Bridges Blog Archive for Classroom Management

How do you ensure engagement from all students? On Lesson Cast, you'll find a 2:24 minute video called "Every Student Response Strategies." In it, you'll find pictures and descriptions of several techniques designed to generate responses from every student, including:

K-1 teacher Misti Simmons of Evansville School in Casper, Wyoming, loves to play the guitar during transition times, integrating movement into warm-ups. Even as children hang up their back packs they know to look to the Smart Board to see what's rockin' today. No down time in this K-1 classroom!

Misti sent in the extensive collection of links for songs and activities that she uses with her kids. The blog will feature them over the next several months, by content. Warning: After listening to these, I've been known to walk around for days, chanting the lyrics. They're catchy!

This past summer in a Getting Started Workshop, we discussed ways to balance student participation. In the Number Corner books, it suggests putting each child's name on a craft stick.

Last month, Shelly Scheafer shared an inspiring math moment from her first grade classroom in Bend, Oregon. Here are a few follow-up questions with this Bridges teacher.

Question: Your students show a high degree of mathematical confidence. How do you grow and maintain that confidence?

Susan Morris recently "retired" from Portland Public Schools where she taught grades 3-5. She now works as a Math/RTI Coach at Forest Park School. She shared this tip while participating in a Grade 4 Bridges Getting Started Workshop:

Mary Harbolt knows how to manage student manipulatives. She teaches a 4th/5th blend at Faubion Elementary in Portland, Oregon, and wrote in with this fabulous idea...

I have a marble system in my classroom. [Students work together to earn--and sometimes lose--marbles that can earn them special privileges and/or rewards.]

If a math manipulative hits the floor and I pick it up, it's my marble. If a student picks it up first, no marble is lost. This system makes the students hypervigilant. At the end, if all manipulatives are put away, they get a marble.

Enjoy the following story from Shelly Scheafer's first grade classroom in Bend, Oregon, then sit in on a little Q & A session with this incredible Bridges teacher...