Classroom Management Plan

While I have half a year's worth of experience as an educator, I have zero experience in setting up my own classroom as a full-time teacher.  I shared a second grade classroom with a much more experienced teacher from January to June of 2011.  She had everything set in place, and all I had to do was follow along.  It was similar to an internship with the exception that I was fully licensed to teach, and I was getting paid for it.  I also had a lot more freedom to make my own decisions as a teacher; however, it was her classroom, her rules, her management plan, etc.  I just made up my own lesson plans and taught them! Therefore, I have been researching blogs to pull together ideas of what I would like to implement in my own classroom in August.  I will be teaching Kindergarten, and I have absolutely NO idea as to what to do! I have zero experience in a Kindergarten classroom.  So, I feel it is very important to prepare myself as much as possible before August.

This first post will be about a few of my ideas for classroom management.

I would like to set up a barnyard theme in my classroom; therefore, a lot of my management ideas are theme-oriented.  These are only ROUGH drafts of my ideas.  I place a lot of emphasis on the rough because I change my mind constantly as I discover more and more ideas by amazing, experienced teachers.

I believe it is important to reinforce positive behavior as much as possible.  Therefore, in my management plan, I would like to implement a system to reward positive behavior.

Title of behavioral plan: We Don't Horse Around - with a large picture of a horse and barn.  Each student is represented by a cut-out of a horse.

Green pasture: This is where the students begin their day.
Corral #1: This corral will be yellow.  This is where students move if they receive a warning about their behavior.
Corral #2: This corral will be orange.  This is where students move to if they had to be spoken to more than once.  They will need to think wisely about their behavior.  Time-out is necessary.
Barn: The barn will be red.  This is where students move if they misbehave continuously.  They will receive a note home about their behavior.  If it is bad enough, the parents will receive a phone call.

It may be more convenient to just use clothes pins, and label each one with the students name.  That way myself, or the students, could move the pin into the appropriate place.

However, if the students make good decisions throughout the day, and act as a productive classroom citizen, their behavior will be rewarded.  When wise decisions are made by the students, they will receive a sticker on the behavior incentive chart.  Once the students collect 10 stickers, they may be rewarded with a prize from the treasure box.

Student behavior will be noted in a monthly calendar that is stored inside of individual student binders.  I would like to find color-coded stickers.


Green sticker = good behavior
Yellow sticker = warning
Orange sticker = time-out
Blue sticker = really good behavior (I earned 1 sticker today)
Purple sticker = great behavior (I earned 2 stickers today)
Pink sticker = outstanding behavior (I earned 3 stickers today)
If the students reached the barn, they will receive a red sticker and a note that specifies the misbehavior.

At the end of each day, I will put the appropriate sticker on their monthly calendar.  Parents will need to initial the calendar daily.  This will let me know that they acknowledged their child's behavior for that day.

I really love this idea, and I hope to be able to implement it as planned.

I believe this management plan will take up a lot of room, so it will more than likely be necessary that I place it on a large bulletin board.  OR ... I could get a large poster (perhaps more than one, and just connect them) to draw and place the management plan on, and then hang the poster in a certain area.