Category Archives: classroom management

Tech tips from teachers for teachers

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Are you a pre-service teacher about to do your practicum? Or are you a graduate teacher about to enter the profession? Wondering how to effectively use technology as a teacher and with your students, in a way that enhances your wellbeing?

I recently presented at a pre-service teachers conference at University of Technology, Sydney on using technology effectively in the classroom. Here are the highlights of the session. These tips are targeted at pre-service teachers about to go on their practicums and graduate teachers about to enter the classroom.

Google or Microsoft? (or Canvas or everything?)

Many schools will use mainly Google or Microsoft. For Google, this may mean all classes use Google Classroom and the apps that come with Google Workspace for Education such as Google Docs and Google Slides. For Microsoft, this may mean all classes use Microsoft Teams and OneNote Class Notebook. Other schools will use Canvas. Some schools will use a mixture of everything. Before you start teaching at your new school, ask which platforms the students you will be teaching will mostly use so you can become familiar with them. Ask to be added to other teachers’ Google Classrooms and Microsoft Teams (same year level if possible and same subject) so you can see what they’re doing with their classes. My school uses Google Classroom with students and I always add beginning teachers to my Google Classrooms when they ask. That way, they can reuse my posts on their Google Classrooms as a way to support them to develop their craft. For more details on how I use Google Classroom, see this post.

Get WiFi access BEFORE your practicum

This tip is mainly for pre-service teachers doing practicums in a NSW public school. When you first contact your supervising teacher or in your pre-practicum, ask them how to get a NSW Department of Education account for pre-service teachers so you can log into the WiFi. You are not suppose to ask others to log on for you and you don’t want to be using your mobile phone hotspot for your whole practicum. GET THIS ORGANISED BEFORE YOU START YOUR PRAC!

Digital wellbeing

Many teachers (including me) have work apps like Outlook, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams and Sentral on our personal phones and tablets where everything is synced across. This can be very convenient (For example, I usually have my laptop connected to the interactive panel to display the lesson starter activity and I mark the roll on my phone.).However, this also means your work can slowly creep into your personal life and you find yourself responding to every ‘ping’ from your work apps on your personal devices. Everyone has a different way of working and you have to find out what works for you while respecting your colleagues’ personal time and the school systems policies. Here are some considerations:

  • Learn how to schedule send emails (and Teams chat messages) so if you want to write a message in the evening after work hours because it is fresh in your mind, you can have the message land in your colleagues’ emails or Teams chat during work hours. This means you can work the way you want and respect others’ personal time. If you are a pre-service teacher, ask your supervising teacher how they work outside of school hours so everyone has a shared understanding of contact outside school hours.
  • Set expectations for your students. This is particularly relevant for high school. Teenagers often do school work in the evenings, at night (sometimes in the early hours of the morning) and on weekends. I tell my students they can post on Google Classroom at any time, but I will look at their posts and respond on Monday to Friday between 8am and 5pm. I have separate expectations in the school holiday period, depending on the circumstances. If you are a pre-service teacher, ask your supervising teacher what their expectations are for the classes you are taking.
  • If you choose to have work apps on your personal phone, know the privacy implications for the relevant school system. Move these work apps to the last screen of your phone so they’re not immediately visible and available for you to tap when you unlock your phone. Explore features like Focus mode, Personal mode and Do Not Disturb mode to see if and how they work for you.

Tips from teachers for teachers

And finally here are the tips from teachers, deputy principals and principals (who I highly respect and are known for their educational technology expertise and innovations) specifically for pre-service teachers and beginning teachers. 🙂 A big thank you to every one of them for sharing their advice.

Using chat cards to establish learning routines and behaviour expectations

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Establishing clear learning routines and behaviour expectations is fundamental for maintaining an effective classroom environment. In a previous article, I discussed my approach to setting routines and expectations for my year 7 class. At the beginning of each term, I find it valuable to review these with the students to ensure a shared understanding of how our class operates, ultimately optimizing learning time. In the past, I utilised slides, videos, and fill-in-the-blank sheets for this purpose. However, to inject more engagement and interactivity into the process, I have started to use chat cards.

