the school year.

By the time I am calmer enough to focus and my thoughts have quieten, (usually by mid August) I take the opportunity to look through my school files and make order. I throw out multiple copies of master copies of templates I’ve accumulated. I usually have a huge pile of papers that need filing. I try to attend an in-service course, I try to combine pool trips with lesson planning (which doesn’t work) and then oops, the final week of August magically appears.

School link love -

Here are a few links of what I am reading in preparation for the school year -

Promoting summer reading at education.com

Discovering a child’s learning style can make all the difference - Learning Forum International

Help your child get organized - NYU Child Study Center

Dear teachers - Please take the poll! Have a great well-deserved vacation!

When do you start planning for school?
( surveys)

Learning styles … ah. If I could write a short book on learning styles, I would.

When teachers are able to successfully plan lessons that tap into students’ learning styles, they are sending a message: “I care about how you cope with the material. Your quality of learning is important to me. I want you to learn the material successfully and, to the best of your potential.”

A lot of what teachers end up learning about students and their learning styles has to do with motivation. When students are motivated to learn, it means that the teacher is doing something right in terms of appealing to the student’s learning. It’s a hard catch to hit the right learning style every time because each student has a completely different learning style. But the good news is that once you find out what makes the student ‘tick,’ then you have already created a mini student profile.

In the past I have distributed questionnaires like this one on learning styles in order to acquire a formal comprehensive profile. I make sure students understand the purpose of the questionnaire and why it is important for the purposes of lesson planning and for me as a teacher. This openness of communication is reflected by their integrity and honesty of their answers.

Before you go crazy thinking well… how can I create a lesson incorporating all different learning styles, let me first tell you first off that observing students is an important part of any new teacher’s career. Watching them interact with each other and the material can provide you with valuable insight.

Another thing is that working with learning styles is greatly dependent on the openness of the teacher. If a teacher is locked into one method of teaching (ie. strictly frontal - I talk and you listen) it will be much more challenging to engage the students other than the format they have been used to. Listening to songs is a great way to appeal to your auditory learners and especially when you are teaching them a second or foreign language. You are really doing for them a great service.

It is possible to also combine differentiated strategies with learning styles. With songs for example, I handed out the song with the missing blanks but without the word bank to the stronger students. To the middle group, I handed a word bank with extra words and to the lower performing group, I handed just the right number of words and even filled in a few blanks on the song template. This may seem like a lot of work, but it really isn’t because the words are prepared in advanced and it is just a matter of paper clipping the words into groups.

Then the groups each with its own task would listen to the song and complete its task. Students of each respective group came to the board and filled in a section of the answers. This final stage appealed to the visual element of learning and involved all students.

Did you know?

There are seven types of learning styles. You can read all about them here.

Go ahead…Ask Dorit!

Do you have any questions or ideas to share about learning styles? Share/ask them in the comment box.

Have a great week!