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This year, I have had the awesome opportunity to work with some first year teachers. It's been great to share some of the tips and tricks I've learned during my nine years of teaching with them. A few weeks ago, one of them asked, "So just how do you keep these big kids quiet in the hall? They always want to talk."
Yes, they do always want to talk. Intermediate kiddos are extremely social beings by nature. Our fourth grade classroom is louder than most, because we do a LOT of cooperative learning structures and brain breaks throughout the day. Which is fine, because it's in OUR room. I do, however, want to be courteous to my fellow teachers when we are walking in the hallway, because I know how frustrating it can be to be in the middle of a lesson and be interrupted by a herd of elephants, I mean students, walking past your room. At our school, we also have lots of students who are receive interventions in the hallway, and they don't need to be interrupted from their hard work every time my students walk down the hall either. :)
Although, hallway behavior with the bigger kids can be difficult, I have learned a few tips and tricks along that way that typically keep my fourth graders quiet in the hall. You'd think by fourth grade they'd have it down, but that's not always the case. My kids get "senoritis", fourth grade is their last year of elementary school, and they think they rule the school. Below are some of my tired and true hallway management tips. I'd love to hear some of your favorite tips in the comments! :)
The biggest piece of advice that I can offer ANY teacher when it comes to walking in the hall, is line order. Give each student each a spot in line, and set them up for success. Does every class really need this? No. However, it's just a nice system to have, because it makes lining up so much easier! I feel my kids out for the few days of school, and then I assign our line order spots. I change up our spots throughout the year as necessary.
After you give your students a line order spot, then it's time to practice. This might seem crazy to some of you, but you don't always know what their previous teachers/schools allowed. Take the time to practice, practice, and practice YOUR expectations in the hall. I promise you'll get that time back when it doesn't take you ten minutes to get back to your room after specials, lunch, or recess.
I do this more so at the beginning of the year, and ease off towards the end of first quarter, but one trick that typically keeps my big kids quiet is our quiet person game. I secretly pick a student before we leave the room, and if they are quiet on the way to and on the way back from our destination, I give the class a bingo number. It helps my class buy into being quiet and respectful in the hallway, and it also helps to develop a good habit that usually follows us all year long.
Finally, BE CONSISTENT! Don't just stress the importance of good hallway behavior at the beginning of the year, and never bring it up again.
Remind students often just how important their behavior in the hallway is to you. Your students learn what's valued/acceptable in your classroom by what you allow. If you ease up on what you expect, with anything in the classroom, then be prepared for inevitable downfall.
Sometimes we get to our destination early, and my class has to wait in the hallway quietly. By fourth grade, they get pretty tired of the quiet game. I play a fun game called "statue" at the end of the day,while we wait for the buses, and it's a hallway favorite too.
To play, I call out "statue" and my students strike a frozen pose. We do have expectations, such as: statues don't talk, touch another statue, or make inappropriate gestures. ;) I pick the best "statue" and they become the judge. I call out "statue" again and my next student judge picks the best statue to be the judge for the next round.
My fourth graders love this game, and it really keeps them quiet in the hallway. You do need to really reinforce what's allowed before you play and do a fair amount of modeling, but once they've got it, they've got it.
Another game we play at the end of the day, and while we are waiting in the hallway is the twenty questions game. I think of an object and allow my students to ask me yes or no questions about the object. They LOVE this game, and it's great inferencing practice. No matter how many times we play it throughout the year, they always get excited when the mystery object is revealed!
When I taught third grade, I'd carry Brain Quest cards around with me every where, and I'd use those when we got somewhere early. My students always loved them, and I need to pick up a fourth grade set! They are great time fillers!
What about you, what are your favorite hallway management tips? Share them below!
Happy Teaching,
Every so often, I get an email or Facebook message via my blog's Facebook page on classroom management. Often these emails come from sweet teacher friends who are new to fourth grade and are wondering what works and what doesn't work with the upper elementary population.
I don't claim to be an expert in classroom management but I AM willing to share what has worked in my third and fourth grade classrooms in the past. Every group is different, so next year it could be possible none of these management strategies work.
When I taught second and third grade, and even my first year in fourth, I used a clip chart.
