How to Encourage Positive Behavior in the Elementary Art Room

Hi, this is Katie Jarvis with Managing the Mess.

This video is part of a larger series that I'm creating on behavior management in the

art room.

This is my 21st year teaching, half of which has been in a Title I school.

So I do not teach rainbow magical unicorn children.

In fact, I've learned a lot of things the hard way.

I'm creating this video for teachers that are starting out so that they can learn some tips and tricks to

be successful, but also for teachers that have been around for a while.

Teachers are lifelong learners and classroom management is something that you continually

need to level up on to stay on top of your teaching game and make your job easier.

In this video, we'll be taking a deep dive into how to encourage positive behavior in

the art room.

We're going to start by breaking down what you need to do before students even enter

your room to improve classroom behavior.

Now, the number one piece of classroom management advice that you've definitely heard is that

you need to build relationships with students and where this is great advice,

it looks very different in an art room when you're seeing hundreds of students each week.

So how do you build those relationships when you've got that amount of students?

Well, you need to make sure that students feel a certain way when they're in your classroom.

So when you're planning things out about how you want your class to run, what you want

your rules to be, what you want your procedures to be, you need to imagine what it's like

to be a student in your class.

Students need to feel that you are organized.

They need to feel welcomed.

They need to feel that they are important and cared for.

So you need to set up a plan of how you're going to teach to students what those things

are explicitly.

Here's what we're going to do.

Here's what we're not going to do.

You can see my video about how I start art on my channel.

Check that one out next if you haven't.

But each week I revisit some of these behavior expectations and even when things are getting

rusty with a certain rule or procedure, I will go over them during the school year at

any time with all of my classes so that we are sure that we are on that same note.

What you need to do as the art room teacher is defend your rules, defend your management

plan.

When I realized that I was having success with this was when I had a student that was

new join the class and the student began to misbehave one day, started to use inappropriate

language, kind of slid down in his chair like he was just going to blow this class period

off.

And the student next to him that had been my student for a long time, no means a perfect

student said to him, we don't do that here.

And that pressure of me being the one that was always telling students what to do and

correcting and yelling, that pressure went away because I realized that my students cared

about my classroom the same way that I did because I instilled that in them.

And they were passing this on to that new student.

So you need to come up with a plan.

You need to come up with what is your behaviors that you're looking for, what are the behaviors

you're not looking for, and make that very clear and very visual for students.

You need to teach this explicitly.

Now if you're in the beginning of the school year, you have a great opportunity of starting

over.

I love that fresh start every year for you.

But if you are in a spot where the behavior is just not so good, you can take some time

and plan out how do you want this to look.

You can do a we're starting over the year day, where you just take back your classroom.

It is never too late to pull a class back in and get them excited about art.

Now your job also before they come in is to plan amazing lessons to motivate students.

I always say that if I wasn't an art teacher, I would want to be in advertising.

So what I like to do is convince my students that the lesson that I am presenting to them

is amazing.

It's awesome.

By the time I'm done giving out all the directions, they literally cannot wait to get started.

That type of feeling is what I want for my students and what I want for your students.

So pick projects that you are excited about.

Be organized and have things ready for when they walk in so that you feel good and you've

got less stress on your shoulders and you are ready to welcome those students.

Misbehaviors occur when you are looking for artwork or trying to figure out what class

is this going to be doing today?

Who are you guys?

When your brain is doing that, you're not at your best.

You've got to be organized.

You've got to have your plans set out.

You've got to have your focus on the students when they get there.

So all the other crazy management things and materials and projects that already needs

to be there.

When the students arrive, that's your stage for performing and convincing them that what

they're about to do today is the best project ever.

So how do you increase positive student behavior during your lesson?

Well, you teach what good listening looks like.

Art teachers love that Mona Lisa listening where hands are still, eyes are forward and

lips are zipped.

But go a step further.

Make sure you have a visual that you're referring to each and every class and make sure you're

telling them what to do with the rest of their body.

How do you want them to sit on the carpet?

How should they be sitting in their stools?

This is going to give a definition for students so that they're clear that they are doing

what is required.

Now, when a student is not showing you good listening, you need to make sure that you

address that.

One way that I make it clear for students that it's a time to listen is I have a sign

with a yellow zone.

And that's usually for when we're doing call and response on the carpet.

And I have a red zone on the carpet.

That's a time where they're looking and they're listening.

If they have a question or a comment, they need to raise their hand.

But that red zone visual is extremely helpful for my younger student and for my ESOL language

learner.

Now, when you have a student that begins talking during your lesson, you need to stop and address

that.

You've already defined what good listening is and they are not following that direction.

