My Top 5 Classroom Management Routines and Procedures for High School Science Teachers [Episode 91]

Rebecca 0:00
You are listening to episode number 91 of the secondary science simplified podcast. Last week, we covered classroom management philosophy. And I challenged you to come up with three to five refrains to define your overall management strategy that’s specific for your personality. And I reference that I really believe that classroom management issues are best handled individually on a relational level. And then whole class issues are best handled on a procedural level. And so this week, I’m going to share how I use routines and procedures to be proactive rather than reactive with my students when managing my classroom. Let’s dive in. This is secondary science simplified a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students and simplify their lives. I’m Rebecca joiner from it’s not rocket science. As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about helping other science teachers love their jobs, serve their students, and do it all in only 40 hours a week. Are you ready to rock the time you spend in your classroom and actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place teacher friend, let’s get to today’s episode.

Rebecca 1:25
Okay, so this could be like a five hour podcast episode, but I’m not going to do that to you. But here’s, here’s the deal. The amount of procedures or routines that you need to have in your classroom is entirely dependent on you, and your personality. Okay, so some teachers are only going to need a few things, some are going to need a lot of routines and procedures. So it really depends on you. In this episode, I’m going to kind of share the five that I think are the biggest game changers. For me personally, and kind of the five that I think everyone probably needs to have some sort of routine or procedure for. But again, you may need way more than this or not, you know, I can’t make that decision for you. But we’re going to start with them five top ones, to me personally, now to know how many you need to know what routines you need, what procedures you need, there are a few things you need to ask yourself. Again, we’re using routines and procedures to be proactive to be essentially try to eliminate issues before they arise. And so to know what could be an issue, you need to ask yourself, if you’ve taught before, if you’re not a new year new teacher, look back and be like, what are the consistent things that I have problems with the students? What are consistent conflicts that arise? Ask yourself, what do I find most disruptive in class, let’s make a routine or procedure for that. So it’s no longer disruptive? I’d ask yourself to what most annoys me personally, or angers me or you know, kind of throws me off in class. Like I know a lot of teachers, they’ll get going lecturing, and they’re so excited. And then a teacher, a student raises their hand and they’re like, Oh, they’re gonna have a question. And then their, their question is, can I go the bathroom, and that just like makes them really angry. If that’s the case, then you need to have a routine for the bathroom that does not involve them interrupting your lecture. I know also, other teachers get really bothered by students sharpening their pencils during class, because it’s such an annoying loud noise. And so they have to have a procedure for that. I personally am not fazed. But I’m also a loud talker. So students could all be sharpening their pencils, and I would just raise my volume above them and not even notice. So I personally don’t need a routine or procedure for pencil sharpening, you might need that, okay. Or, for instance, if you find it incredibly disruptive for students to go to their locker to get their binder because they forgot it, you need a procedure in place for that. Okay, so you need the amount of procedures necessary to eliminate any potential disruptions or things that will make you annoyed or anger or throw you off. Okay. And then again, another kind of like, overarching question for all these is just like, What can I be proactive about so that I don’t end up being reactive again, you as a teacher have to make hundreds of micro decisions within every single class period. And in order to free up some of your brain space to not have to constantly be doing that. We want to eliminate some of those micro decisions by putting things into practice putting systems routines, procedures that are going behind the scenes, again, just to free up your energy and to free up your disruptions, especially if you’re like teaching on a 40 to 50 minute class period. You do not have time to be repeating yourself over and over and over again. So we need these procedures. And then we need to clearly communicate them with your students so they know your expectations. Now, there is no one right way to do any of this. I mentioned this in the last episode, I talked about my personal classroom management philosophy, some of my refrains back in episode 90 To give you some ideas. But none of these are right or wrong. It’s just what fits you that makes it right or wrong. Okay, so I’m just to give you examples. And to make this episode really practical, I’m going to talk about what I think are arguably like the five top procedures that