ECD 210

09/09/26

Classroom Design

Physical Design

  • sets the tone for classroom instruction

  • Can impact student behavior

  • Permits safe and orderly movement, especially for disabilities and transitions

  • Is a component of effective classroom management

  • Keeps distractions and disruptions to a minimum

5 Key Considerations

  • Teacher should be able to see every student all the time (from desk, from lecture spot, from horseshoe table)

  • Students should be able to see teaching demonstrations at all times

  • Room arrangement should support your goals for instruction

  • Movement is easy and safe

  • Easy accessibility to instructional materials

09/14/26

Classroom Design

  • The students should be able to see teaching demonstrations at all times

  • The teacher should be able to see all students at all times

  • Never call a student out in a whole group EVER

    • Use proximity and if needed, pull them into the hall for a solo convo

  • Your classroom design should be ADA compliant. You are the advocate for your students!

  • Don’t ever try to move the whole class at the same time

  • We make students feel safe by maintaining consistency in our routines and procedures

9/16/26

Travis Neimeir

  • Whole brain teaching

  • Score board \

    • daily, three points either way per day. Rewards at the end may be chocolate kisses, jolly ranchers, mystery envelopes, social time- gameify it!

  • Mirroring!

  • Playing for Change music on YouTube

    • Intro and leaving songs for kids

    • When kids walked in, he’d have the music playing and have lyrics on their desks. Kids would read lyrics, and respond as prompted on the back, maybe about why that song was shared and how that applies to classroom and community

    • Playing all different genres of music can be so powerful- but make sure it’s proper and not just popular

Observations from teachers

  • Chat with students during morning work

  • Daily check ins

  • Digressing can be a great relationship builder, and it can be done in a way where we stay on track

  • Use names often, especially in praise

  • MOVEMENT! Lots of energizers to work with attention spans for all ages.

    • You can also break lectures up with quick writes, videos, think-pair-share, etc.


9/23/26

Tips for Pedagogy in Routines and Procedures:

  • Give a specific amount of time for an activity and let students periodically know how much time is left.

  • Be proactive to prioritize instructional minutes

  • The root of “Discipline” is disciple, which means to teach!

  • A procedure is how you want something done

  • A routine is what the student does automatically without prompting or supervision

  • The number one problem is classrooms is a lack of routines and procedures, not discipline!


9/30/26

Routines and Procedures

  • Attention getters are crucial to have down for safety reasons

  • There are SO many procedures, and you’ll need to discuss and frontload each of them a lot

Rules/Expectations

  • Rules govern student behavior; procedures are what students do

  • “If you don’t follow a known expectation, there is a consequence to that expectation.”

  • They represent core philosophy and drive classroom climate

  • Most rules define what is appropriate behavior

  • You only want to have three to five rules, even for high schoolers

    • 3 general rules for sure

  • If you put a rule in place, you must enforce it consistently.

Choose 3-5 Classroom rules:

  • They must be age-appropriate

  • Simple and clear

  • Rules you can enforce

  • When appropriate, set rules together with your students

    • 1. Treat everyone with respect (including yourself!)

    • 2. Act with integrity!

    • 3. Be a leader!

    • 4. Choose your words wisely!

  • Proximity!


10/7/26

  • Consequences

    • Redirection:

      • Group reminders (“Everyone should be taking their notebook out right now.”)

        • Group punishment for something one student is doing is not a great thing. Handle that one student, but don’t hurt the group.

      • Anonymous reminder (“I see a friend who is off task…” and look at the people not doing what they’re supposed to)

      • Proximity (#1 classroom management strat. Touching the desk when you are near to remind students that you do not approve of their behavior)

        • You do NOT want to stand over the top of a kid with trauma

        • You can still use proximity with these kids maybe by kneeling down beside them, but not come front-on or hover.

        • Some kids will also really not respond to touch

      • Non-verbal signal (A student keeps turning to his friend and tries to take something off her desk. You signal with your hand to regain the student’s attention.)