How chat cards can enhance engagement

Each chat card presents a typical scenario and prompts students to identify the appropriate actions. By encouraging student conversations, you can assess their understanding of the established routines. Rather than straightforwardly informing students of the routines, the chat cards prompt them to actively recall and discuss possible responses, enabling you to address any misunderstandings effectively.

For instance, a card might ask about the three steps students should follow upon entering the classroom.

A screenshot of a chat card. The card reads, "When you walk into the classroom at the start of a lesson, what are the 3 things you need to do?"

My class’s routine is as follows: 1. Go to your assigned seat. 2. Take out the necessary equipment. 3. Begin the lesson starter activity. This is a critical part of the lesson routine. It’s important it is consolidated at the start of each term.

Another card asks how a student can determine the required equipment for the lesson. In my lessons, students are expected to look at the whiteboard for this information.

A screenshot of a chat card, which reads, "You are in the classroom. How do you find out what equipment to take out for the lesson?"

In addition to reinforcing routines, some cards highlight complex situations where students may need support to know how to respond in a respectful manner.

A screenshot of a chat card that reads, "Another student is speaking to the whole class. You have realised they made a mistake. What should you do to politely let them know?"

How to use chat cards in the classroom

I find it effective to utilize these cards by organizing students into groups of 3 to 4, designating a reader and scribe within each group. The cards can also be integrated into gallery walks, where students write their responses on post-it notes and place them under the respective chat cards. Alternatively, you can assign different chat cards to different groups and have each group role-play the scenarios in the chat cards. Although I typically introduce chat cards midway through the school year, they can be employed at the start to collectively establish routines and expectations with the class. The possibilities are endless; the key lies in customising the cards to align with critical aspects of your classroom routines and expectations.

Download the editable chat cards

Access the editable chat cards here to tailor them to your needs and the needs of your students.

Get in, learn, get out – How to create classroom routines in 3 easy steps

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Effective classroom management is one of the key challenges in teaching. It can make or break a lesson. It can even determine whether a teacher chooses to stay in the profession. There are lots of books and resources on classroom management. All of them emphasise the importance of routines. However, many early career teachers I speak to often say it is difficult to know how to create routines that work for you as a teacher and your students. Where do you start? How many routines do you need? How detailed should they be? For this, I found the book, ‘Effective Classroom Management: A Teacher’s Guide’. The first chapter outlines the “four rules of classroom management”, which are:

  • Get them in
  • Get them out
  • Get on with it
  • Get on with them

Essentially, a teacher needs to have routines in place to get students into the classroom, get students out of the classroom, have students learn during the lesson and establish and maintain positive relationships. I’ve condensed these further to:

  • Get in
  • Learn
  • Get out

I frame my routines around these three core events. They happen in every lesson, every subject and every learning space. Hence, they act as a great framework to establish classroom routines. Below are examples of my year 7 quick guides to classroom expectations, which then inform my more detailed routines. The quick guides are more appropriate to display in the classroom as posters as they act as a summary to the routines.

I then break up the dot points in the quick guide into more detailed routines, which are explicitly taught through our school’s positive behaviour for learning processes. I like to go through the expectations and routines at the start of each term, even if I’ve had no classroom management issues with the class. My current Year 7 class is beautiful but I still like to re-establish our shared understanding of how our class works before issues arise.

See here for the Canva template I used to create the quick guide. You can make a copy and modify the text, title and Bitmoji to suit you and your students’ needs.

See here for a more detailed blog post on routines, expectations and classroom management, based on the book ‘Running the room‘.

