I Teach First: 1st Grade Teaching Resources: Top 5 Classroom Management Tips {Amanda from First Grade Garden}

Hey everyone! This Amanda from First Grade Garden. Life has been busy since I went back to school on Sept. 8th. I can't believe it's already October!! I am definitely adjusting to life as a teacher AND mom. :) I want to share a few classroom management tips that have been saving my sanity during this first month back at school.

Have you heard about Sit Spots?? They are amazing! They are basically just large pieces of velcro that stick to you carpet so that students know where to sit! They come in all sorts of shapes and colours. I bought the large circles in my classroom colours: pink, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. No more squishing all together or forgetting where they sit. I haven't even had to assign carpet spots yet... they just choose a spot when they come to the carpet. It makes transitions to the carpet a lot smoother!

Colour coordinated table baskets! I love when things match. I have three tables of students in my room--they are the blue table, green table, and the pink table. In their table tub they have matching scissors, dry erase markers, and baby socks (to use as erasers). I thought about putting matching washi tape on the glue sticks, but we haven't had a problem losing them yet! :)

Cut down on classroom jobs. I can't be bothered to teach, organize, and maintain 18 different classroom jobs, so I cut it down to TWO. I have a leader and a caboose. The leader goes at the front of the line, the caboose goes to the end of the line, and they both help me with any jobs I need done. Easy peasy. I choose a new line leader each day and the previous day's line leader becomes the caboose. So easy to keep track of!

This is my first year using GoNoodle and my kiddos and I just love it! I just use the free version and find it has a ton of fun videos for the kids. Watching our mascot grow is such a fun community-building activity too. We do a video after each of our three recesses. When they come in from recess, they need to get ready quickly and be sitting on the carpet nicely for us to watch a video. I also check to see if they need to get their wiggles out with a fast song such as Koo Koo Kangaroo or MooseTube, or if we need something calming to get us ready to focus, such as Mr. Catman or Maximo.

My last tip--tidy tubs!! I first saw this idea on Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits (who saw it from Rowdy in Room 300). I have a small tub for each table (colour coordinated of course) that we take out any time we are doing a cutting activity. All paper scraps go inside the tub and not on the floor. At the end of class, one student empties the tidy tub into the recycling bin. This helps for a ton of reasons: less students walking around the room, less paper in the garbage can instead of the recycling, and less paper on the floor. We do a lot of cutting with our interactive notebooks, so this has been a real life saver!