newteacher
At my school there is a school-wide behavior management system. Each classroom has a pocket chart with a student's name above each pocket. Inside each pocket are four cards; blue, green, yellow and red. Blue is for outstanding behavior, green is for good behavior, yellow is a warning and red is for poor behavior. This is how it works: The students are taught to understand that if their behavior is not acceptable at any given point, they are asked to "change their card". For example, let's say that during a math lesson, a student is talking. The teacher may ask the student to stop talking. If the student continues to talk during the lesson, the teacher stops and tells the student to change his/her card to yellow, which is a warning. Usually that is enough to stop the student because most of them want to remain on green, which will earn them prizes at the end of the week. If the student needs to be spoken to again, the card is changed to red and a phone call home is made. If the student is put on red three times, they go to a room in the school that's called the "reflection room", where they have an opportunity to think about their behavior and how it affects them and others. Three visits to the reflection room warrant a suspension (but thankfully I haven't had to go there yet!). I work at an elementary school; I don't know what grade you teach, but this system seems to work well, so far. I hope everything works out for you!
