Classroom Management Visuals: A Teacher’s Secret Weapon

There are so many things that kindergarten teachers can do to help their classrooms run more smoothly. However, most of these strategies include a common thread that holds their classroom management together all year long: Visual supports. In this post, I’m going to share how classroom management visuals can completely transform your daily learning routine.

7 Benefits of Classroom Management Visuals

1. Level the Playing Field for All Learners

A kindergarten classroom includes students with a wide range of prior classroom experience, language development, and behavior needs. Classroom management visuals provide a way to level the playing field for all of the learners in your classroom. They can help all students feel more comfortable and at ease when they can associate what you’re saying with a visual that makes sense to them.

2. Increase Accountability and Independence

One of the biggest hurdles to a classroom that runs smoothly is the fact that kindergarten students are young and need a lot of support as they learn and grow. This is especially true at the beginning of the year, when everything is new to them. Students will frequently ask clarifying questions and check in to make sure they did things correctly, making teachers feel like a broken record.

You can incorporate a variety of visual supports that will increase student accountability and encourage independence. For example, you can use picture direction cards to help students remember the steps that they need to complete for an independent activity during center time. This will cut down on the number of times you hear “Teacher, what do I do now?” as you get your centers routine up and running.

3. Create Consistency

Consistency is at the heart of classroom management and visual supports play a huge role in creating that consistency. You can use visual supports for different aspects of your daily routine to remind students of the steps in those routines. These visuals are so helpful as students work to become familiar with the daily classroom routines. Eventually, you’ll find that things like your arrival and dismissal routines can run on autopilot because that consistency has been built into your school day through the use of visuals. 

4. Decrease Voice Usage

As I just mentioned, it’s common to feel like you’re repeating yourself all day when you’re a kindergarten teacher. Visuals can help you cut back on how much you’re using audible reminders in your classroom. In addition to saving your voice, limiting audible reminders and redirection will also cut back on the overall classroom noise level. Over time, students will learn that they can use the classroom visual tools to help answer their questions. They will build the important life skill of using available information to help them solve their problem. This can significantly cut back on the number of questions you have to answer in a given day.

5. Avoid Power Struggles

There is something magical about having the black and white of a visual support in your corner. When it’s time for a non-preferred task in the classroom, students have a much easier time transitioning to the task when it’s communicated through a visual support. The visual schedule is the face of this non-preferred activity, not you. Students will be less likely to argue with you about it, avoiding potential power struggles. 

Visuals can also help you avoid power struggles because students will have plenty of warning before transitions. One reason why students become defiant is because they feel like things are out of their control when things are sprung on them with no notice. Visuals can help prepare students for the activities of the day.

6. Remind Students of Expectations

We all know that rules and expectations need to be revisited frequently throughout the year to maintain effective classroom management. Visuals are a great way to quickly remind students of expectations throughout the daily routine.

For example, you could create a display with visuals of the different choices for sitting at the carpet. You can review these choices when you notice that students are starting to lie down and invade the space of their neighbors during circle time. These visuals are also helpful for quick reminders during lessons. You can quickly say a student’s name and then point at the visual to remind them to make an appropriate choice.

7. Track Rewards

One of my favorite ways to keep a classroom running smoothly is to use whole-class rewards to recognize positive behavior choices. Visuals are such an important part of a group incentive! A visual display can remind students of the behavior goal that they’re working toward as a class, along with the reward that they’ll earn when they reach that goal.

You can use a lot of different methods to track your students’ progress toward the class reward, but Build-a-Rewards are by far my favorite. Students love to work together to complete the object or scene piece-by-piece. Once all of the pieces have been added to the chart, they earn the reward!

By keeping the reward system on display, it stays at the top of mind for you and your students. It reminds you to be watching for students who are displaying the target behavior and it encourages students to do their part to work toward the reward.

Printable Visuals for Classroom Management (and More!)

If you’d like to use visuals to keep your classroom running smoothly all year long, you’ll definitely want to check out the Kindergarten Behavior Blueprint. It’s a self-paced video course that walks you through the elements of effective kindergarten classroom management. In addition to the course, it also includes access to a vast library of visual supports and other helpful tools for kindergarten classroom management.

If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included in the Kindergarten Behavior Blueprint, just click below to check it out!

Save These Classroom Management Visuals

Be sure to save this post so you can come back to it later! Just add it to your favorite classroom management board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find these visuals and tips when you’re ready to streamline your classroom management.