Effective Classroom Management Strategies for Physical Education

Having good classroom management is essential for physical education (PE) teachers to effectively teach their students. No matter how well you present information or teach skills, poor classroom management can lead to distractions and behavioral problems that hinder learning. This article explores a range of classroom management strategies tailored for the physical education setting, focusing on creating a positive, engaging, and structured environment.

Building Relationships

Strong relationships with students are vital for effective classroom management. As Rita Pierson said, "Kids don't learn from people they don't like." Building rapport with students, especially those who tend to disrupt the class, can significantly improve classroom management. Establishing solid relationships with your students significantly helps with classroom management. Strong relationships don’t necessarily make classroom management easy, but relationships definitely help.

Engaging Lesson Plans

A well-structured and engaging lesson plan can minimize classroom management issues. Bored students are more likely to misbehave, so it's crucial to keep them interested and active. When they’re engaged, there is way less classroom management to be done. On days that don’t have the planning done, the amount of classroom management I need to do skyrockets. Kids get bored. And when they get bored, they do things that they shouldn’t.

Breaking Up Class Time

Breaking up the PE class into different activities keeps the students engaged. When they’re engaged, there is way less classroom management to be done.

Instant Activity: Provide students with an activity to begin as soon as they enter the gym. For example, in rugby, as soon as they get outside, students grab a ball and start passing with a partner. Having the students begin an activity as soon as they get to your class, cuts down on waiting time. Always remember, “idle hands are the devil’s workshop”
Warm-Up: Begin with a warm-up that either introduces the students to skills you’ll be covering during that class or reviews skills from a previous class. Try to use games as part of your warm-up so that your students are immediately engaged and excited for the lesson.
Activities: Split the remainder of your class into 3-5 different activities. Make sure the activities are long enough for the students to develop or apply the skills they’re learning, but not too long that they lose interest. Aim for 5-20 minutes per activity, depending on what it is.

Variety in Activities

Make sure you have variety in the activities that you give your students. It gets old really quickly when each day has a similar formula.

Read also: Using Google Classroom Effectively

TGfU (Teaching Games for Understanding): By using modified games to teach skills, students learn to apply skills while having fun.
Variety in Drills: Adding relays and competitive elements changes how they would normally apply the skills. The more variety you give the students, the more engaged they will be

Maintaining a Friendly Attitude

Maintaining a pleasant, friendly demeanor can significantly impact classroom management. Staying calm at all times during your physical education classes is critical to keeping a calm class. Humans tend to match others’ emotions. If we have a calm demeanor, then our students will reflect that with a calm demeanor themselves. If we are nervous, stressed, or feeling rushed, our students will sense that and we’ll experience a lot of excitability (and not in a good way) from our students.

Staying consistent also helps with classroom management because our students don’t feel like we’re being mean or attacking them. We are simply explaining what our expectations are and following through with the consequences we’ve laid out for them.

The "Decide First" Method

Use the “Decide First” method (Linsin, 2014). Olympic Athletes use this mindfulness exercise to focus and calm their minds in stressful situations. It also works really well in teaching, before speaking with a difficult parent, or parenting your own kids.

Put yourself in a quiet space before the students arrive (I like to do this in my car before I go into the school for the day).
Take several calming breaths and release any tension you feel in your body
Make a promise to yourself, that no matter what happens during the day, you’ll stay calm
Once you make this promise to yourself, you can keep it. Once you keep it for one day, you realize that you can keep it for the next day and the next. The more often you are successful, the easier it will become, and the more confidence you’ll have in yourself.

Keeping a Clean and Organized Space

Having a cluttered space leads the students to believe that you don’t have very high expectations. This leads to poor student behavior. Research has shown that having a cluttered environment impacts our behavior, emotions, ability to learn, and decision-making processes.

Enlist your students to help with cleaning up after a lesson. Set aside 5 minutes (more or less depending on how much equipment you’ve used in the class) at the end of class before the students have to change, to have them help set your class up again for your next lesson.

Read also: Planning in Early Childhood

Setting Simple Rules

At the beginning of the year, you need to set rules that you’ll use for the entire year. Rules are non-negotiable. You need to let your students know what your rules and expectations are from the very beginning, so that they know exactly what you will and won’t tolerate in your class.

Respect yourself: Means always doing the best that they possibly can. Even if they aren’t the best at a particular sport or skill, I expect my students to work as hard as they can to better themselves. I want them to only speak positively about themselves, and refrain from negative self talk.
Respect others: Means speaking to others the way that they want to be spoken to, using positive language and not trash talking other students, avoiding saying anything negative about another person’s abilities or appearance, etc.
Respect the equipment: The equipment we have is the only equipment we get for the entire year, and it’s also the only equipment we have for several years. The biggest thing about this is just to use the equipment the way it is intended.

Establishing Clear Routines

At the start of the year, you need to set clear routines for your students for the things that you do most often. Teaching Your Routines Everything that happens consistently and repeatedly in your class should have a routine. Your students need to know exactly how you want things to be done.

Teaching Routines

Everything that happens consistently and repeatedly in your class should have a routine. For example your students will always enter and leave your class, get changed, have an instant activity, etc. This means that all of these situations should follow very specific routines.

Your students need to know exactly how you want things to be done. How do you want them to enter your class? How do you want them to get changed (ie. Do you have specific gym strip that the students need to wear, running shoes, etc.)? What should they do after they get changed at the end of class?

You can’t expect your students to just know exactly what you want, you need to teach the routines to them. On your first day of class, have the students go through all of the routines until they can do them perfectly the way that you want them to.

Read also: Universal Design for Learning

Practice Makes Permanent

Regardless of what level of physical education you teach, you need to be consistent with your routines. Don’t ever move on to the next activity until the students have done the routine exactly the way you want them to. Don’t settle for “good enough”. If students don’t complete the routines exactly the way you want them to, then repeat the routine immediately after the students completed the routine incorrectly.

Addressing Common Issues

Tattle Tales: Implement a "resolve the conflict on their own" procedure.
Poor Sportsmanship: Pause gameplay and recite a "Good Sportsmanship Poster" as a class.
Excuses for Not Participating: Have students fill out a form explaining their inability to participate.
Rule Breaking: Use a "Penalty Box" where students self-monitor their time-out.
Difficulty Focussing During Instruction: Shorten instructional time as much as possible.

Additional Tips

Self-Assessment: Use self-assessment strategies to build assessment into your program and ensure students are aware of their performance.
Grading Signs: Use grading signs for students to indicate their performance level at the end of class.
Power Minutes: If the entire class needs to refocus, have all students sit quietly on the floor for one minute with no talking or movement.
Praise Students: Praise students more often than not. Love your students.
Start and Stop Signals: Establishing a start a stop signal is important. Practice these signals until they know them well. Raised hand: When the teacher raises their hand, all students raise their hands.
Student Involvement in Rule Creation: Have students help create rules and expectations. Tie-in leads to buy-in. Chances are they’ll create the same things that you’d like to see. Take a partial or an entire class period to revise if needed.
Consistent Discipline: Explain discipline and procedures to the entire class and be consistent. Most of the time we shouldn’t punish an entire class. Those on-task should be allowed to play and participate.
Time-Out Area: 1st improper action is a warning. 2nd improper action results in a timeout to a pre-determined area. The student determines how long their timeout should be and is allowed back into the activity when they can come back and participate within the boundaries of the rules and procedures. We cannot tell when a student is ready; only they can.

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