Classroom Management Plan

Aaron Zubiate

College of Education, Vanguard University

Foundation in Teaching

Dr. Hittenberger

December 12th, 2023

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Philosophy of Classroom Management

Traditionally, classroom management has been viewed as taking control over the learners.

Still, recently classroom management has been perceived as establishing a healthy space and

climate for learners to grow. According to Wai-Shing, “Teachers need to create the best possible

physical environment to ensure that their students have a comfortable and pleasant atmosphere in

which to learn” (Wai-Shing, 2008, pg. 47). This is done by being organized and planning ahead

of time, making goals, and communicating early on your expectations. The journal article Does

Space Matter? Classroom Design and Team-Based Learning, discusses the importance of

learning in a group setting. For most students, history can be seen as a boring subject, however, I

can make it more entertaining with the use of group interaction. Permanent teams of five manage

their team interaction with “the structure of assignments, feedback, and peer evaluations to help

establish accountability and promote learning” (Espey, 2008, pg. 766).

Moreover, routines are important to students in the classroom as they navigate the school

year. According to the article, Importance of Classroom Routine and Procedures, students need

structure and familiarity as they continue to learn and develop, and a classroom routine gives

them a predictable day. Some benefits of classroom routines and procedures include consistency,

enhancement of behavior, reduction of classroom distractions, and boosting focus and

engagement. Routines in the classroom “make class time enjoyable and productive. They offer

students a sense of stability” (SBD, 2022). Some routines that I can develop include entry and

exit routines, transition routines, and student attention routines. Drawing on positive behavioral

interventions and supports (PBIS) is important to strategies inside the classroom. One strategy

that a teacher could use is thoughtfully designing the classroom environment where students can

move freely, materials are organized, seats are assigned, and students feel seen and heard. For
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example, in a history classroom, I can group up four desks to allow for student collaboration and

group instruction. You may find yourself in a classroom where some students are not following

positive behavior expectations. This may be because of family struggles, emotional struggles,

attention seeking, and frustration of not understanding the content, to name a few. Some

behavioral expectations that I would include are showing respect to fellow students and myself,

actively listening, and showing integrity. According to Ming Tak Hue, “To ensure that the

physical aspect of the classroom is well planned, managed, and maintained, teachers have to pay

attention to its design and look” (HUE, 2007, pg. 463). If a student struggles to align themselves

with these positive behaviors, a teacher can communicate effectively and remind them of the

expectations. Jonathan Carrier notes that “having clear and well-crafted syllabi and rubrics that

detail expectations, assignments, and due dates may assuage student anxiety and squash

problems before they begin” (Carrier, 2015, pg. 63).

In terms of my classroom management skills, I believe my biggest strengths include

relationship building, a positive mindset, clear communication, time management, and a hard

work ethic. On the contrary, I need the most growth in experience because I have not been able

to be in the classroom for a long period of time. Because of this, I may struggle at first with

being an authority figure and disciplining students effectively. To combat this, I plan to set clear

expectations, boundaries, and structure when I begin to student teach. I want to build

relationships and be able to have fun, however, I want to have a balance of fun and hard work. I

will also hold them accountable and be consistent because I believe this is the biggest thing they

need in the classroom.

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General Classroom Management Plans

Appendix 1 Classroom Management Plan

Physical setup of your classroom
Depending on the size of my classroom and layout, I
plan to have my students in rows or table groups with
my walls decorated with a couple posters from historical
events. In front of the room, I want to have a table where
students can pick up any worksheets before they sit
down and it will also be used to turn in homework in a
basket on the table. I definitely plan to have a big USA
flag on the wall! I do not want to overload my students
with too many distracting posters, however, I want to
make the classroom appealing to the eye.

Planning and organization steps Before I begin each school year, I want to come up with
before the school year/class starts an outline of dates for units, tests, assignments, and
projects. From this, I can effectively communicate to my
students the content. I want to set up role play
assignments throughout the year and plan ahead of time
the character sheets, primary sources, and speeches for
the game! Moreover, I want to look into the HSS
standards and pick an emphasis for each lesson with a
clear learning goal that is communicated to my students.
I think it is important that I come into the school year
prepared for the content I am going to teach and be ready
to communicate effectively with my students and fellow
colleagues.

Setting a positive learning tone
(Growth Mindset) for your
students and classroom
In order to set the tone for Growth Mindset, I would
want my students to have the freedom to learn from each
other and partner up in discussions with a question I
proposed for them and a question they still have about
the topic. I think this allows them to use creativity and
show interest in a specific emphasis of the topic. Asking
questions helps reflect on the content in which they just
learned.

