A Problem-Solving Activity to Try With Your Students to Reset Classroom Expectations
One of my most favorite “teacher-thing” to do is review expectations and reset after a break, whether this be Thanksgiving Break, Winter Break, Spring Break, or honestly any time I feel like my students are getting out of hand. This is a great thing to do because sometimes students who don’t have much structure at home have a difficult time adjusting to the expectations at school. Resetting and reviewing can (hopefully) smooth the transition.
Recently, I came up with the idea of doing a problem-solving activity with my students to reset these expectations. My students this year are in 4th grade. Drama comes with the territory of teaching upper elementary, I’m afraid. So, doing something like this was very important to me. However, I didn’t want to just talk their ears off - I wanted them to interact. Read more to find out how I did it!
Step One: Prepare
First, think of some common problems for your grade level. I chose:
Someone in the cafeteria skipped you and your friends without permission.
At recess, someone bumped into you and you fell and hurt your knee.
Your classmate snuck their phone into the bathroom and wants to make a TikTok video with you.
The teacher is choosing volunteers but didn’t choose you. This hurt your feelings.
Someone in class is being annoying.
I chose 5 problems because I wanted to split my class into 5 groups. Of course, you can choose as many as you would like.
After, write these problems on chart paper and tape them around the room. Also included on the poster is a “Good” section and a “Bad” section, where students must write a good way to react to the problem as well as a bad way to react to the problem.
Step Two: Discussion
Before letting your students get started, have a discussion with your students about the importance of problem solving, as well as what happens if we are unable to solve problems in a school setting.
I mentioned to my students that the point of school is to learn, and so if you aren’t learning anything because you can’t focus due to arguments and disruption, you’re wasting your time.
I stressed the fact that in order for us to meet the goal of learning and expanding our knowledge base, we need to learn how to solve problems on our own so that there will be less disruption and so that I can teach rather than deal with negative behaviors!
This is when I introduced the problem-solving activity. I told the students that they’re going to work with their partners to solve some common problems that their grade level has. I made the point that there are positive ways to solve problems that will ACTUALLY solve the problems, as well as negative ways that will make the problem worse.
I also told my students that it’s good to try to solve problems by yourself in a positive way, but if you can’t come to a solution it’s a good idea to get adult assistance.
Step Three: The Activity
After I split my students in to groups of 5, we began the rotations. To ensure there was less chaos, I allowed one student in each group to write at a time, and they took turns writing.
I instructed the students to write at least one thing under the “good” and one thing under the “bad”. After 5 minutes of writing and discussion, we rotated to the next problem poster. We repeated this until all groups visited each poster.
After each poster was filled, I had one student from each group stay at the poster and we all discussed a few “good” and “bad” solutions.
Some Disclaimers
Now, I’m not saying this will solve all your classroom management issues. This also heavily depends on the demographic you teach, your relationship with them, their relationships with each other, your students’ personal experience, their personalities, and how they’ve been raised. So, like any classroom management strategy, there are a lot of things that could determine the effectiveness of it.
However, I will say it’s an opportunity to have some great discussion. And who knows? Maybe most of your students will take it to heart and genuinely try to solve problems in a positive manner. Maybe they’ll come to you if they have issues rather than make negative decisions.
At the very least, this will be a good way to reset expectations: this is what you should do if this thing happens. That way, no students will have an excuse when it comes to decision-making during problems they encounter.
