Classroom Management Ideas for Preschool

Working with preschoolers can make even the most confident teacher question her methods. After all, a preschooler's growing need for independence can make her question your authority, ignore your instructions and talk back to you. Using several classroom management strategies can lessen the need for frequent discipline and reprimands, which can only improve the interactions between students and teacher.

Set a Schedule

In a preschool classroom, having a set schedule can make all the difference between an unruly group of students and a content class. When students have the security of knowing the general progression of events in the classroom each day, it allows them to relax. A set schedule can also help students who have difficulty with transitions, because they can anticipate when a transition is coming and prepare themselves mentally for it. Although your schedule should stay relatively regular from day to day, there can be some flexibility in the schedule without undermining its helpfulness in classroom management.

Make It Into a Game

It's much easier for students to follow your directions when you make the directions fun. Rather than simply moving them from the snack table to the other side of the room for free play, put on some music and encourage students to get up from the table to dance with you for several minutes before beginning to play. Have a race to see how many of them can put on their coats in the time it takes you to count to 20. Whenever you find students are struggling with a certain set of instructions or acting up at a specific time of the day, try to inject a bit of fun into the situation.

Giving Classroom Jobs

Giving out jobs to students is a great way to teach them responsibility, and it can also help you manage the classroom effectively. For example, if you appoint one student as the "line leader" and another as the "caboose," they can assist in encouraging their classmates to line up between them. If you have one or several "snack servers," you'll be free to watch the rest of the class while the snack is being handed out--or at least while plates and cups are being handed out, if your students are too young to hand out the snack. You can also appoint one student as "teacher's helper," and this student can deliver messages to the office or to other teachers as needed.