Being a midlife career changer to the field of education, you can say I was baptized by fire. I learned quickly that great lesson plans will only carry a teacher so far if she or he hasn’t made a plan for class procedures. You can have your lesson plan laid out, assignments on the board, and your classroom discipline plan all set up, but it is often the little things that make a classroom run smoothly. Listed are five classroom procedures that any teacher, particularly a new teacher, needs to have in place before the first day of school.
1) What to do when you enter the classroom. This is the first thing to have planned. I have learned from experience that if you expect your students to sit down, open their books to the page listed on the board and start working, you are in for a surprise. It is important to have some type of warm up exercise listed on the board, or better yet, use the trusty overhead and have and assignment appropriate to the course you are teaching. I often set a timer. I explain that you have five minutes from the time the bell rings to complete the warm up. I also assign a percentage of their grades to warm-ups. I find ten percent is fair. If they know the warm up counts towards a grade, they are more than happy to do it.
2) What to do with work when finished. There are many variations on this. Some teachers have the students keep a notebook for each subject, some have folders, and some have a turn in box. I found that a turn in box works well. I have one coded for each subject or period I teach. They turn in the sheet or work in the box when they are finished. This also allows them to get up and move around some.
3) Passes. This is another important thing to have out of the way at the beginning of the year. Some teachers have a sign out board and only one student can be gone at a time. Others are strict about no one out, unless an emergency. My goal is to teach responsibility, so I use the child’s school planner, where they have a space for passes. Once you’ve used up your three passes out of my class per quarter, you have no more, so I advise the students to use them wisely. I don’t allow them to get up during warm up, the last five minutes, a lecture or test.
4)What to do when you finish early. Again teachers have different procedures for this. With my class, it depends on what we are doing. If it is a test, the students remain in their seats and read their library books. But if the lecture is over, they are doing individual work or group work and the work is turned in, they are free to choose a center. They can write in their journals, or go to a reading center. This way, they are always occupied with something creative.
5) Homework. I assign homework on Monday, Tuesday and Thursdays. I find that many children are involved in church activities on Wednesday nights, so homework is not a good idea that night. Anything you give on a weekend, will probably never make it back to school. This is why I assign only on Monday, Tuesday and Thursdays. Thank goodness for planners. Every day, I write the homework assignment on the board in the upper right hand corner. They are responsible for writing the assignment in their planner and a parent will sign it so they are aware their child had homework. Homework counts ten percent of the grade. If parents sign the homework space, the child gets extra credit of one point to be used on the next test. They love having three extra points per week to use to bring up a test grade.
Hopefully, these suggestions about classroom procedures will help if you are a new teacher. Even experienced teachers need help with their classroom procedures from time to time. No one teaches you these procedures in college, they are simply something you create out of neccisity.
Reference:
- Experience
