How has your start to 2024 been? Have your class been cool, calm and collected…or has there been some teething issues? 👀

 

The first few weeks of a new school year are always the most daunting for both students and teachers. Meeting new people, exploring a new space, learning new things…it can be a lot to take in! One of the most important parts of the start of Term 1 is establishing strong behaviour management practices in your classroom so that your students clearly understand what’s expected of them in their new environment. In this blog, we’ll be diving into some of our best recommendations for starting your 2024 school year off on the right foot. If your students are comfortable and confident, then you will be too! 💛

 

 

 

Your school likely has its own personalised program for behaviour management, but that doesn’t mean you can’t integrate your own processes into your classroom to ensure all your students have the best possible chance of success!

 

Here at TT, we’re firm believers in the importance of nurturing the whole child, and in taking the time and space necessary to make sure students know how to emotionally regulate themselves and their behaviours for a more holistic understanding of their feelings, choices and consequences.

 

These are some of our best tips for setting up behaviour management processes in your classroom:

 

💛 Develop an Understanding of Emotions: Knowing how you’re feeling and why you might be feeling that way is key to understanding how to self-regulate and make positive choices! You and your school might be familiar with the Zones of Regulation program, which breaks down emotions into four colour-coded groups to make it easy to recognise and acknowledge how a student might be feeling (ie. “I’m feeling a bit yellow today, what can I do to help myself get to green?”). Our Wellbeing Check-In on the Digi-Tool Dashboard is perfect for supporting learning about the Zones and identifying individual emotions; plus, you can use it to track how students are feeling and tailor your daily management to cater for individuals who might not be feeling their best!

 

Not using Zones of Regulation? No worries! We have a heap of handy resources on the webby to help you and your students explore emotions and their effect on the individual. Try using our How Do You Feel? Poster as a visual reference point, or practise identifying different emotions using our Emotion Drawing Worksheets.

 

💛 Establish & Maintain a Routine: Students thrive on routine! Having clear expectations for what to do and how to do it makes it easy for students to aim for success, and helps them to feel comforted by knowing what to expect on a daily basis. A morning routine is a fantastic starting point; use our Digital Calendars in our beautiful decor pack themes to help you plan your morning mat time.

 

💛 Build a Calm Corner: We love a Calm Corner at TT! Set up a dedicated space in your classroom where students can go when they need time to think, calm down or self-regulate. Fill it with comfy cushions, blankets, plushies, fidget toys and whatever else your students might need for support. Then, use our Calm Corner PACKAGE to decorate the space and give your students visual reference points for calming strategies!

 

💛 Use Vocal Cues: Need to get your students’ attention? Attention grabber call-outs are a great verbal cue to get students to stop and listen to instructions! You can experiment by adding in hand movements or additional actions to make sure you’ve got their full attention. Pick your favourite call-outs from our Attention Grabbers Posters set, hang them up somewhere in your classroom and get started!

 

 

 

Having visual references for behaviour management strategies and rules is crucial! Visual references remind students of expectations and create accountability when those expectations aren’t met. Here are some of our favourite ideas for creating visual tools to support behaviour management:

 

💛 Use a Visual Schedule: Students are much better at managing their time and emotions when they have clear expectations of how their day is going to go. Using our Schedule Cards is a great way of allowing students to visually track what’s happened during their day and what’s going to happen next, allowing them to be prepared for time constraints and transitions. You might like to use these cards as part of your morning routine to work through the day’s schedule as a whole class!

 

💛 Set Whole Class Expectations: At the beginning of the year, discuss as a whole class what your students believe the behavioural expectations should be in their classroom. Use their responses to create a collaborative poster using one of our In Our Class editable posters, and display it prominently in the classroom. Have a student that’s not meeting your expectations? Remind them of the requirements they agreed to and help prompt them to start making positive choices!

 

💛 Let’s Play Behaviour Bingo: Our Behaviour Bingo resources are a great way to track whole class behaviours and reward positive decision making. Students draw a number each time you note that they’ve made a positive choice in the classroom – the requirements for this is entirely up to you! Cross off the number on the classroom poster when it is drawn. Each time your class gets four in a row, they earn a reward! 🎉

 

💛 Use Hand Signals: Mat time can be a challenging experience for managing behaviour, with interruptions and call-outs being a near constant source of annoyance! 😮‍💨 Instead, use our Hand Signals Displays to assign simple hand signals to different potential interruptions, such as needing to go to the bathroom. This way, a student can use a hand signal and you can dismiss them without even needing to interrupt your sentence!

 

 

 

So, maybe you’ve done all the right things, set all the important expectations, made your consequences clear…and your class is still starting to slip up 🤔 It happens! Sometimes an additional activity might be all that you need to give your students a quick reminder of what’s expected or why it’s expected. Check out some of our favourites below!

 

💛 Bin Bad Behaviours: This Upper Years-targeted activity is great for students to understand ways of being respectful in everyday life. Students cut and paste different scenarios to show whether they’re a respectful behaviour or if they belong in the disrespectful behaviours bin. Then, they’re prompted to think about the effect making disrespectful choices might have on the people around them. Encouraging students to think empathetically about their choices will support them in making more positive decisions in the future!

 

💛 Feelings Reflection Template: Has your student made a poor choice? This activity is great to use as a self-reflection after they’ve had time to regulate their emotions. Using this task, students reflect on how they were feeling when the incident occurred, how it affected their choices, and what they can do from now on to help calm themselves down and avoid making other negative decisions in the future. This accountability helps students to understand the reasons why they may have chosen to break classroom rules and supports their self-regulation skills.

 

💛 Good or Bad Social Skills POWERPOINT: For some students, it can be challenging to understand how different choices in social situations can affect the people around them. This interactive PowerPoint is an invaluable resource for students to use to explore different types of social situations and how others might feel about them.

 

💛  The Big Reaction Board Game: This easy-print activity helps students to practise feeling empathy for others by asking them to imagine how they would feel in different situations while playing a fun board game. Empathetic students are less likely to make poor choices in the classroom as they’re more considerate of the feelings of their peers and how their actions might affect them!

 

 

 

The most important part of behaviour management is consistency, consistency, consistency!

 

Set your expectations, be clear, and make sure students understand the consequences of different actions. If students make a poor choice, be sure to spend time clarifying exactly what happened that didn’t align with classroom expectations. Why did this happen? What can we do together to ensure this doesn’t happen again? Keep your students accountable for their actions, but make sure they know that you’re a team and you’ll help them to make the right choices in the future 💛

 

Let us know what your favourite behaviour management tips are! ⭐️