Paper Airplanes

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At one point in my career, I came in as a long term sub in the middle of the year.  The students missed their first teacher, and had had a long string of substitute teachers in between with varying levels of language and teaching experience.  As you can imagine, when I came in, there was a lot of rapport-building that needed to be done, and a lot of pushback against yet another change.  I had one group in the afternoons that was rambunctious and challenging.  You can imagine exactly the group I’m describing!  Their behavior certainly kept me on my toes. 

One day, during the execution of a carefully planned lesson, I could hear paper shuffling around.  I continued to walk around the room, help students, and facilitate the lesson.  Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something whiz by me.  Then another.  Yup - paper airplanes.  It was easy to tell which aspiring aviators the airplanes had come from - two students were in a corner of the room, both missing the paper from the activity, with the eyes of the entire class on them.  “Jack and Joe” (names changed) I said.  “Please come up to my desk.”  To my surprise, they did, however reluctantly, and the class made all the disruptive cooing that erupts in these types of scenarios - “oooooh!” and “busted!” 

“Let’s see which one of these can fly farther!” I said.  As you can imagine, the students were not expecting this reaction.  I launched the two paper airplanes myself, we picked a winner, I then handed Jack and Joe a new copy of their assignment, and asked them to focus on their work.  Surprisingly, the whole situation was resolved in under a minute, and the rest of the period everyone (even Jack and Joe) engaged in learning.

While I admit that this is not always the wisest course of action for all situations, the impromptu choice to engage in a 1-minute airplane race let my students know that my focus was not on punishment, but rather redirection.  Slowly, this class of students began to take me and their learning incrementally more seriously, and by the following year were stopping by my classroom to say hi during their passing time. 

What are your favorite classroom management tips for managing rambunctious classes?  Comment below!

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