probably every teacher can stack hands on that you need. Going in the background, I will share specifically how I handled these, again, to give you ideas, but by no means do I think you all need to adopt all five of these things exactly how I do them. But hopefully, like me giving you some ideas, we’ll get your gears turning and thinking of what might work best for you. And Casey, who I interviewed back in episode 89, I also had some ideas that were different from what I do. So if you want even more ideas, you can go back and listen to that episode. Okay, but I’m going to share these again, just to help you and give you some ideas to get you started. And I want you to at the end of this episode, your action set is going to be to come up with your own procedure for these five things. And then if that kind of gets you going, and you’ve got some momentum, keep going, keep coming up with procedures and routines. For all those things you find disruptive or annoying, or that throw you off. Let’s get those all jotted down and planned out before the year gets started. And then you can teach them to your students and have those going on in the background the rest of the year, you will be amazed how much energy it saves you to kind of address these things before they even become problems. Okay, so let’s start though with my top five. And I think these are my, I think are the most important to establish specifically at the beginning of the year, because these are a lot harder to kind of change up mid year. Of course, it’s never too late to like take control of your class to manage your class differently. But since the beginning of the year, let’s start with these. And my first one I would say is I feel like every teacher needs a procedure for the first five minutes of class, how you want that start of class to go. I have always referred to the first five minutes of class. Literally, since I was a student teacher, I came up with this term as Prime Time, because to me, I think it’s the most important part of the class period is that first five minutes, it is the prime time, I genuinely feel like it sets the tone for how the rest of the class will go. And so my goal is to be really effective with that five minutes of time. So this is how I handle the primetime the first five minutes, you may do it differently. But I train my students that when the bell rings, as one class is leaving, so when the dismissal bell rings, as they leave what I do as I pull up a bell ringer, which I call primetime, so I’m pulling that up for the next class, I get that pulled up on my whiteboard. Then I have pieces of paper where my students are going to answer the their bell ringers on, they each get a piece of notebook paper and these it for the whole week. And I have that piece of paper and I collect them kind of an order of the rows that they sit. So they’re generally in order. So I put those on their chairs face down, all of this takes me like 45 to 60 seconds, then I’m at the door to greet my students. Okay, so in that five minute transition period from dismissal, one classes started the next, I’m pulling up the primetime bell ringer that I usually just have minimized at the start of the day on my computer, then I’m putting their sheet on their desk, and I’m going straight to the door. I’m greeting students as they come in. I’ve trained my students in that first five minutes as they come in my turnin bin is on my wall, they turn in any assignments that are due the as they walk in, sometimes I’ll have a reminder on the whiteboard like turn in the adaptation lab from yesterday if you didn’t finish it in class, so that’ll remind them. And then I’ve trained them to immediately start working on their prime time, so that when the bell rings to start class, everyone is in my class, they’re seated. They’re not talking and they’re working on their primetime bell ringer, I go and I take attendance. And I get things ready for this upcoming class period. I can walk around and ask certain students questions. If I have something that like maybe we did a bunch of practice problems, the previous class period, and I want to check that they finished those and did those, I’m going to check it for completion. I walk around while they’re working on their primetime bellringer. And I just mark it on my little clipboard. And then after that first five minutes is up, I collect the bell ringers that primetime we go over it, and then we start class right away. It has been so effective for me to train my students this way, because every minute of my class period is used really, really efficiently. It eliminates a lot of drama of like, what are we doing today? What do I need to do? What do I need, like they get in and they get started and we’re all ready to learn. I’ve done what I need to do with attendance and getting materials out or whatever. And we’re ready to go after the first five minutes and I have so much I could say on this but I’ve already done a podcast episode on it. You can listen to episode four. I’ve got blogs on it. I’ll link in the show notes. You know my blog posts about prime times. I also have a blog post about like five complaints I hear people say about bell ringers and why they don’t like them and then kind of my solutions for those complaints, I’ll link all that in the show notes. If