Seating arrangements to enhance I will most likely be teaching a high school history class,
learning (assigned or open and what I love most about history is the discussions that
seating? Groups, rows of desks?) stem from it. Most students do not love history, which I
can totally understand but I believe I can make it more
enjoyable just with the seating arrangements in the
classroom. For example, I can set up the desks into a
seminar style classroom which can be advantageous for
role play games and class discussions. I think the layout

Opening class routines (how will
you start each class session so
that growth and learning start
right away)
Positive behavior expectations
(what are 3-5 expectations you
plan to implement and how will
you engage students in
generating/owning those
expectations)
Procedure for attention getting
and class quiet focus (how will
you bring students back from
group work to quiet attention to
you)
Addressing off-task behavior
(How will you monitor student
focus on the learning at hand)
Teaching positive social
skills/addressing behavior that
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of my room depends on the students I have each year. I
may want to also group up the desks to allow for
collaboration but at the moment I want to incorporate
rows.
In order for students to begin learning and growing right
away, I want to begin the class period by proposing a
question on the board and allowing the students to pair
up and discuss. I believe this will allow my students to
learn from each other and be ready to participate in the
class period. Afterwards, I want to introduce the topic
and learning goal of the day.
The three expectations I plan to implement in my
classroom are as follows: work is turned in before the
bell rings and students are in their seats, respecting each
other and our time in the classroom because we most
likely will only have 50 minutes to learn, and lastly to
come to class ready to ask questions and learn from each
other! I also would like to develop a contract where the
students themselves create their own behavior
expectations for the year and paste each class period's
expectations on the board!
I plan to bring my students back from group work to
quiet time by using a timer that is displayed on the
projector. Once the alarm goes off, the students will go
silent. If some are still talking, I will use a clapping
technique of saying “2 claps” and they repeat 2 claps
back to me. I can almost make this a game and if I say
no claps and nobody claps I do push ups!
In my own educational experience, when I was off-task I
was called out in front of my classmates and then I
would become discouraged. To prevent this for my
students, I want to use Dr. Kim’s strategy by praising the
good behavior of students around the student that is
distracted. After this, the student that is off task will
begin to be on task and then I can compliment good
behavior. As humans, it feels good to receive
compliments and on the contrary if we call out off-task
behavior in front of the whole classroom, the students
will be embarrassed and it will take a lot more positive
compliments to bring this student back up.
Again, I am going to pull something from what Dr. Km
shared to our class the three questions he uses to address

does not align with positive
expectations (how will you help
students realign with positive
behavior expectations when they
go out of alignment)
Turning in assignments/grading
and feedback (what will be your
efficient system for student
submission of assignments and
your feedback on assignments)
Student roles in implementing
classroom management plan
(how will you assign student roles
in helping make the class run in a
positive way)
What other positive classroom
routines and procedures do you
anticipate planning and
implementing?
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behavior that does not align. For example he would ask
“what are you doing right now?” and then “what are you
supposed to be doing?” After this, the teacher asks “what
are you going to change that?” I find this strategy to be
quite impactful working on this with fellow classmates
and the student recognizes that they need to get on task.
It holds everyone in the classroom accountable and it is a
nice and respectful way of getting the students on task
by generating their own answers to the questions I ask.
Like I mentioned in an earlier heading, I would like to
have a table setup in the classroom where students can
pick up worksheets, turn in assignments, and turn in late
work. Everything on the table will be in labeled baskets
such as: “turn in”, “late work”, and “today’s worksheet.”
On my end, I will have a simple grading system of
slashing incorrect answers and having other assignments
that are just completion. My goal is to have assignments
graded by the end of the week and I think this is realistic.
With late work, the highest grade you can receive is an
80% but this is open to discussion based on situations
and assignments.
I believe that I will have students who are natural leaders
and lead by example in and out of the classroom. Since
we live in a democracy, I would want the students to
possibly vote class leaders or I can just have a couple
students that I depend on and lean on when I am out of
the classroom. These can be students that remind
classmates of expectations and rules.
As a Christian teacher, I want to implement grace,
mercy, and love even when my students may not deserve
it. I also like the idea of the use of music in the
classroom. I observed a teacher last spring at Costa Mesa
High School and he would use music everyday when the
students were working unless they were not focused or
misbehaving during the lesson. I think it would be
awesome to have a reward system where the students
pick music that is appropriate!