3 ways to stay organised with Google Classroom

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This year I teach Year 7 maths, year 7 science and Year 12 chemistry in a large high school. Working in a large high school means that no one has their own classrooms. Homerooms are non-existent. My school has a fortnightly timetable cycle with each 50-minute lessons. I am in at least 10 different classrooms in a fortnight. This means every 50 minutes, I am setting up and packing up in a different classroom, utilising different audiovisual equipment and working with a different seating layout. Learning time can be easily wasted if I don’t have a system and a consistent routine for me and my students as we move from room to room. So here are three ways I use Google Classroom to make it easier for me and my students to stay organised and maximise learning time.

Every lesson and every detail are on Google Classroom
I post every lesson with every worksheet, slide deck, website, video and anything else I use for a lesson is on Google Classroom. This includes the lesson’s learning intention and success criteria for my Year 7 classes, and the syllabus content points for my Year 12 chemistry class. This means I can walk into any classroom, connect my laptop to the display screen and my entire lesson and everything I need is ready to go. I don’t need to waste time looking for files in File Explorer or my Google Drive. Everything is already in the lesson post on Google Classroom. This maximises learning time as it allows a more seamless lesson flow. It also minimises classroom management issues and cuts down on transition points.

At my school, every student has their own device, so I encourage my students to have the same resources opened on their device as I am going through them on the classroom display screen. This is very helpful for students who may have difficulty seeing the screen clearly for a variety of reasons. Students can also work at their own pace if we are making notes from slides that I’m using so the students who work faster can move on and the students who need more time can take more time.

Having every lesson posted on Google Classroom, lesson by lesson, also makes registrations so much easier.

A lesson post on Google Classroom for my Year 7 class
A lesson post on Google Classroom for my Year 12 class

Lesson starter activity is on Google Classroom

I start every lesson with Quick Quiz, which is a bell ringer activity that the class completes in silence as soon as they enter the classroom. The Quick Quiz is a series of questions based on previous content the class has learnt. I use the Quick Quiz for retrieval practice and as a classroom management strategy. The students know as soon as they walk into the classroom, they do the Quick Quiz. This gives me time to mark the roll, check uniform and set up for the lesson. Each lesson’s Quick Quiz is on Google Slides which is placed on the top of their Google Classroom Classwork. I use to handwrite the Quick Quiz on the whiteboard, but found having the Quick Quiz prepared before the lesson results in a smoother start to the lesson.

Quick Quiz Google Slides is in a post that is sorted to be on top of Google Classroom in the Classwork tab, which makes it really easy for me and my students to access at the start of each lesson.
An example Quick Quiz question for my Year 12 chemistry class
An example Quick Quiz question for my Year 12 chemistry class

Lessons are posted on Google Classroom the day before

I post every lesson on Google Classroom in the afternoon the day before the lesson. This allows students to have a preview of the lesson before they walk into the lesson. I encourage my students to log onto Google Classroom in the evening or in the morning before school, so they know the type of learning to expect for the day ahead.  I find that when students know what to expect ahead of time, they are more settled and there are fewer classroom management issues. Some of my Year 12 students like to read the slides the night before if they have time so they can better understand the content when I explain it in class.

These three strategies are not unique to Google Classroom and can be adapted to other digital tools like Microsoft Teams. The key is using technology to facilitate routines that allow you to maximise learning time and feel less frantic when you set up a lesson.

3 things I’ve learnt from ‘Running the Room’

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During the October school holidays, I read Running the Room: The Teacher’s Guide to Behaviour by Tom Bennett. As indicated in the title, the book is on managing student behaviour in the classroom. I’ve been teaching for nearly 13 years and I don’t think I have nailed classroom management (but I don’t think any teacher can say they have perfected any part of their practice, in any stage of their career). Classroom management is complex and this book offers lots of evidence-informed and practical strategies for all teachers, regardless of their experience and career stage, in a non-preachy way. The key messages I got from the book are

  • Be organised and plan ahead so that it is easy for students to behave and hard for them to misbehave.
  • Create a class culture where it is the norm for students to behave in a way that lets them and others learn.