You don't want this to snowball.

You have to imagine what is

it like to be a student in your class?

Maybe art is your favorite class and you're sitting down in art and you're listening to

your art teacher and you can't wait to get started.

But she's allowing the people next to you to giggle and laugh and have a little side

conversation.

You start to not feel so good inside.

You start to not feel so good about that art teacher and being in that class because the

art teacher is not controlling the class so that you can all have fun together.

She's saying one thing, but she's not following through.

If you're saying this is good listening, then that's what you need to require from all of

your students.

High expectations can be met by all students.

All students want to learn, especially art, when they come to your class.

Now, there are things during your discussion that you can do to help facilitate the conversation

moving about positively.

Anything that you can do with different motion, students love to do.

And also throughout your lesson, refocusing them back to that MONA helps a lot.

I like to do something like, can I get a clap, clap, elbow tap?

Now show me your MONA.

And they'll do it back the same thing.

And that just kind of refocuses as we're maybe shifting to a different slide or a different

step in the direction.

So they've got that good listening back and they are ready to move forward.

Another thing that I like to do, and I noticed this every time that I see someone speak in

front of students that doesn't normally speak in front of kids, they will just enthusiastically

ask a question and students will just yell out the answer.

Because experienced teachers know that we will ask a question by saying this, raise

your hand if.

So hands are already up.

And then we state the question.

So we already have that hand in the air.

Students are already knowing what's expected.

They know the answer.

They know it's not a time to shout it out because we're saying raise your hand if.

Another one that I like, especially when there's lots of questions going on in my class, especially

in the younger grades, I feel like this happens is we do 1, 2, 3, and then back to me.

So I'll take three questions or comments, but then at each and every time we move right

back to my lesson and keep things moving forward.

Another one that I like to do is tell students that we're not going to do what if questions.

So you might start to get some questions of like, what if an elephant comes into the art

room and what if I cut my hand and what if I spill some paint and it can just go on forever

and ever.

And you need to explain that to your students.

We're not going to ask lots and lots of what if questions because that game literally never

ends.

So I usually just state this to my students, I kind of get what I'm talking about.

And then we're able to move on with our lesson and it doesn't come up again.

I like to also do a strategy that I believe I picked up from Dr. Jean, and that is good

with the younger kids.

If you know it, blow it.

So I'll explain that if you know the answer, you're going to blow it into your hand.

We're going to hold our hands up and then you're going to let the answer out.

So it's allowing for a little bit of think time during that lesson.

Now when your students are working on projects, it's probably the easiest time to get that

positive student engagement.

But here are some tips that I have found to help keep students on track and calm during

the art making process.

My number one tip would be keep the lights off.

I typically have the lights dimmed.

I have a lot of natural light in my classroom.

I'm very lucky, but I keep the lights off just to get that calm mood.

I help students to get that feeling of what is it like if we all just kind of get lost

in our art and enjoy it.

Sometimes I set this up by doing five minutes of silent art at the very beginning of the

class.

If you guys have had a rough time during the lesson, this is a great way to reset your

class.

If someone talks, you simply add a minute.

Once they've gotten that feeling of what it feels like to work and be in control of themselves

and enjoy and getting lost in their work, they will pull that into the rest of your

class.

So when you go back into allowing them to talk quietly, you'll notice that the noise

level does go down.

Now, throughout my class, if I do have students that get noisy, and I really have set this

expectation so that I can't even remember the last time that this happened.

And you'll find this too.

As you get better with your classroom management, those routines and those procedures, your

students will just do them automatically.

They will take care of things for you and your job will be made easier.

But if students are too loud in my class, I have a little electronic doorbell and I

have a remote control that I'll press.

And I don't let students see this.

I hear that sound and I'll, oh my goodness, that sound goes off every time that a class

is too loud.

It's like a noise sensor, it's so annoying.

And when that happens, I'll put a frown up because I keep a happy and sad board for student

behavior.

And if this happens twice in the same class, we will have five minutes of silent art.

Wherever we are in the class period, we set a smaller visual timer so the students know

that we will be silent for five minutes.

Other things that I do to encourage students to work quietly that I've been really enjoying

this year and my students have too is podcast.

So I would encourage you to already have a quiet environment when you start.

If you don't want to go from crazy chaos to trying to listen to a podcast because that's

going to not work and you're just going to be shushing everyone.

But when you already have that quiet environment and the students have decided they enjoy that

and they get that feeling for what that is like, I introduced podcasts.

So for my upper grades, we have been doing Whose Amazing Life, which is a podcast from

Wondery.

I'll be sure to link it in the description down below because my students are obsessed.