I actually like using a pocket chart with cut outs instead because I always found they were breaking the clips. I always found the behavior chart to be super motivating with my students. They loved clipping up, especially if they had a rough start to the day. I love that it really instilled the mind set that they really COULD change their behavior. If they got to the top of the chart, they put a sticker on their star. They loved it.
What I didn't like was how some of my fourth graders got so moody about clipping down. Fourth grade is when some of your students start experiencing some of those hormonal changes and it was drama city when I asked someone to clip down. It's also hard to have a clip chart when you are departmentalized. However, I love theses ideas from Christina and Rachelle and would probably use one of them if my teaching partner and I decided to try clip charts again in the future.
Last year, I shared how I use the calendar below and coupons in a classroom economy type system. You can find that post here.
I really love the coding on this calendar and it's a great way to communicate quickly with parents about their child's behavior. However, kids are smart. They purposefully loose them when they get a lot of signatures and are in danger of loosing their bigger reward, such as an extra recess. I didn't have a backup system and that made things hard when you were figuring out who earned the reward and who didn't.
This year I plan on binding this cute free calendar from my friend Sarah and at least try to write down which calendars I may have signed that day to have some kind of record myself.
Shopping for coupons was a little difficult this year. My partner and I shared coupons and sometimes we ran out of good ones. Sometimes we would forget to go shopping and we found shopping every week was hard. Luckily, Laura's coupon pack has full page coupons that we could but in a binder. I think that might be easier for us. Additionally, we may choose to go shopping once a month instead and change the value on some of the coupons. :) If kids carried over a balance of stars/stickers, we just wrote that on the top of their new calendar. Not super pretty, but it worked.
Now even if you find something you really like that inspires your most students to strive for good behavior, there are always outliers of students where that just doesn't work for them. So you need to come up with a plan for them, otherwise you'll be trying to put a square peg in a round hole all year and that's no fun.
For example, one my students used this management system instead. One of my students really loved to clean and really struggled with his behavior. So if he didn't get his calendar signed, he wanted to sweep the floor at the end of the day. Most of ED students have a behavior plan set in place by their intervention specialist and I don't mess with it, or force them to do my system, because what she does works for them.
As far as whole group behavior management, I've tried a lot of different whole group incentives. However, I always come back to behavior bingo.
I found Behavior Bingo back in the day on Mrs. Gold's website. It works for me and has worked for most of my classes. I love it because it doesn't require much extra work for me to have two, since I teach two sections of ELA. I just have two bingo boards. One for the AM and one for the PM.
This year, I used this one from Ms. Sanchez.
I love using Behavior Bingo to reinforce things that my classes struggle with whole group, such as walking quietly in the hallway or transitioning without starting conversations, etc. :)
I keep two bingo boards in the front of my room. I have a pouch of unearned numbers for each class. This is where I draw the numbers when they earn numbers. Each class also has a pouch for their earned numbers, so the numbers aren't picked twice.
Once one of my classes earns bingo, five in a row or four corners, they earn a reward. We brainstorm a list of possible rewards and then vote. The brainstorming allows me to weed out things that just won't work, such as KFC lunches for the whole class, field trips, etc.
In the past, I've send home letters asking for donations for bigger rewards, like ice cream and root beer float parties. Typically, if you aren't asking all the time for donations, parents will help out.
Sometimes your class might earn two bingos quickly, and that's okay. I just stress during our brainstorming to come up with manageable/free rewards that time, especially if I'm footing the bill. An extra ten minute recess or watching a Magic School Bus while they eat lunch are two suggestions of free to me rewards.
One of my coworkers had a super challenging class this past year and she only had twenty-five numbers on her board. This made earning a bingo very manageable for her group. You could do twenty-five squares to start out and then increase the number of squares on their bingo board if you feel 100 off the bat is overwhelming.
Like I mentioned earlier, this is simply what works for me. What works for me, might not work for you and your class. However, the important thing to remember with behavior is that consistency is key. If you want a clip chart to work, make it a point to use it every day! If you don't use it or don't put an emphasis on whatever you are using, your kiddos won't be motivated by it. I found this to be true on the weeks we would go without coupon shopping. They weren't motivated to keep clean calendars because we weren't using the coupons to reward them.
I'm linking up with Miss V's Busy Bees and Ms. D's Corner today. If you are in need of some behavior management ideas, I highly suggest you check their linky out. I clicked around and found some good ones myself.
Check out the linky by clicking {here}.