        • You can teach your students a hand signal that they know means pay attention or stop what you’re doing.

        • These can be great when you’re trying to compete with a loud and noisy classroom.

        • This can also be eye contact!

        • These are also voice-savers and encourage your students to constantly be engaging with or looking at you

      • Quick word (“The expectation right now is that we are silently working. I need you to bring your volume to a zero.”)

    • You want five positive praises for every redirection: “I see Quincie is ready, Olivia is ready, etc. etc.”

    • Redirection steps:

      • It’s about the behavior, not about the kid.

      • Focus on the desired behavior rather than the problem behavior

      • Provide a clear description of the desired behavior (Not just, “Stop it!”)

      • Give the student positive attention as soon as the student shows the desired behavior

    • Remember the drummer kid video? Kids with OCD behaviors do so without even noticing! They just have lots of energy and are trying to get it out. Flexible seating can help! They’re not trying to be bad, so be careful about punishing them.

    • When all else fails- Logical Consequences!

      • “It’s not the severity of your consequences that will make them effective, it’s the consistency of your approach.”

      • Three Rs of Consequences: Realistic, Relevant, Respectful

    • Restitution: You break it, you fix it!

      • You accidentally knock someone down, so you help them up

      • You hurt someone’s feelings, so you write them an apology and invite them to play

      • You waste time talking to a friend in class and avoiding tasks, so you make up the time later in the day

    • Loss of Privileges

      • A student waves scissors around repeatedly. She loses scissors for the remainder of the period and you have a conversation about safety.

      • Two kids talk instead of working. They have to sit by themselves.

      • A student rolls his eyes or calls out during a morning meeting. He has to leave the group.

      • A student fools around in line. She has to walk with the teacher.

      • A student logs onto an unacceptable website while doing research. He loses computer time for the rest of the period (or week).

    • Time Out or Take a Break

      • Calm corners are great, but we have to be very careful with how we employ this.

    • Document Repeated Behaviors ABC

      • Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence


10/14/26

  • Make learning REAL:

    • Relational

    • Experiential

    • Appliable

    • Learner-Based

  • Think-triad-share

  • Research on Learning Behaviors

    • Students engage will tasks that they feel they can perform well (attainment value)

    • Students engage in tasks that bring them enjoyment (intrinsic value)

    • Students engage in tasks they feel serve a useful purpose or meet an end goal that is important (utility value)

  • Other considerations with engagement and motivation

    • Resiliency

    • Growth mindset

  • The brain gets stronger and works better the more it is engaged

  • Too often students believe that the brain is static and hopeless

  • Research tells us that each time you stretch yourself and learn something new your brain forms new connections and over time build knowledge and skill

  • Resiliency: Encouraging difficult work

    • “You aced that really quickly. Maybe this is just too easy for you and it’s time to dig into something more challenging.”

    • Traditional grading that most students encounter at school may inadvertently encourage the pursuit of easier tasks.

    • Tangible improvement will occur only if students actually engage in challenging tasks that require them to stretch and grow

  • What works best for student engagement: Hattie

    • Classroom discussion

    • Reciprocal teaching

    • Feedback

    • Student teacher relationships


10/21/26

Restorative Practices

  • “Students need to learn mistakes have consequences within relationships, not consequences that take them out of relationships.”

  • Tiers of Restorative Practices

    • You can only restore what was already built

    • Tiers:

      • Universal, targeted, and intensive

  • Traditional vs. Restorative

    • Traditional: school rules are broken, justice focuses on establishing guilt, accountability=punishment, justice directed at the offender- victim is not addressed, rules and intent outweigh outcome, limits opportunity for remorse or amends

    • Restorative: people and relationships are harmed, justice identifies needs and responsibilities, accountability=understanding impact and repairing harm, the person who caused harm, the person who was harmed, and the school have roles in the justice process, person who caused harm is responsible for harmful behavior, repairing harm and working outward toward positive outcome, opportunity for amends and remorse

  • If the students aren’t ready to take that accountability, we don’t move forward into the restorative process

  • Culture shift! Prioritize the relationship over the task


10/26/26

Movement and Transitions

  • Movement induces serotonin!

