1. You
have only one chance to start the year off right. Plan and prepare for a day that will set the
tone and expectations for the whole year.
2. Smile
and be approachable. When I started
teaching, several veteran teachers advised me “not to smile until Christmas”. That was not good advice for creating a
classroom environment that is warm and supportive.
3. Set
your expectations high. Be specific
about what you expect from students.
Teach routines and procedures explicitly. Model and practice them. Practice them again. If students don’t perform routines and
procedures as you expect them to, stop and re-teach, then have them do it
again. Time that you spend in teaching
procedures is an investment that will pay high dividends.
4. Teach
a routine for everything—what to do when you enter the classroom in the
morning, how to hand in your homework, how to line up, how to pass papers down
the row, etc.
5. Don’t
relax your expectations at the end of the day.
When it’s time to send them off, stick to your end-of-day
procedure. Model and practice how you
need your students to clean up the classroom and get organized to leave. Again, if they don’t follow expectations,
stop and try it again.
6. Spend
time as needed throughout the first days, and even weeks, of school to make
sure that routines become routine.
Whenever you see a problem, stop and re-teach. If you become lax with your expectations,
behavior will start to deteriorate.
