Proactive classroom management definition

It’s about strategies for controlling students’ behaviours, preventing problems from occurring and keeping the noise down. So, proactive classroom management aims to create an environment that supports and facilitates both academic and social-emotional learning.

This requires forethought planning and consideration of students’ cognitive as well as emotional and physical needs.

Yet, the process pays off since research has shown that effective classroom management lies in how to prevent misbehaviour rather than how to respond to it.

Jacob Kounin (1970) claimed as behaviours ripple through the classroom the teachers who use proactive classroom management can avoid an escalation with often quite a subtle redirection that avoids having to stop to handle the interruption and restart the instruction.

This means that proactive classroom management is a powerful tool to avoid behavioural interruptions and downtime in the classroom that prevent active engagement during instruction.

Proactive classroom management strategies

To minimize disruptions and distractions, we need to focus on two goals: maximizing academic learning time and increasing students’ engagement in learning. These are paramount for effective classroom management since they make students busy learning, more productive, and learn at their best.

Here are 6 proactive classroom management strategies you can use to maximize academic learning time and increase students’ engagement in class.

1. Establish instructional routines

Teaching involves a sequence of events such as handing out and turning in materials, lesson transitions, interacting with students, moving in the classroom, monitoring students’ work, etc. These are part of the classroom routines students are involved in regularly.

So, to maximize instructional time and get students engaged there is a need for a system of organizing those events. That system is called instructional routines.

Instructional routines embody classroom rules and procedures to do or accomplish tasks (for example how and when to submit assigned homework) as well as expectations or the desired behaviour in a given situation (putting away all electronic devices, listening to others, participating in a class discussion, etc.).

So, setting instructional routines will save you a lot of time and effort. Because they provide smooth classroom transitions, build instructional consistency, and maximize instructional time and students’ engagement.

To make effective use of instructional routines in your classroom be sure to teach and reinforce them from the beginning of the school year.

This is through explaining the desired behaviour and its rationale, demonstrating the behaviour, helping students practice the bahaviour, providing positive consequences to students for meeting the expectation, and providing instruction feedback when it is not met.

Behaviour rules have to be consistent with the school rules and administrators will support them. They also need to be explicit, specific to the observable behaviour, and limited in number.

2. Build positive relationships

We can’t teach students to behave well if we make them feel worse. So, our relationships with students are powerful. They impact not only students’ learning attitudes but also their feelings and future decisions.

Being professional, supportive, and friendly with students reflects that you care about them and also value them as individuals. This will help you establish trust, a key to an effective classroom.

In this case, you’re not just going to earn students’ respect and minimize distractions, but you’re going also to make them engaged and willing to invest in their learning.

3. Plan proactively for the physical space

This includes the layout of the movable furniture and the pathways students use to move through the classroom. The kind of classroom arrangement you decide will determine the type of students’ interaction expected.

For instance, when you set chairs in a circle, this communicates to students that they’re all expected to speak and interact with each other.

So, when you plan for that arrangement you’re not just thinking about the kind of instruction that will occur and determining students’ roles, but you’re also considering how flexible you need to be to confer either with groups or privately with individual students.

While planning for the arrangement of furniture you also need to consider space or the aisles between furniture. You should allow students to move safely in and out of their chairs to access materials, work in groups, and sharpen their pencils without distracting their peers sitting nearby.

Those aisles should also allow you to interact with each student and get needed classroom instructional materials.

So, proactively planning your physical space is a way to reduce distraction and encourage students’ focus on instruction because you will avoid downtime by getting the space organized.

4. Maintain momentum

This is among the most important proactive classroom management strategies to keep students engaged in class.

As the lesson progresses, it’s necessary to keep students focused on instruction, leaving little opportunity for behaviour interruptions. To do so, maintain the lesson momentum: making transitions from one lesson element to another smoothly while keeping students on task.

The following tips can help you maintain momentum:

• Cue students on important points to get ready for what will happen next (Listen to this, here is, your attention please, etc,.);
• use visual or verbal reminders and cues to direct a student to more appropriate behaviour (a hand signal, flicking the light, etc.);
• move around the classroom during all parts of the lesson maintaining eye contact;
• call students by their names to give directions, involved in the conversation, give examples, etc.;
• attend to more than one thing at a time. For instance, while writing on the board and students are listening, explain the task or read aloud what you’re writing. While students are taking notes, walk around the room and check off students who have their homework on display;
• to help the student get on task while avoiding escalating the behaviour, repeat a direction, rule, or the task’s statement privately;
• use mild responses for minor misbehaviours or accidental misdeeds like making eye contact with two students chatting during a silenced reading task;
• integrate humour that is kind and inclusive rather than sarcastic and alienating.

 

5. Teach conflict resolution strategies

Disruptions and disturbances can also occur when students encounter problems in learning to regulate their behaviours. This does not only affect their relationship with teachers but also their relationships with their peers. Conflicts can arise among students as a result of a classroom debate over a controversial topic.

So, teaching students to resolve conflicts is one way to help them share control, thereby minimizing distractions and disturbances.

Therefore, you can create opportunities for students to learn how to manage conflict when it occurs (for instance not taking turns). This is through teaching them how to handle the conflict, classroom discussions about the problem, and encouraging them to devise class strategies to address it.

Bringing mindfulness into the classroom with your students is also important to avoid any classroom conflicts. Because it helps practice wellness and supports building a positive learning community.

You can integrate movement for transition, ask students to meditate when they come in from recess, practice yoga, mindful hip-hop songs, etc.

Hence, we need to establish our practices of well-being such as mindfulness or yoga before introducing them to our students.

So, start with the self, and practise any form of wellness so that you can teach this to your students.

6. Provide positive feedback

Students need instructive feedback that can help them understand class rules and procedures when they’re not meeting expectations. That feedback should be specific and descriptive, clarifying the consequences of breaking the rules.

You can meet with students (individually) to discuss those issues and also seek the reasons for breaking those rules.

Positive feedback needn’t be just instructive or informative, but also prompt students to improve their behaviours. This is through praising and rewarding students who meet an expectation. This can motivate those who didn’t display the desired behaviour to be re-directed.

So, providing regularly positive feedback to students can help you maintain communication with students, clarify misunderstandings and confusion, and prevent any conflict or struggle from escalating.

These were the most useful proactive classroom management strategies.

Proactive classroom management is a powerful way to avoid discipline issues in the classroom. The suggested strategies in this post will help you devote much time and energy to instruction, thereby maximizing more learning opportunities for your students. So, use them you’ll see the difference.