Four Tips for Classroom Management in December

 

December is an interesting time in the classroom.  Everyone is excited about the holidays and anticipating the upcoming winter break.  That level of excitement can sometimes be a lot to handle in the classroom.  😜 The best way to handle that is to be proactive and embrace all of the fun.  It's also important to revisit procedures and expectations, as well as review social emotional learning topics.  In this post, we will cover four tips for managing your classroom in December and ways you can build community, which will in turn lead to happy students and a happy teacher.

Use Read Alouds to Build Community

A Little Spot of Christmas by Diane Alber is a great story to use to get students in the giving spirit this holiday season.  You can use this and the activities below as a sort of behavior management tool up until winter break.  Encourage students to be Santa's Helpers in the classroom, just like in the book.  In the story, Spot wants to give a gift to Santa and comes up with the idea of doing kind things for others as a way to give back to him for all he does.

The book covers five traits that students can exhibit as a gift for Santa: kindness, patience, being thankful, giving, and love.  You can use this as a quick read aloud during your morning meeting, such a great way to start your day!  Each day focus on a different trait, making an anchor chart of what each looks like, sounds like, and feels like.  Students can then make their own lists in an included mini booklet of ways to demonstrate that trait at school.  

You can also give each student a Santa's Helper BINGO board.  As they perform the act for each trait, they get to color that space.  They can continue this unit they fill up their board.  Such a fun way to be a helper at school!

Students can also make an ornament to give to someone, write a love note in which they tell someone why they care about them, write a thank you card, and make a Christmas tree craft with each of the traits that they can send off with your classroom elf for Santa or take home to leave out for Santa.  These will also look super cute on a bulletin board!

Below are a few other favorites that you can incorporate for building empathy, resilience, and gratitude into your classroom.

Review Classroom Procedures and Expectations

If you have a classroom promise or rules, go over those again.  Discuss goals and what is going well and not going well.  How can you as a group improve?

Go over specific examples and behaviors in the school and classroom.  Discuss why it's important to be respectful, responsible, safe, and kind.  Students always respond better when they know the why behind the expectations.

Do a good choices/not so good choices sort.  Keep it up so that students can refer to it as needed.  

Provide Incentives for Students to Work Towards

Sometimes, you need to focus on a specific behavior that the class needs to work on.   I made these Classroom Management Games years ago to hone in on an expectation and to positively reinforce it.  Let's say your students are blurting a lot during instruction.  We would play Blurt BUMP in which the class plays against me.  If they blurt, I get a piece.  If they are raising their hands to speak, I point it out and choose a students to add a game piece to the board.  You can bump each other off the board.  I never bump them, but they love to bump me!  The first to get to four in a row wins.  You do have to be consistent with it, as well as be an encourager.  Once they get that behavior down, I stop playing the game.  They don't notice that I take away the incentive, because they become more intrinsically motivated.  

The December games include Blurt BUMP, Holly Jolly Helpers, Deck the Halls with Smooth Transitions, Fa La La La La Voice Levels, and Santa's List Challenge.  For that one, you can choose a behavior you want to focus on for that game.

If the class wins the game, they get a prize.  I always tried to something free like a special activity.  The most popular one was bring a stuffed animal to school.  They would do anything to bring their favorite stuffed animal!  

Encourage Acts of Kindness

When students are kind to one another and to their teachers, it just makes everything else run more smoothly.  That's been the most effective way I have found to manage my classroom.  They just want to be happy and make sure everyone else is happy, too.  The books I mentioned above are great for encouraging that kind spirit, but there are also some activities that I love to help spread acts of kindness during the holidays.

Have students set goals of ways they can be kind to others.  

Everyone loves a compliment!  Have these notes available for students to write compliments to others.  This would really brighten someone's day!

Start your day by playing a game of Acts of Kindness BINGO.  

I have a whole week of mini-lessons and activities for spreading kindness that you can check out HERE.  There are also other units that cover important SEL topics that you can incorporate into your morning meeting.  

Of course, not everything is going to go smoothly...it is after all December!  It's crazy and hectic, and students don't always listen.  Give yourself some patience and understanding, and know that you are not alone.  You showed up and are doing your best!  That's what's important.  I wish you all the best this month!  Let me know if there is any way I can help you or if you have any specific questions; my e-mail is always open to you!  Happy December!