  • Weighted vests or lap belts (heavy things) help ADHD students’ bodies recognize a rest state

    • Jodi had a severe ADHD student do a “job” of carrying heavy books to the office, going on a walk with heavy things

  • Students sit for 6-8 HOURS EACH DAY! This number was found in 2016, so odds are high that this number has increased with social media and whatnot at home

  • Sitting is really hard on the body

  • After sitting for 20-30 minutes, 80% of the blood supply pools in the lower half of your body, which means the brain is deprived of oxygenated blood!

  • Mental gymnastics are like physical gymnastics- if you can’t get them physical exercise, giving them a puzzle to solve is also highly beneficial

  • Movement helps to build neural networks!

    • Movement causes a state of arousal in the brain, meaning it’s more sensitive to input

    • Movement causes positive physiological changes in the brain and increases level of neutrophins which aid neural processing

    • Movement engages the same neural networks as cognitive learning

    • When you have a day that is cognitively exhausting, you will be physically exhausted

    • Movement also wears students out, but in a different way

    • Give kids some grace when they’ve had a content-heavy day!

  • When movement is combined with cognitive learning it increases neural activation

  • Active engagement is the combination of conceptual knowledge, social interactions, motivation, and movement

  • Strategies for Movement in the Classroom

    • total physical response

      • When you connect movement with words, it helps your brain remember it better

    • simulations

      • Recreating an activity or process

      • Research shows that learning styles are a myth! We know that movement in learning benefits everybody

    • brain breaks

      • Go Noodle, dance parties, something to wake people up and get blood flowing!

      • Jar of activity ideas

    • Flexible seating

      • Allowing kids to learn from different seating places can be hugely beneficial

      • Rules in place for use of flexible seating is very important

      • recess

  • Activities with transitions

    • Center work

      • Mini lesson, then kids move into 15 minute centers. At each bell, their movement was cleaning up and then rotating

    • Transitions from large group to small group

      • Moving from carpet to seat to carpet to centers, etc. Can be huge when moving through a huge amount of content with big lessons

    • Four corners

    • Gallery walk

      • Showing student work and displaying it to classmates

    • Circulate and share

      • Writing journals and sharing what you wrote. Jodi used this as morning bell work and tied it into work later in the day, i.e. working on punctuation so students go back and circle all their punctuation, or circle the verbs in their own writing. Then they circulate around the room and share what they wrote with three other people. “Author of the day” then came up for more direct sharing.

    • Scavenger hunts


11/02/26

High Impact Teaching Strategies

  • Hattie and Marzano

  • Students should know what they’re doing at school and why they’re doing it

  • 2/3 of our students need explicit instruction about what we’re going to teach them

  • We want students to engage with content

  • We want to give feedback

  • We need to provide students with roughly ten exposures to content before they get it mastered

  • Give students opportunities to apply their knowledge

  • Get students working together

  • Build students’ self-efficacy

  • Expect 100% compliance

    • “The hill you have to die on.” - Jodi

    • When we give students instructions, we are expecting 100% of students to follow directions the first time they are given

    • We also was 100% of students engaged the whole time they are learning

    • You can’t teach over the top of any disengaged students

    • “I’m gonna stop everybody, redirect, and go back to 100% compliance. I will wait until I have that. You will do it over…and over…and over.”

  • Mini Lessons

    • Introductions

    • Think-Aloud/I Do

    • We Do/Interaction

    • Closure- sets up You Do!

    • These are ten minutes long MAX

    • Any instructional format in a lesson plan will have this format

    • Lesson plans should be so detailed that anybody could just pick it up and teach it

  • Think aloud as you teach

  • We want students engaged while also following procedures and protocols





11/11/26

Niemeyer