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Oh, boy. Classroom management. Classroom management is the most important part of teaching, because without it, you won’t be able to get ANYTHING accomplished. The problem? If your college experience was anything like mine, you may not have learned ANYTHING about classroom management for music class before actually stepping into the music room.
The bigger problem? Most of the strategies that people teach are for classroom teachers who are with their students all day, not elementary music teachers who see their students once a week.
So let’s talk about a classroom management strategy that works well for whole group classroom management in elementary music class: Teacher v. Student points.
What is Teacher v. Student points?
Teacher v. Student points is a PBIS classroom management strategy from the Whole Brain Learning system. This is a system where students work as a team to earn points, promoting positive bbehavior. The teacher can also earn points if students are not doing what they are supposed to.
This is a whole group classroom management strategy, which is especially important in the elementary music room. Since the classes only come to music every few days, it is important that they work together to earn points.
You can check out the Whole Brain Teaching book here (it’s seriously great!)
And check out their website here.
How does Teacher v. Student points work?
Teacher v. Student points is super simple! Here’s how it works:
- When students follow classroom rules, they earn a point.
- When they earn a point, it goes on the board, and they say “oh yeah!”
- When students don’t follow a classroom rule, the teacher earns a point.
- When the teacher earns a point, it goes on the board, and the students say “aww” or “oh no!”
- At the end of class, subtract any teacher points from the student points, and whatever is left over goes towards a whole class reward.
Here’s what my point board looks like. I use the magnets to represent the points. You could also use a white board marker, but I find this to be easiest.
How do Students earn points?
Students earn points by working as a team to follow music room rules. In my room, we have four rules.
My music room rules are:
- Follow directions
- Be respectful
- Be responsible
- Be a participant
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I typically shoot for students to earn about 3 points a day. This usually boils down to one point for the warm up, one for our main, mini lesson, and one for individual work. They can get more or less, but three is the standard.
I tell them:
- 1 is not good
- 2 is meh
- 3 is good
- 4 is great
- 5 is amazing
And I don’t give out a lot of amazings.
What if someone isn’t following the rules?
It depends. If you have just one or two (or even 3) people who are not earning points, then I don’t hold it against the class. That student would get a consequence while everyone else gets the point.
If it’s a significant portion of the class, then they don’t get the point. Positive peer pressure can be an amazing thing.
Any time that I have to stop a lesson and restart something, the students have to redo something, etc earns me a point.
How does the teacher earn points?
I earn points when students are NOT following directions. This usually happens if we have to stop an activity early, if I have to repeat myself, or if I have to keep using my quiet signals.
What are some rewards for Teacher v. Student points?
Now…. What about rewards?
At the end of class we take their points and subtract any of mine, and whatever we’re left with is the reward amount.
My school uses “class Gator bucks”, so the points translate to class Gator bucks at the end of class. Classes earn these around the school for good behavior and use them for pizza parties, dress downs, and movie days. I love that we have a school wide thing to make life easier.
At my previous school, we did not have this. I also saw the students every day for the week– so I’d see them Monday- Friday, then I wouldn’t see them for 3 or 4 weeks. It’s weird. If you have a schedule like this, you might want to watch this video about how I dealt with it.
Because of this, I’d keep track of their points for the week, and we’d have game time at the end of the week– the amount of minutes that you have points. (10 points = 10 minutes) They would choose a music game we’ve played before and vote on it.
Because most of us see our students once a week, it may work best to add points together. Create a target (10 points, 20 points, etc), and after the class reaches so many points, they can earn things like:
- Minutes of game time
- Free time
- Time on Chrome music lab
- Movie day
You could also do daily rewards instead. Daily rewards would be harder, but you could do extra minutes on instruments or minutes of freeze dance (I had a class that did that one every day because they needed the short time frame).
As far as classroom management systems in elementary music class go, teacher v. student points is one of the best. I love that it’s positive, but you still have a way to fix behavior. You can also track behavior by seeing how many points classes get each week. You never have to take away their points, but they still have a consequence. And I typically use the free incentives, so it’s not a lot more work for me.
If you want more help with classroom management, especially at the beginning of the year, you might want to check out the Back to School Bootcamp.
In the Back to School Bootcamp, we focus on everything to start the year off first– including a whole module on classroom management! Even if it’s not back to school time, this self paced course has a lot of helpful content in it.
Happy teaching!
Becca