you’re like, I don’t want to do bell ringer, but I really think they’re so helpful. Also, if you just hate doing bell ringers because you don’t want to write them. I have bell ringers for biology, physical science, anatomy and chemistry. I have like the first few units done, but I’ll bundle it actually, by the time this airs, it should be bundled. So I’ll have that bundled to what I’ve done so far. And I’ll keep adding to it. But I have bell ringers for you. So I would say if you’re one opposition to doing a bell ringer at the start of class is you don’t want to write them, then eliminate that variable by just buying some that are pre made and using them. And it doesn’t even have to be mine. But I just think that it helps so much. And so whether you do a prime time bellringer or not, I really want you to establish a procedure for your first five minutes of class, it will make a difference. Okay. Second thing I think you need a procedure for is how you’re going to handle phones. Again, there’s no right or wrong way to do this. Casey in Episode 89, basically has an approach to phones where he has no approach and essentially is like, I’m just gonna not let this become an issue. But again, he’s way more chill than I am. I am not chill. So I need a procedure for this. I will also say too, I think it makes a difference. If you have a school wide policy, that you are reinforcing or being a part of, if you don’t have a school wide policy, you need to come up with something individually that you’re going to do. So I’ve been in several different school settings. You know, I’ve been in a school that allowed them in the hallways, but then required you to collect them at the start of class. And so in that school, I had a caddy that kind of like hung on my door, it looked like one of those things that people have in their closets, they put their shoes in, I’ll link in the show notes, like an example of what I’m talking about. But I had that I’ve known teachers that have that and have been like numbered by seats. And then that’s how they take attendance is they look up and see like, oh, there’s no phone, and seven and 18. And they look at who seats and seat seven and 18 you can like label the front of your desks or the lab tables. And then that’s how they do attendance. You know, that’s one way to do it. I had another school that kind of was like a more like, make your own policy situation. And then for that school, I was a little bit more flexible. I had some lights, which all again, I’ll link those in the show notes, too, that were stuck on my whiteboard. And I train the students by color. So like, the red light meant absolutely no phones. And if seen, I’m going to take it until the end of the school day. Green meant like feel free to have it out use it for educational purposes. Like we’re doing something with QR codes, or we’re doing research or, you know, we’re doing independent work. And I don’t mind if you’re listening to music, that’s fine. But that was like a more flexible policy. But I liked the light because I felt like it was really, really clear. Also be cognizant of colorblind students as you consider which lights you might need to use. But I found that was really effective. So those are ways that I’ve handled phones in the past. Again, totally up to you what you want to do. But I do think having an expectation and a procedure and communicating that with your students will save a lot of drama with phones later. Also, you may just say I don’t care about phones, except for testing on test days, I’m gonna collect them. And if I see your phone out during the test, you get a zero, I don’t know. But I do think you need to decide on a procedure for phones. Third thing I’ll say is you need a procedure for to the bathroom. Again, I mentioned this in Episode 89 When I was talking to Casey about this, but I personally do not want to be interrupted during class during lab during lecture anything to be asked to go to the bathroom, I just find it like annoying if I’m honest, that’s just the best way to explain it just kind of like irritates me, I’m like, you’re just like, wasting time asking you about them. I don’t care if you need to get bathroom go to bathroom. But from a safety and a management point. I can’t just have like five kids out of the classroom at once. I have to know where kids are at all times. So I just had one bathroom pass. It hung at the front of my classroom. At one point I had a magnetic whiteboard. So it was just like magnetic and another school I had like a hook. And so it just like was hooked up at the front. And basically, if you need to go the bathroom, if the past was up there, you just go up there, you just scribble your name with a whiteboard marker right on the corner of the right whiteboard, right where the past was. You take the past and go. That way. I know if there is a fire drill. If I’m drawing popsicle sticks, which I’ll talk about in episode 93. If I’m drawing popsicle sticks go over something and I draw your name and you just like don’t answer and I’m like what the heck, I can look at the whiteboard be like, Oh, Sean’s in the bathroom. That’s why he’s not responding to me. Or if I’m like dividing people in the lab groups, and I’m like, Wait, why is your group only empty people I can know. Oh, Emily’s in the