Classroom Management: Tips To Save You Time and Sanity This School Year
Have you ever
...felt like you cannot get your students attention?
...noticed a time where your classroom seemed out of control?
...released your students to work, only for them to have a bunch of questions?
And all the teachers said…duh! It’s teaching in 2025.
When we do surveys to see what teachers are wanting professional development on, it’s almost always classroom management.
(That’s why at Germinate Conference we have two categories for classroom instruction for content and strategy)
A few years ago, Hannah taught a session on classroom management that lives rent free in our brains. Every single one of us uses at least one if not all of the strategies she taught.
And in June, Sarah and Hannah traveled to teacher conferences to teach these strategies. And then we realized, we have never actually written a blog about them. Whoops.
Here is our “we are SO SORRY for gatekeeping this” blog to remedy our wrongdoings just in time for the start of the new school year.
So get out your paper and pencil, take some notes and get ready to save some time and sanity with these three classroom management tips.
3 Classroom Management Tips To Save You Time and Sanity This School Year
One verbal and two non-verbal strategies to get (and keep) your student’s attention:
💬Call & Response
Fill in the blank
“One, two, three all ______ on ______.”
You know it, you love it (or love to hate it). It’s a simple and common call and response. This is an attention getting strategy where the teacher makes a statement and the students respond in unison with the goal of them noticing that it's time to listen up.
Some common calls and responses are…
Hocus Pocus ➡️Everybody Focus
All Set ➡️You bet
Ready to Rock ➡️Ready to Roll
Macaroni & Cheese ➡️Everybody Freeze
Oh me ➡️Oh my
For upper levels, this might sound silly or elementary, but you don’t know it until you try it. And by trying it, I mean actually commit to doing it for a while before throwing in the towel.
Some modified ideas would be just a statement that you say that alerts the kids to stop chatting like “Eyes and ears up here.” You could also use a noise like a portable doorbell to get their attention.
The kicker with this classroom management strategy is to teach it, practice it, and perfect it. This isn’t something that just works immediately and you don’t need to remind students what your expectations are when the call and response happens.
They need to know their expectations – are they supposed to just stop talking, are they supposed to be in their seats, are they supposed to look up front? Communicate those expectations to them and watch what happens!
2. ❄️ Freeze Body
I am notoriously a mover and a shaker when I’m talking. I will pace, wave my arms like I just don’t care, and basically create chaos anytime I am presenting.
What I found out wayyyy too late in my teaching career is that all that movement is a distraction. And as a teacher I am usually trying to get students to pay attention to the words I am saying and I was working against myself by being so mobile.
I realized I had to change the way I was presenting to kids to keep the distractions to a minimum.
Hannah, our amazing Solutions Director, taught the G&G community some non-verbal strategies and this first one helped me solve my movement mayhem.
It’s called FREEZE BODY.
Essentially, you choose a place in your classroom that you will stand to deliver your most important information. Maybe those are direction sets or announcements. You will stand there and STAY IN THAT SPOT until you release the kids to start working.
Imagine yourself wearing concrete boots. Concrete boots would be hecka heavy and it would be really hard to move. So try everything in your power to stay in that one spot.
Here is where the magic happens: the more consistent you are, the more pavlovian the kids get. They start seeing you walk toward or stand in that spot and guess what happens… they start to get quiet on their own. 🤫
No lie, I taught this in a workshop a few weeks ago and in 45 minutes by the end of the sessions the participants started to notice me in my freeze body spot and a hush flew over the crowd.
And you better believe once I did it in my classrooms, it worked. I would do this in conjunction with a call and response.
So in a classroom, maybe the kids are working in groups and I need them to clean up supplies before the bell rings. I would walk to my freeze body spot, say my attention getter (Eyes and Ears Up Here) raising my right hand, I wait until everyone is quiet (and if some are not, I say their name to redirect) and then I move on with my announcement.
Where do you think your freeze body location will be in the classroom?
3. 🚶Exit Directions
I’m saving the best (IMHO) for last. The day I was taught this strategy, it changed my teaching career forever.
Exit directions are for WHEN YOU EXIT THE TEACHING.
Think about it, you are standing in front of the class giving detailed instructions about the next activity, let's just say it’s butt welds (hehe).
You have to make sure to remind kids about safety procedures, what weld bays they will be using, what electrode, where to find their metal, how to turn it in, and what to do when they are finished.
That is a lot of information for students to digest, especially if it’s only spoken. I know when I get verbal directions it’s in one ear and out the other.
Exit directions don’t take away those verbal directions, but rather they add a visual element to help the students once you release them to do their work.
Why does this work? A few reasons:
Allows students to have a visual reminder of their job
Provides icons/images to support ELL students or student who have trouble with literacy
Allows an anchor for the activity to be present at all times
Drastically reduces the amount of times you hear “what are we doing?”
LITERALLLLLLY as I was teaching this to a group of ag teachers, I sent them off to make their own exit directions and someone walked in late. He just looks at me like “what are we doing here?” And I realize OH NO, I DON’T EVEN HAVE EXIT DIRECTIONS FOR AN EXIT DIRECTION ACTIVITY. So I needed to sit down with him for a few minutes to explain what we were doing to get him caught up.
Holy freaking airball, amiright?
Here are some examples from our ag classrooms:
(INSERT SCREENSHOTS)
Just remember the three golden rules of exit directions:
Use visuals
Not a lot of words
Make sure they know WHAT they are doing, HOW they do it, and WHAT’S NEXT!
Are these three strategies going to magically fix all your classroom management issues? No, we cannot promise that. What we do know from research is it can save a teacher UP TO an hour and a half every WEEK from redirecting and reexplaining themselves. Anything to get me to stop spinning my wheels and having to say “I just said that, weren't you listening?!”
Try it out, and be ready because we are going to drop 2 more bonus strategies on the next blog!
