Classroom Wars!

Classroom management can be difficult. Especially when you have class sizes of over 35.

One of my co-teachers and I have been trying to find ways to reign in our crazy co-taught class! They are always so full of energy and can be quite the talkers! Not to mention, we have them at the end of every single day when they are more than ready to go home and burn off that energy that has been building up from sitting in school all day. Who can blame them?

We have tried multiple ways to get students to demonstrate the behaviors that are expected from them while they are in our class. However, nothing has seemed to work. So we racked our brains for ways to positively reinforce the behaviors we want to see; and let’s be honest – who doesn’t love a little friendly competition?

One of the best things about teaching is that we can all grow and learn from one another! Why reinvent the wheel when you can simply modify it?@Maniacsinthemiddle had a really great classroom management tool that we decided to try! With a few tweaks! View her instagram post below to see the main idea behind this fun weekly classroom war!

Not only do we use Jolly Ranchers (on cheat days, of course) as one of our weekly rewards, but we also bought over 500 stickers on amazon! Middle schoolers LOVE collecting a good sticker to decorate their Hydroflasks and binders. Even my hydro is covered from top to bottom. Therefore, we thought this would be yet another cool reward to offer them! Eventually, we will add to our lists of rewards for them to chose from, but for now they can go candy and sticker crazy!