bathroom. Okay, that’s why there’s someone missing from this lab group. So that’s why I make them write their name on the board. And then when they come back, they just hang the past, they erase their name, and then they can go back to their desk. And then the next person can know so then you’re not having to like come up with this line. Like you’re not having to remember like, oh, JD asked to go and then Eric asked to go and then Deshaun asked to go like you don’t need to remember who asked like they can just self police themselves with that procedure, which is why I love that bathroom policy. Again. You might want to handle it differently. That’s okay, there’s no right or wrong. But I found that to be really effective. Okay, so you need a procedure or routine for the first time and it’s a class, you need one for phones, you need one for your bathroom policy. And I think the fourth one everyone needs is some sort of policy for late work. I just think this is something that can create a lot of tension with students, and it creates a lot of a gray area, if you don’t have a policy for this that can, again, create relational conflict with students, if they think you’re not being fair about this. I think we as teachers, we have to strike live in a tension, if you will, of managing, understanding that these are individual humans that sometimes need individual grace given versus being fair students, and holding the line of students and understanding that, like, if I’m constantly doing this with one student, it can be deemed unfair to another. So we kind of have to live in that. That’s where I think having a set policy is really helpful for late work. And then if you want to provide Grace here, or there you can, but having a main policy is important. Before you even get started thinking about a late work policy, you need to see if your school has a school wide policy, that’s really important to see if there’s something required first, I’ve been in a school where you were not allowed to give a zero. I’ve been in a school where you were required to take late work all semester long until the end of the semester, had been in a school where you could do whatever you wanted. So just find out first before you get going. And then if you have flexibility, just make sure that you do two things. One, you choose a policy that feels fair to you, and to a policy that you have the energy to reinforce, okay, those are the two things, that’s all that matters here. What feels most fair to you may not feel the fairest to me. Also, you may have more energy to grade light work than I do, or your neighboring teacher does. Again, there’s no right or wrong here. And it doesn’t matter what you decide, you just need to make a decision and then communicate it clearly to your students, and reinforce it. Okay, like I said, all these examples I’m sharing are very personal. For what I have done, I’m just sharing them as a reference point. If you read these ideas, and you’re like, I hate these, then don’t do them, like do your own. But I do think you need to late work policy. So here’s how I handled light work. And we’re going to talk a lot about this in September when we talk about grading and grading practices. First of all, I don’t grade a lot of stuff for accuracy, mainly because we do so many formative assessments. And I don’t feel like they need to be great for accuracy. And also I literally don’t have the time or energy, especially when I had five preps to grade every little thing for accuracy. So I grade a lot of things as like 10 point, spot, check completion grade, I just want to see that you tried and then we’re gonna go over it as a class, that works really well. For me, again, I’ll go over this more in the future. I know some people are vehemently against grading for completion. We’re not going to get into that debate here, but I’m fine with it. Now, for things that are for completion. Like if you don’t do it, or don’t try for me, you get a zero and you don’t get to make it up because we’re going to immediately go over it in class. And to me, I’m trying not to be controversial here, but I’m about to be, I just think it’s so pointless when you’re grading all these things for accuracy to like, send a kid out in the hall because you’re about to go over the answers as a class, and then they miss, like learning all the stuff like I’d rather just have them in there, I’d rather be like, Okay, you go to zero to 10. Like, I do so many different assignments, and so many different point values of 10 to 100, like a 01 10, one assignment, that’s a zero, it’s like not going to make that much of a difference in their grade. So I’d rather be like, Okay, you didn’t even try, you get a zero, or, you know, you could have tried to get five out of 10. But stay in here, because now we’re gonna go over it, and I want you to learn it, so you can understand it moving forward. So I do a lot of that. So those grades that are for completion, they don’t get late work on grades for that it’s just you did it or you didn’t. If they were absent, which I’ll talk about more in a minute, I had an ability in my gradebook to put like an x, which meant they were exempt from it. So it didn’t help their grade or hurt them. It just didn’t count. I found that really effective for those things. And then for anything