Now I do this one with grades four through six and it's a podcast where you are hearing

about someone's life, but you don't know who it is.

So it starts in their childhood and it's in the first person.

So if there is a female narrator, then you know that it's going to be a woman that you're

hearing about.

It could be someone that lived long ago.

It could be someone that is famous and still alive today.

And the students love this.

What I have them do is if they think they knew who it is, they can raise their hand

or come up to me and kind of whisper into my ear and I'll let them know if they've guessed

correctly.

So students are listening for those clues.

And from week to week, they keep asking me for this podcast.

The only issue I've had with this is some students are so excited about it that they've

started to listen to this podcast at home with their families.

And occasionally we'll listen to the same one here and then they've already heard it.

But that's a really good problem to have that students are enjoying that, they're able to

enjoy the podcast while they're working and it cuts down on talking.

I do allow students to talk during the podcast, but I talk to them about it just being necessary

talking.

Now, this is something that I actually teach from the beginning of the year and I call

it chicken nugget talk, which is kind of a funny name.

But how I came up with it is that everyone's already been at a table or something when

they're a kid and just some weird kid will just, I mean, it doesn't even matter where

you are.

You don't have to be in the cafeteria.

But you remember a kid saying something like, if you like chicken nuggets, raise your hand.

And right, you stopped everything you were doing and both your hands went up immediately.

And that's what happens when kids hear a question like that.

And that can happen in art.

There are conversations that are chicken nuggets.

They are so distracting that everybody has to stop what they're doing and respond.

Now, I discourage that and we call it chicken nuggets.

So kids will say, Hey, stop talking about chicken nuggets or I'll say, Oh, I'm hearing

too much chicken nugget talk.

And we talk about what kind of help talking is helpful.

So talking is helpful if you're asking somebody a question, if you're quietly giving somebody

a compliment, but it's done in like a whisper voice, you know, what is needed?

What are those necessary conversations that you have to have?

That's fine during our podcast, but we keep any other chitchat, any chicken nugget talk

to a minimum.

I'm popping back in here because I realized I forgot to add what podcasts I enjoy with

my younger students.

So as low as first grade, I have done this podcast has fleas, which is a super adorable

podcast about a dog named waffles and a cat.

And they all have their own podcast inside the house.

And it's kind of a dueling podcast type of situation that is hilarious, has great sound

effects that kind of tends to pull them back in with the listening.

Unfortunately, that podcast only has one season.

So we quickly kind of went through that.

And now we're currently enjoying Melon's house party.

I believe both of these are from Wondery Podcast.

And again, I will link that down below.

Now, you may be wondering, do I do a podcast every single week?

I do think that that would kind of lose the novelty of enjoying the podcast to do it each

and every week.

Often, I will just, depending upon the project plan, if this is a podcast day or not.

If it's a very high energy activity like clay, or maybe we're doing painting, but during

one of the steps, they have to go wash their papers and come back with another color and

there's a lot of movement to get different materials.

That would probably be a day where I don't do a podcast.

Days when we're more in our seats, doing quiet, focused work, doing planning.

Those are my podcast days, and it's been a wonderful addition to my class this year.

Other strategies that you can use to encourage positive behavior during working time is quiet

critters.

I know Cassie Stevens is a big fan of these.

I sometimes do quiet contests where we do the warm colored tables versus the cool colored

tables.

And if someone's talking or one side is being louder than they get a point, we see which

side wins.

It's all just for fun.

Another thing I like to do is point out energy shifts.

So I say, oh, I've really noticed that people are getting very excited about painting and

the noise level is getting to be a little bit too much.

Or I notice that the people that are working quietly are producing the most beautiful artwork

because they are focused and their hand is still and their eyes are looking at their

paper.

And this really encourages students to kind of slow down because they want to be part

of those students that are receiving that praise.

So any positive encouragement you can give, any praise will help students to stay on task.

Creating fun projects, offering help to students when needed, also help them be engaged.

Don't be afraid to have students help each other if they finish early.

That's also another strategy that keeps people that work a little bit quicker still engaged

in the lesson.

Give them cleanup jobs if they finish early.

I love to have students pre-clean because it makes our job easier in the end.

When it comes to misbehavior during cleaning up and lining up, most all of this can be

avoided by clearly giving directions, teaching where things go and what expectations are.

Another tip that I have for cleaning up and lining up is also to have students give feedback

with a thumbs up, a thumbs down, or thumbs to the side, reflecting upon how did it go

for that day.

So they know that you know they did a great job or that there's things that you need to

revisit and work on when they come back the following week.

I have more information about cleaning up and lining up and how to encourage positive

behavior in separate videos.

Be sure to check those out next.