3 Teaching Hacks that Transformed My Classroom

If you're ready to change up your classroom so it works for YOU and not against you, then you need to implement these teaching hacks. I call them hacks because they're simple. But sometimes it's the simple things that can have the biggest impact. Let's get right into it....

Here are 3 teaching hacks that transformed my classroom!

1. I stopped using incentives

Yep. I did it. I STOPPED incentivizing my students to behave with tangible items. I stopped refilling my treasure box, I let the candy drawer dry up, and I stopped printing out sticker charts, stamps, tickets.... all of it. When you reward students for following your basic classroom rules it communicates that following your classroom rules is something worthy of being rewarded. It communicates that it's hard work. The thing is though, following classroom rules should be the basic expectation for our students. We should be communicating that the bare minimum behavior in the classroom is to respect other students and their right to learn. Breaking classroom rules disrupts your teaching and therefore disrupts the learning environment of all students. It is simply not acceptable for a student to interfere with another's right to learn.

"Ok, I get it," you may be thinking. So what's the solution? You can read more about my solid classroom management system that runs on simple rules and effective consequences here.

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2. I started tasking instead of asking questions

Let me set up the scene to explain this one. It's a common one we're all familiar with as teachers. You're up teaching your class and you throw out a question, "Who can tell me the main idea of this paragraph?" Then you wait. 5 students raise their hand. 5 out of 30 are actively thinking and engaged in what you're saying. That's about a 16% engagement rate. Yikes. Out of those 5 students you call on ONE. You now have ONE student who is actively engaged. When you ask a question to your class, you are essentially giving the class permission to turn off their brains.

This is where tasking comes in. Let's look at the same situation above but replace the "ask" with a "task." You say something like, "Everyone look at your paragraph and point to a key word that helps you find the main idea." Now, the expectation is that every student should be engaged. You have now given a type of accountability to your students to think. Here's a few other tasks you could use:

-"Everyone think of the main idea in your mind- turn to your neighbor and share the main idea."

-"Everyone hold up your pencil. Now circle 2 keys words that clued you in to the main idea."

-"Everyone highlight the main idea in your paragraph."

-"Here are 2 possible main ideas (write on the board) stand up if you think there is more evidence that supports main idea A and sit on your desk if you think there's more evidence that supports main idea B."

Can you see the difference? Teachers who Task instead of ask will have a more engaged class. More engagement leads to less behavioral issues and more learning! Make sure to check out my 50+ ideas to task. You can print this out and display it on your whiteboard or desk so you always have a way to task right at your fingertips!

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3. I streamlined my classroom procedures to make sure they worked for ME.

As a new teacher I was guilty of getting most of my classroom procedure ideas from Pinterest. And don't get me wrong, I've gotten wonderful ideas on Pinterest, but I would just click on the ideas that looked cute rather than being effective. Over the years I've learned that when it comes to your classroom procedures, "cute" doesn't equal effective. Most of the time it just means more work for the teacher. So what did I do? I took a hard look at every single classroom procedure I had and asked myself these questions.

"Does this require more work of me?" "Does this procedure make my life easier?" "Is there a way to simplify this so it takes less time?" "Is this something I can delegate to a student?"

With this thought process, I actually ended up changing a lot of my classroom procedures to get my classroom running a lot smoother. For example, one of my procedures I changed was my lunch count. My old procedure was that I had all of my student's numbers on a cute little magnet circle and they were all grouped together on a large cookie sheet. When my students came in they took their number magnet and put it on either home lunch or school lunch. Then I would go over and count the ones who were school lunch and input it on my computer. I would also remind any students who hadn't moved their magnet yet to do so. My NEW procedure was to just ask my students during bell work time, "please raise your hand if you're having school lunch today" and then silently and quickly count from my desk and input the number into my computer. This saved me time of reminding any students to move their numbers, saved me time from walking over to the lunch count, and saved me space on my wall. While this may seem small comparatively, if you do this for ALL your classroom procedures it can truly compound. If you're not quite sure where to start, I've got a document that outlines 100 of my classroom procedures (yes 100) and exactly what I do. This would be a wonderful place to start if you're an elementary school teacher.

So there you have it! 3 teaching hacks that totally transformed my classroom and I know they can transform yours too! If you want to see more tips like this on the daily, make sure you come say hi on instagram, TikTok, and facebook!

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