Well, it’s back to school and it conjures up feelings of excitement, new beginnings, and even a bit of anxiety particularly if you are a beginning teacher (even if you’re not). That’s to be expected, after all you may look back over the courses you took to prepare you for an elementary school classroom and wonder if you are.
When you do look back over the courses that you took to prepare you for elementary education, can you think of any skills or knowledge that you might need but haven’t acquired yet? For example, do you know how to organize a grade book so that you can mark it ‘on the fly’ and correctly assess all your students by the end of the school day? Can you use an electronic grade book?
I know from personal experience that my own “classroom management” course barely skimmed the surface of what I really needed to know to be truly successful. There wasn’t any discussion about how to utilize a grade book, how to take attendance, dealing with audiovisual equipment, distributing supplies to your students, construction noise, just to name a few.
I want to take this opportunity to share with you a strategy that I used with my students and it has saved me a bunch of time and needless to say aggravation. This strategy that I am talking about is, “Always give your students one direction at a time.” I know what you’re probably thinking, “Wow, this is going to take all day to do a simple task.” But I can assure you that it will not. I go into a lot more detail in my classroom management book “Get Started on the Right Foot.” If this was the only strategy that you took away from reading this book, it would more than justify the cost.
Would you like classroom tips and strategies that you can implement immediately? Click Here!
What is a strategy that you have used in your classroom that has worked really well? Please share!
