Bridges Blog Archive for Classroom Management

Mary Harbolt knows how to manage student manipulatives. She teaches a 4th/5th blend at Faubion Elementary in Portland, Oregon, and wrote in with this fabulous idea...

I have a marble system in my classroom. [Students work together to earn--and sometimes lose--marbles that can earn them special privileges and/or rewards.]

If a math manipulative hits the floor and I pick it up, it's my marble. If a student picks it up first, no marble is lost. This system makes the students hypervigilant. At the end, if all manipulatives are put away, they get a marble.

Enjoy the following story from Shelly Scheafer's first grade classroom in Bend, Oregon, then sit in on a little Q & A session with this incredible Bridges teacher...

Think-Pair-Share, a strategy frequently used in Bridges classrooms, enables children to:

1. Think about a question for several moments.

2. Pair up with a classmate nearby to share thinking and compare strategies.

3. Share thinking with the entire class. 

On Little Miss Kindergarten's blog, Mrs. Coe posted an idea for managing runaway dice. If students have trouble keeping dice under control, simply place dice in mini plastic storage containers to make dice-shaker-boxes. After seeing this idea, I easily located a pack of ten at a nearby discount store for a dollar.

Sherwood, Oregon, teacher Maggie Englund writes in with a fabulous idea for moving manipulatives:

Although I was born without the gene dedicated to organization, other teachers excel in this area.

Over the last several years I've encountered more and more traumatized children in the classroom. I likely taught many in my early career as well, although at that time I failed to recognize the signs of trauma or to understand the impact it could have on a child's ability to learn. Trauma may be caused by any number of experiences including, but not limited to: domestic violence, moves from family to family, inconsistent or inadequate care, neglect, or abuse.