Well-Managed Chaos

When you first launch a self-paced classroom, the result is often chaos. Some students finish lessons quickly and demand your attention right away; others accomplish little but — because you’re so busy reviewing mastery checks — you’re unable to reach them. You thought a Modern Classroom would make class time easier (it will!), but at the moment you’re stressed and overwhelmed. What should you do?

All of us on staff here at MCP have experienced some version of this. In fact, most of it experienced it anew each and every year! But, over time, we developed a few techniques that you can use to calm the chaos:

1. Structure the question-asking process. If your students can simply call out each time they have a question, you’ll spend class running around playing whack-a-mole. This is not sustainable! Instead, create a process by which your students can ask you questions. For example, you can have students write their names and questions on the board, so you can respond to them in the order they arose — this ensures fairness, gets students up and moving, and creates the possibility for authentic collaboration (if one student realizes they can answer another student’s question). Or, use a free tool like ClassroomQ to make this process digital. 💻
   

2. Designate an “instructional nest.” Instead of running around like crazy answering questions, have your students come to you! Set up a table in the middle of the room, stock it with the supplies you’ll need to stay there throughout class, and invite students to join you when they have questions. For students, this marginally increases the burden of asking a question — which can be a good thing, if and when it encourages them to figure things out themselves — and for you, this creates order and calm. You’ll still want to circulate from time to time, especially to check on students who haven’t come to you, but you’ll always have a comfy home base to which you can return. 🏠
   

3. Emphasize collaboration. If your students can start helping each other, they won’t need you! Designate “Lesson Superstars” who can help answer questions about content they’ve already mastered, enforce a policy of “Ask 3 Before Me” — when a student comes to you, ask them whom they’ve already asked — and publicly celebrate collaboration when it occurs. (Note that you shouldn’t just celebrate the helper; make sure to celebrate the student who took the risk to ask a question as well!) Ideally, your students can teach themselves while you sit back and watch the magic happen. 😎
   

These strategies, and the classroom culture they require in order to work successfully, take time to implement and refine. And none of them is perfect! Keep in mind that, for many students, asking questions is intimidating; they may hesitate to ask anyone for help, and you may just need to go and visit them consistently. But once you’ve met the needs of your frequent question-askers with the approaches above, you should have more time to check in with your reluctant question-askers anyways.

With a few simple tweaks, plus and plenty of careful reflection and refinement, you should be able to turn start-of-year chaos into well-managed chaos. That’s the goal, at least — and we hope these approaches help you get there!