Classroom Management

I think it is important for teachers to begin the school year with telling the students what they expect from them, and let them know that breaking the rules isn't okay. In an elementary school I worked in, there was a teacher who had a consequence wheel. There was a board with all the student's names on it and a little pouch under each of their names. If the teacher had to stop a lesson and tell a student to be quiet that student would have to put a marble in their pouch. If they got to 3 marbles in their pouch, they would have to spin the consequence wheel to see what their punishment would be. On this wheel there were things like, staying in from recess, helping the teacher clean up the classroom, or writing a letter and having their parents sign it. Overall this technique was pretty successful, but a pitfall we saw was that the students would  break off the arrow on the wheel so they wouldn't have to spin. In that case we would just assign them a consequence, which helped them realize that they wouldn't get out of having a punishment for their bad behavior.