Class Period Overview
Min. Class Sessions
0:00-0:15 Class Period Opening
0:15-0:30 Class Period Segment 2
Scenario 1 After receiving an
assignment for group work,
one group of students, male
and female, sit in the back
of the class in a clump and
talk. They are positive
towards you until you ask
them to focus on their
assignment, at which point
you start getting pushback.
At this point, however, their
talking has become a
distraction from the rest of
the class and two of the
students seem to want to
push the boundaries of
what they are allowed to,
despite their effects on your
ability to teach. How will
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Classroom Management Strategies
Before the bell rings, students are expected to
have already turned in their assignment and
picked up the worksheet for today whether that
be notes or a primary source reading. Once they
reach their seats, I will go over the learning
goal of the day and discuss the content in
which we will be addressing. Moreover, I like
the idea of giving the students 3 minutes to
write down 3-5 questions they have on the
topic we are about to go over (the next time we
meet I will answer these questions to the best
of my knowledge).
I will have a presentation ready for the content
I am about to teach including music, video, and
a slideshow. It is important that I am not
overseeing a broad topic but that I have a
bigger emphasis on something smaller. This
presentation will last no longer than 20 minutes
as it is scientifically proven that we can only
maintain our attention for an extended period
of time.
I think what I will first do is use the 3 question
strategy that was introduced by Dr. Kim.
Depending on how they respond to this, I will
walk away from them for a bit and if they are
still being a distraction I may go over and
remind them another time to focus on the task
or I will have to disperse them into another
group.
Once their classroom has become a distraction
to the rest of the class after I have reminded
them multiple times to work on their
assignment, I will separate them into different
groups and if they are still a distraction, I will
ask them to stay after class to ask them if
everything is okay and remind them of the
expectations that we set at the beginning of the
school year. However, I do think separating the
two students will help resolve the issue and let

you work with these
students to provide a more
positive and workable
solution so that they refocus
on their assignments and
learning?
0:30-0:45 Class Period Segment 3
0:45-0:60 Class Period Segment 4
Scenario 2 At the end of your class
right before lunch, your
students start to mentally
check out of class early,
start talking, and pack up
about ten to fifteen minutes
before class ends. How will
you address this in terms of
your overall classroom
management plans so that
your students learn out of
habit to stay engaged to the
end of your class, and how
will you handle this on this
particular day to make the
change to better practices?
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them know that for the rest of the week they are
not allowed to work together. Once that week is
over I would allow them to work together to
prove they will not be a distraction.
This point of the class, the students will need a
break from learning so I will have them talk to
a partner about questions they have about the
content or how they would react to a certain
historical situation if they were living in that
time period. This is not direct instruction and it
gives them a break from listening to myself and
collaborating with each other.
I want to use this time of class to have students
work on an assignment I have assigned during
the class. If the students followed our
classroom expectations, I will play music with
them and I will allow them to work with a
partner on the homework assignment.
One of the biggest takeaways from Dr. Kim is
that if students begin to mentally check out, it
may because the lesson is not engaging or
interesting. To avoid this happening, I will
incorporate videos and music into my lesson.
Moreover, instead of lecturing for the whole
class period, I want to lecture for a max of
twenty-five minutes and give my students a
brain break.
The last 15 minutes of class will be used as a
time for students to work on assignments and if
they are checked out, I may end the time for
them to work on their homework. I would
instead show a video from the time period that
they had just learned about or another idea is to
have a kahoot that I have made ahead of time
for a time like this. Friendly competition will
always get a class refocused to the learning
goal!
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Works Cited

Carrier, J., Mitchell, N. G., Slone, N. C., & BICHELMEYER, B. A. (2015). Managing

Problematic Classroom Situations. In R. K. MORGAN, K. T. OLIVARES, J. BECKER,

& R. WOLTER (Eds.), Quick Hits for Adjunct Faculty and Lecturers: Successful

Strategies from Award-Winning Teachers (pp. 63–64). Indiana University Press.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt17rw5ft.44

Espey, M. (2008). Does Space Matter? Classroom Design and Team-Based Learning. Review of

Agricultural Economics, 30(4), 764–775. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30225916

HUE, M. T. (2007). Classroom Management for Children with Diverse Learning Needs. In S. N.

Phillipson (Ed.), Learning Diversity in the Chinese Classroom: Contexts and Practice for

Students with Special Needs (pp. 459–486). Hong Kong University Press.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1xwb4p.18

SBD, Inc. (2022, September 8). Importance of classroom routines and procedures.

Successbydesignplanners.

https://www.successbydesign.com/blogs/news/importance-of-classroom-routines-and-pro

cedures

Wai-shing, L., & Ming-tak, H. (2008). Effective Classroom Management. In Classroom

Management: Creating a Positive Learning Environment (pp. 45–62). Hong Kong

University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1xw9ng.7