The book talks a lot about how people’s behaviours can be different when they are by themselves and in different group situations. A classroom and a school are large group situations and teachers need to create and sustain a culture where it is the norm to do the right thing.

The book re-affirmed a lot of things I’m already doing and gave me new ideas to trial as a teacher and a school leader. Here are 3 things I’ve learnt from the book.

1. Routines, routines and routines

I’ve always been a big fan of routines and Running the Room reaffirmed this practice for me. Explicit routines prevent behaviour problems from arising and helps create the class culture and norms. My classes have routines for starting a lesson, ending a lesson, entering different classrooms, how to transition between activities, etc. I have sometimes thought I was going overboard with the routines in terms of their detail and how we actually acted them out. E.g. We would practise how to line up, enter the classroom, etc. We go through these routines and practice them at the start of every term.

After reading the book, I am more confident that these routines support my students’ learning. I’m going to go further this term and trial practising the routines more regularly. So instead of going through them at the start of the term, going through them at least twice a term. The book emphasised that routines need to be taught, practised and re-taught BEFORE a problem occurs. Don’t wait for an issue to arise to re-teach a routine.

I’m also going to trial establishing more explicit routines for students to observe teacher science demonstrations, how to break off into small groups of science practical work, how each group collects and returns equipment, how each group asks for assistance and how homework is collected, distributed and returned.

Below are some of the routines for my Year 7 class, which I have further adjusted after reading the book, such as specifying the number of minutes that students must arrive to class after the bell (so there are no misunderstandings).

Text describing the reasons we need classroom rules, routines and consequences.
Text describing general classroom rules.
Text describing how to enter the classroom
Explanation of using the acronym SLANT for listening to a speaker
Classroom routine for existing a classroom

Of course, consequences are not all negative. Rewards and praise are needed to reinforce positive behaviours. Reading the book reminded me I need to be recognise my students more frequently for positive behaviours and avoid rewarding some students disproportionately. I have decided to trial using Class Dojo again to help keep track of positive behavious and support all students in gaining school merits.

System for recognising positive behaviours

2. Plan your consequences BEFORE you need to use them

Like all teachers, I’ve kept students in for detentions, called parents for misbehaviours and placed students on behaviour contracts. These things are bound to happen. Running the Room recommends planning and scripting how you will do these things BEFORE you have to do them. The purpose is to have a basic scaffold of what you are going to say and how you will respond in these situations. If you are an early career teacher, you can try role playing and practising what you are going to say to students/parents with a more experienced teacher.

In my earlier years of teaching, I had reflection sheets for students to complete when they are in detention to facilitate a conversation to support them to choose more appropriate behaviours in the future. I have no idea why I stopped using these sheets (perhaps because as I became more experienced, the number of detentions I’ve had to give has decreased), but I have now revamped them and them printed and ready to be used. I’ve also decided to let my students know how detentions will be operated so we have a clear understanding before they happen.

Description of detention rules
Behaviour reflection worksheet

3. Have a removal strategy in place before you need it

Before I go any further with this, the book emphasises that removal should not be done on an ad hoc basis and it should be an unusual event in mainstream classrooms. However, sometimes there will be situations where a student needs to be temporarily removed from the class and a removal strategy should be in place before it is needed. This is something I want to work on as a Head Teacher. Do I have an agreed process with the teachers I supervise for the unlikely event that a student needs to be removed from class so that all students, including the student being removed, can continue learning? When such an event occurs, the class teacher should not have to think about who and where the student is to be sent to, what the student should be doing while removed from class, what happens after the removal, etc. It is important that students should know this process before they are removed (which hopefully will be never).

Overall, the book is one of the best books I have read on behaviour management. I love the emphasis on planning ahead and deliberately planning how you will run the room and set the class culture and norms. As emphaised in the book, these strategies are “rising tides – ones that lift all ships.”