that I like with collecting and grading for accuracy, I would accept those things. And I would take off 10% Everyday late, but I would cap it at five days late 50% off, I would never give them more than 50% off because then it’s like what’s the point? But here’s what I’ll say. And I think this was really, really effective. This worked really well for me. And this is something I had the energy to reinforce. I do not collect late work after the end of the unit. So for example, if you show up to the unit three test, and you hand me a stack of work that you’ve done, and it’s all late, I’ll take it if it’s for Unit Three, because really I want you to do work to learn the content before the test. Like that’s important to me. But that feels fair to me. But you know what, I also don’t have the energy though, to be grading stuff and December that we did in August, there is nothing that grinds my gears more than like, it’s the end of the semester, the end of the quarter, and you’re trying to get grades finalized, and some student rolls up at 4pm on a Friday, and gives you all this stuff. And you’re like, I don’t even know where the rubric is for this from August. And also, you probably just went to your friend and copied all these answers. So now I’m gonna have to sit here and grade this, and you didn’t like even it didn’t even serve any purpose other than you just like filling in zero. So I found it, I only had the energy to reinforce all grade your light work all stay late and grade it up until the date of the unit from that point on, you may not make up anything from that that unit. So we’re on unit five on that grading light work from unit two, okay? Again, this worked really well for me, it may not work best for you. Think about what matters most to you consider your school policy, and then just create a procedure that you can be consistent with and you have the energy to be consistent with. Maybe you don’t have children in your home right now. Or maybe this is like the first year that you’re not coaching a sport or doing 5000 clubs. So you have more capacity to greenlight work. So you’re going to take it all year long, like good for you go for it, like love that for you. But I also want those of you listening who are like, I can’t do that, that’s fine. You don’t have to do it. You need to do what you can do with the energy that you have and the capacity you have in the season that you are in. Okay.

Rebecca 21:23
That was a tangent. I didn’t mean to go on. But here we are. Alright, last thing, and I kind of mentioned this missing stuff. So you need a procedure for students, specifically who miss labs and Miss tests. Okay, y’all know, it’s so frustrating when a student misses like the class period, or they miss like three days and they just like roll in. They’re like, what did I miss? You know, like, what’s going on? So having some sort of procedure so that they don’t ask you that question when you’re trying to like, get stuff done and get class going, is important. I had always had like a very rudimentary class website, where I just kind of listed our agenda every day and what we covered, and I had that link, I had it like a bitly, like a really short link on my whiteboard. So they asked, I just pointed to it and like look it up there catch up and jump in. But then also, I think you specifically need some sort of procedure for those labs and tests. Now, for me personally, when I was teaching 50 minute class periods, typically a lab was going to take like two to three days, we at least had one day that was like we’re designing it and doing data collection, and then another day for analysis and application. So my students missed that first day, but they’re back for day two, I just would throw them in a group be like get the data and practice analyzing it, because there’s still a benefit in doing that. If students miss day two, but they were there for day one, I would give them an extra week and be like, Hey, you got the data, you need to do the graph the analysis and the application on your own. If students miss both days of a lab, I typically did not make them make it up. And here’s why. I know this is an unpopular opinion. But I had many years that I taught in a non lab space, which meant we were either doing labs like at our little desks, or I was having to plan labs, in swap classrooms with another teacher to do labs, I literally did not have the space, or room or ability to keep labs set up for multiple days, like I genuinely couldn’t do it. And then even the year that I was in a lab room, but I had five preps. When you’re teaching five preps, you have at least one lab happening a day in one class, but usually there’s two. And so again, you’re constantly having to change out even the stuff that’s in your lab space to manage all these different classes. I mean, it just was not feasible for these students that were absent to be able to make it up. So oftentimes, I would just let them skip it. Now, if it was like a pretty big one, I typically just would be like, Okay, come after school, I’ll give you a rundown of kind of like what happened and how we collected this data. And then I would give them someone’s data and have them practice analyzing it. Because again, I kind of think that’s typically the most important part. I know, there are like