Elementary Music Classroom Management

Classroom management has always been a challenge, with very few comprehensive resources or training that is specifically for elementary music teachers. Part of the problem is there isn't one single strategy that will magically make everything run smoothly- there are so many facets to building and maintaining a positive, productive elementary music classroom that celebrates and meets the needs of all the hundreds of students that come through its doors each week. This post is intended to serve as a resource hub for all of those many facets that affect classroom management, so you can find strategies that will best meet the needs of your students.

Let's start with what everyone thinks of first when they think classroom or behavior management: a concrete system of tracking, motivating, and holding classes as a whole accountable for their behavior in class.

Concrete systems for responding to both positive and negative individual student behaviors are also important:

Having procedures and predictability is one of the most important strategies for fostering positive and productive classrooms, especially when students aren't there every day and have less time to feel settled!

Another key element of procedures and predictability is assigned seating, including assigning students to a "team" that serves as a way to give students classroom jobs, build in procedures for handing out and collecting supplies, and give students more ownership in the classroom:

Now that we've got some concrete systems in place, it's important to make sure we have the right framework / mindset for interacting with students in positive and productive ways, and encouraging students to do the same:

Now let's talk about specific strategies for specific situations that we commonly encounter as music teachers, whether for individual students or classes as a whole:

That is a lot of information but it also just barely begins to scratch the surface! You can browse all of my posts on management by clicking here. If you have any questions or topics you'd like to see addressed in a future post, please leave a comment to let me know!