Preparing your class for the first day of school: Part Four (Procedures)

To help make sure that the class runs smoothly, all teachers need to have established routines and procedures.  Having these will cut down on transition time (where many behavior problems arise) as well help the students know what to do.

Think about what are the things you do everyday?  Take attendance?  Collect or handout papers?  Deal with students needing to go the bathroom?  Dealing with no name papers?

You could save time and eliminate almost all interruptions and bad behavior, if you implement procedures.

Taking Attendance:

• Have assigned seating and just look for empty seats
• Have a question of the day and write a response on a sticky note
• Have students move their card, stick, or magnet as they come in 

A Cupcake for the Teacher

Collecting/Turning in Papers

• Always have students pass papers in the same way (back to front or left to right)
• Have a labeled, specified spot for students to turn in papers 

Leaving their Seat 

• The Hand signal method
• crossed finers for the bathroom
• pointer finger for getting up
• all five fingers for asking a question

• The card/cup method
• yellow for the bathroom
• blue for throwing something away or getting new pencil
• red for asking for help

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Needing pencils

• Have jars for students to exchange their broken pencil with a new one only when the teacher is NOT talking 

The Sharpened Pencil

• Students raise broken pencil in their hand and the teacher exchanges it without saying anything (from jar)

These are some tips you can use to make things run smoother in your classroom.  If you have any suggestions for these issues or others, comment below.  I love hearing from you.