Classroom Management Strategies: Secret Student

 Have you tried the Secret Student classroom management strategy with your students yet? Today I’ll explain why it’s one of the easiest and effective classroom management systems I’ve found!

If you’ve been in the classroom for more than an hour,  you realize how important classroom management is. When I was a new teacher there was an endless amount of things I felt I needed to cover each day, but I learned in order to get anything done (and save my sanity)  had to get my classroom management system under control.

As a new teacher, I came across a ton of behavior strategies, point systems, and charts to promote positive behavior in students. The problem with all of these was they took up a lot of time. Time that a new teacher just didn’t have. That’s when I found out about the Secret Student and suddenly managing the behavior in my classroom got a whole lot easier!

Today I’m going to share one of my favorite, tried and true classroom management strategies: Secret Student.

Maybe you’ve heard of this classroom management technique, but incase you haven’t I’ll quickly explain.

What is the Secret Student?

The Secret Student is one student secretly and randomly (or not so randomly) chosen by the you at the beginning of each day. You’ll write the students name on a sticky note and place it behind a special “Secret Student” poster. This helps give students a reminder throughout the day and allows you to easily draw attention to it when needed.

During the day you’ll observe the Secret Student’s behavior. At the end of the day, you’ll determine if he or she made good choices throughout the day.

Rewarding the Secret Student

  At the end of the day, if good choices were made, the Secret Student gets a reward of some kind. A few reward ideas are classroom coupons, free time of some kind, or another special privilege just for Secret Students.  If poor choices were made, the students don’t find out who it was and another student is chosen the next day.

(It is up to you if you’d like to privately share with a student who was chosen as a Secret Student, but didn’t make great choices that day. Sometimes this can help motivate those students having a hard time. You know your students best.)

Try Secret Student with Your Classroom

It’s amazing how quickly behaviors adjust when you remind your students that you’ve got your eye on the Secret Student!

If you want to try this classroom management strategy with your own students, you can grab a FREE download to help you get started with the Secret Student strategy in your classroom!

Click HERE to get yours!

Routines are key to having a classroom that runs smoothly. You can bet that your stress level will go WAY down with the more of them you have in place. Your students will also love you for them because children thrive off of routine. This I know for sure!

 In the next few weeks I’ll share a few more of my favorite routines and procedures for the classroom. Even though back to school may be the last thing you want to think about right now my hope is that you’ll have plenty of time to decide which ones you’d like to put in place in the upcoming school year.