Having taught from babies to high school, I have implemented a wide range of classroom management techniques over the years. As all age ranges react differently, you can probably guess which ones react better than others.
Have you implemented these same techniques in your school as well? I hope you will learn at least one new technique today or perhaps agree or disagree with my rating system of each technique.
Can you get bingo from below?
| The silent treatment | Ringing a bell/annoying sound | 1-on-1 outside classroom | Jingle jingle keys pay attention | Adding a punishment (homework, test, etc) |
| Making them stand | Teachers Room | Quiet police | Threatening to turn off the AC in summer | Stand near noisy students |
| https://bouncyballs.org/ | Take break time away | FREE SPACE (you have good students, congratulations!) | Calming music | The unexpected |
| Moving students | Board apology | Turning off the lights | Timer | Countdown |
| Positive reinforcement | Exercise | Call and response | Apology letter | Calling parents threat |
Here is the list of techniques used above for getting a classroom quiet and my efficiency rating for all::
| Technique | Efficiency Rating :(1 - least effective 5 - most effective) | Explanation: |
| The silent treatment | 3 | Usually can take a long time for students to realize the teacher is waiting so if overdone can lose effectiveness quickly. |
| Ringing a bell/annoying sound | 5 | The more annoying it is, the more likely the student's attention will be quickly grabbed. |
| 1-on-1 outside classroom | 2 | Either with myself or having gotten other teachers involved, this is actually not that effective, especially with students with more stronger personalities than others. |
| Jingle jingle keys | 4 | Used sparingly and once taught effectively, “jingle jingle pay attention” is a keeper. |
| Adding a punishment | 4 | Most effective when the punishment is a test, quiz, or homework. Fear is always a great way to quiet students down. If your students all have bad grades, this won’t be effective at all. |
| Making them stand | 5 | Surprisingly works very well for most students. They tend to get the hint pretty quickly if I ask them to stand multiple times or if I keep them standing for long periods (only a few minutes max don’t worry.) |
| Teachers Room | 2 | Another surprising one, the teacher’s room is actually NOT that effective and can make other students make it into a game. Can be effective for others though so pick your battles. |
| 8) Quiet police | 3 | Depending on the class, works wonderful and others…well you can imagine. Hit or miss. |
| 9) Threatening to turn off the AC in summer | 5 | 10/10 highly recommend (use sparingly as your last weapon). |
| 10) Stand near noisy students | 4 | If they’re silly, they will stare back at you and keep laughing but overall this is pretty effective but not long term. |
| 11) https://bouncyballs.org/ | 2 | Honestly…it’s not that great. I’ve used these voice level monitoring sites, and the students just don’t seem interested in it to be honest. |
| 12) Take break time away | 5 | With only 10 minutes in between classes, time is gold. |
| 13) Calming music | 3 | Gets students interested but doesn’t keep their attention for long. Best for self-study mostly. |
| 14) The unexpected | 5 | A dance, a meme, a song, this is one of the best ways to get their attention. For example, a popular Tiktok song as of July 2024. |
| 15) Moving students | 5 | As long as they are not near ANY students this will work. I usually like to put them near me or have them be my helper. A classic because if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. |
| 16) Board apology | 3 | If they can write and understand why they’re writing, great. If they don’t care, they will see it as just annoying, which might also work as well. Hit or miss. |
| 17) Turning off the lights | 2 | Can work in the right conditions but overall students just think they’re about to watch a movie. |
| 18) Timer | 2 | Students will just wait till it gets to an even number of 1:00 exactly then go “aww…” |
| 19) Countdown | 4 | A classic. |
| 20) Positive reinforcement | 4 | Usually in the form of giving no homework or a song, this does work pretty well. |
| 21) Exercise | 4 | Depending on the season, this is another effective surprise. If you make them tired they will be too tired to talk to others and will just preserve their saliva instead. Jumping jacks, clapping hands, pushups, etc this is especially effective if there’s a lot of boys in the class. |
| 22) Call and response | 3 | It might be just me, but I am honestly not that great at doing these because I am soft voiced, but I bet other teachers will have better luck with this. |
| 23) Apology letter | 4.5 | Great for those who are skilled AND not skilled in English, it will force lower skilled users to use what little English they know (or ChatGPT) and at least write some English they otherwise would not have written. Highly recommend it. |
| 24) Calling parents threat | 3.5 | Greater for younger students, older students don't seem to care as much. This is actually more effective if you make it into a joke and pretend you are calling the police instead. |
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