practical lab skills you want them to learn and all that. But like, if they go on to take science in college, they’re gonna learn a lot of that and those lab classes that they have. So I’m not stress about that I really just personally want them to know how to like graph data and analyze it, because that’s like a life skill that they’re gonna use at all times, even on social media when they see these like crazy data points that people point out, like, I want them to be able to assess if they’re legit or not. So I think that warrants good practice. But again, I don’t stress about makeup labs, personally. Now for tests, I tell students, they need to be prepared to make up a test within 48 hours of their return. And I kind of do it different ways. I usually let them do it over lunch over two days, or you know, before after school and I’ll just print off like the first couple pages of the test first, and then the second the next time just to kind of split it up. And I do this 48 hour policy because like we move on the next day to new material. And it can be really overwhelming if you don’t put a time limit on a makeup test. Like students can be showing up two weeks later trying to make up a test they don’t want A member it Okay, so I set that procedure early in the year, like you’ve got 48 hours to make this up. Especially because I feel like 90% of absences. They know in advance, like they’re leaving early because they have a tennis tournament, or the junior volunteer league is doing some sort of volunteer days, they know they’re going to be out or they’ve got a student council thing, or they have a doctor’s point, like, they know it’s coming, I feel like or their family trip, like, it is more rare that the students are actually like ill and it’s unexpected. And so again, you can provide Grace there. But I think just having some sort of standard that you can hold to. And then if you need to provide a little grace here, or there you can, but that’s always worked really well for me. Okay, so those are the big five, your procedure for Miss labs and test for late work bathroom phones, and the first five minutes of class, hopefully, they give you a lot of ideas. But again, you may need more than these five, I had more than ease, you know, I had procedures for how I handled extra credit, people asked me about if I’m going to curve a test the way people ask questions during lab, like, there’s so many things you can write procedures for. If any of those things you find disruptive or annoying, or things that you find come up over and over again, then make a procedure for them. And then here’s what’s most important, you need to one, be clear in communicating those expectations. And communicate them often, you have to tell them over and over again, especially the beginning of the year. But once give it a couple weeks of you saying the same things over and over again, they will remember and then to be consistent and reinforcing those expectations and consequences. Because y’all a procedure is only as effective as it is clearly communicated and continually reinforced. If you don’t tell them the procedure and make it super clear, it will not be effective, because they will not know what you expect from them. And if you don’t reinforce the procedure, it will lose all value at all wait, because there’ll be like she doesn’t really care. Like there’s no actual consequence or the nothing happens if I don’t follow this, okay, so you have to be clear in your communication, and consistent and continual and your reinforcement. Alright, so your action step. At a minimum, I want you to come up with your own personal procedures for the start of class phones, bathroom, late work, and Miss labs and tests. And then if you have that momentum, you’re feeling good, you got an extra cup of coffee at your desk, keep going. Ask yourself those three questions I mentioned at the top of the episode, and then develop as many procedures as you need. Okay, and I’ve mentioned a lot of different links in today’s episode. So those are all in the show notes. At isn’t rocket science classroom.com/episode 91. And before you go this week, if you are listening, I want all the teachers out there who are listening who have adopted prime times to leave a review for the pod. If I have gotten you on this primetime train in the last seven years that I’ve been talking about this on the internet, leave a rating and review for the pod. I would love to hear from you. You can talk about how primetime has changed your life, you can just talk in general about what you like about the pod. But again, I’d love to hear from you. I feel like this has been one of the pillars that I’ve like tried to post and standby on the internet is this idea of prime times and how much of a game changer they’ve been for me and my students. And so I would love to hear from those of you who have experienced the same so leave a rating and review before you go if you’re loving the pod. All right, teacher friends. That wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher, head to It’s not rocket science classroom.com/challenge to grab your classroom reset challenge. And guess what? It’s totally free. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I’ll see you here next week. Until then, I’ll be rooting for you teacher friend.