Teaching Lifesavers-Twelve Classroom Management Forms

During the 30+ Labor Day nights that I spent tossing and turning with Start of the School Year Insomnia, my dream fragments didn’t feature lesson plan anxiety, but behavior issue fears. It didn’t take more than a week of student teaching to realize that my stress levels weren’t soaring because of what or how I was teaching, but because of student behaviors and administrative policies.

For example:  
• Apathetic Joey slouched in the back of the class apathetically staring out the window;.
• Sarah was led back to the classroom by an assistant principal because she didn’t have a pass. Guess who got her hands slapped? Hint- it wasn’t Sarah. 
• The students had a difficult time staying on-task while I was taking attendance and handing out the beginning activity.
• Zelda handed in Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” as her original creation for my assignment: Write a poem about a celebrity (she chose Rhiannon). When I showed her Lord Byron’s poem printed in the anthology, she said, “It’s not my fault it wrote the same thing I did.”
And this was just my first day heading a classroom!

Knowing that behavior issues would be stymied with good classroom management, over the years, I created,

revised, tweaked and revised again (and again) these twelve forms in an effort to help me organize and manage my classroom. My main objective was to create a safe and exciting learning environment. In order to accomplish this goal, I knew that I had to thwart disruptive student behavior before it even began, and to ward off encounters of the negative kind with administrators. I offer them to you all who are still leading classrooms. Note: If your school district has forms that they require teachers to use that coincide with various policies, use them, of course. If they don’t, download this packet, “Get thee to the copy room, “ (Sorry Shakespeare, no nunneries here), and in a few minutes you will be ready for whatever left hooks the year might toss your way.

Note: You can download: A Student Information Sheet, A Parent Contact Record, a Parents’ Perspective Survey, and three activities: a What About Me (Student) and What About

Me (Teacher), This is My Future, and What's in My Name Collage from: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Printables-Back-to-School-Assortment-of-First-Day-Forms-and-Activities-746170

Most of these forms are self-explanatory, but here are a few clarifications:

All Forms: In your desk or file cabinet, have a folder for each of these forms: blank ones as well as those you have used in class. The latter is very important for your personal well-being, but also for those times when you need information to take to a parent/student conference.

Tardy Sign-In Sheet: I stapled these together and kept them on a small table right by the classroom door along with a pencil. After a few reminders the first week of school, students knew that they had to stop and sign-in if they arrived to class after the Tardy Sign-In Sheets folder so I could have it handy when I finalized the grades, or if I had to contact parents – whatever was necessary to meet the school’s policy.

late bell. Each week, I flipped to a new sheet. Every grading period, I put the stapled sheets in a

NOTE: Except for the Lesson Launch examples, this packet is for all subjects. Teachers can adapt the Lesson Launch idea to their subject areas. 
Download it from: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Printables-Teaching-Lifesavers-Twelve-Classroom-Management-Forms-768230

Happy Teaching,