Classroom Management is something that we know educators struggle with when they are physically in the classroom with students. Some students have behavioral needs, some students are just having a bad day, some students are maybe a little too excited and wound up to focus. Add distance learning and hybrid learning to the equation and now classroom management is that much more difficult.

So how do we manage our students during distance learning? How can we ensure that students are paying attention and learning when we’re teaching remotely?

Enter our new Digital Classroom!

The SAM Labs STEAM education and Learn to Code Digital Classrooms are perfect for promoting positive student behaviors and classroom management. Our team of educators have adapted our STEAM education and Learn to Code lessons to include multiple engagement opportunities. These adapted lessons utilize Nearpod to create interactive lessons for students and to make classroom management that much easier for teachers.

There are two features that can help you manage students and promote positive behaviors when using the Nearpod lessons in the Digital Classroom: you control the pace and you can see what students are doing.

1. You control the pace!

Once you gain access to your free copy of the Digital Classroom you can assign the Nearpod lesson activities for students to complete independently or you can choose to do a whole class Live lesson with students. If you choose to do a Live lesson with the entire class you can control the pace that students progress through each slide and activity of the lesson.

Controlling the pace means that you determine when to move on to the next slide and how long students can spend on a slide or activity. We recommend giving a countdown to let students know when you plan to move on and change to the next slide. Once you move forward students cannot go back. By controlling the pace students will have to remain on task to ensure they complete activities on time and get credit for the activities.

2. You can track student progress!

Our education consultants have included multiple interactive opportunities to keep students engaged in the STEAM and coding lessons. As students participate in the interactive activities and are engrossed in the lessons, we hope this will help limit any negative classroom behaviors.

Along with these engaging activities, while you are doing a live lesson you can also tell if someone is remaining on task. With the activities included the digital classroom you can watch as students answer short answer questions, complete quizzes, draw the drawing prompt, and more. This can give you insights into how long to wait on a slide or whether it’s time to move on.

Conclusion

Classroom management is something teachers work on throughout the school year and during a more traditional school year classroom management gets easier as you get to know students and as they become more familiar with your rules and expectations. This doesn’t mean that all students are perfect angels that always pay attention, do their work, and cause no disruptions though. There will be really great days and there will be some not so great days sprinkled in every once in a while. We hope our digital classroom with Nearpod adaptations will help you and your students have more positive behaviors and classroom management days!

Interested in learning more about our digital classroom? Check out the 10 top features of our digital classroom!

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Ashli Maholland

Ashli is a science educator who has a passion for using EdTech tools in the classroom and for creating interactive learning experiences that allow all students to engage in higher level learning.