Classroom management procedures are what make class run smoothly, and you have to have control over the class before you can teach anything. Your classroom management procedures can (and should) change if they are not working, but make sure you are deliberate and explain why you are going to change it so you don't look wishy-washy to your students. Students crave routine and order, so make sure you have procedures in place for them. I will write a future post about my procedures. #3. Under-plan your lessonsThis may seem counterintuitive, so give me a second to explain. I am a severe over-planner. I don't have a procrastinator's bone in my body and it drives a lot of people crazy, but that's another story. My first year teaching, I wanted to plan weeks in advance and have all my copies ready to go! What a waste of paper that turned out to be! I completely miscalculated how long things would take. Lessons that were supposed to take five minutes took forty and visa versa. Furthermore, I had no idea how to anticipate the kinds of questions my students would ask. Their questions would inform my explanations and help me see where I needed to reteach. So within a few days of my first year teaching, I had to throw out most of my lesson plans because they weren't relevant to the kids I was teaching. I had to learn to be OK with planning for Monday and Tuesday on Sunday, and for the rest of the week on Tuesday. If I ever tried to get too far ahead, my kids (or a special schedule) would jolt me back to reality. There is just no use in planning too far ahead during your first two years teaching, or your first time through any new curriculum. That being said, you should always put a great deal of effort into planning the lesson in front of you at that time. The more you plan, the less likely you will be to run into trouble. Try to keep some filler games in your back pocket too for those days where you get through material more quickly than expected. #4. Record everything!This is HUGE! You're not going to have time to fill out those fancy lesson plan templates you were forced to do while student teaching (unless of course you are required to turn them in to your administration, and then you better make that a priority!). But you HAVE TO keep good notes about what you did, what worked, and what totally failed. My favorite way to do this is in Google Sheets. I create a template in Google Sheets for each quarter and a new tab for each week. I type in my lesson plans in list form and then in the column next to it, I leave myself a place entitled "Notes for next year." This is the most important part. During lunch or after school, I quickly fill in anything I need to remember like
If you are lucky enough to teach the same thing two years in a row, these notes will become invaluable to you, but also, if you loop and will need to remember what you did three years ago, you will be overjoyed that you did this. I print mine off each June and pay $4 to have Office Max bind them into a book so that I can reference it the next time I teach that class. Along the lines of recording everything, I should also put in a quick plug for documenting student behavior and parent interactions. You never know which parent or child is going to be your squeaky wheel, so if you start to notice a pattern of behavior in a child, jot down some notes by hand or on this free electronic template. Ask your mentor if you school has a policy about documenting (some schools do not allow electronic documentation), but always remember to keep notes factual. For example:
#5. Don't be afraid to deviate from the bookThis one is for the language teachers specifically, although it may apply to other areas as well. If your school uses a Spanish textbook, you don't have to go in order. I don't. Our department has decided that we want to finish 4 chapters by the end of the year, but how you get there is completely up to you. I only use my book as a starting place, but I create 95% of my own materials. Looking back, I don't know if this was something I could have done my first year, because I needed to witness what challenged my students, but having those notes about what did and didn't work made it much easier to reorder topics the following year.
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