One of the toughest jobs in the world is to be a teacher. Not only do you have the responsibility to educate young minds so that they can contribute to society, you are asked to do this while dealing with disobedient and often noisy students. Children in elementary school are often the toughest batch to handle, so teachers in these levels must be effective in building classroom discipline. Here are some classroom management techniques specifically targeted for elementary students, which will aid instructors in taking charge of their students.

Kids in grade school have built stronger personalities now that they have aged a little. Often, they would rebel against the teacher, testing the ability of the teacher to bear with his students. They will do this by being unruly, hyperactive and noisy. Teachers would often think that disregarding the children's actions and starting the lesson will make them stop whatever they are doing. However, doing this can convey that you do not care enough whether they want to pay attention or not and push them to behave even worse. So, teachers must keep in mind that they should never start a lesson until everybody is paying attention. Instead, they can keep quiet and keep an expression on their face that says they would not start the lesson until everybody is calmed down and quiet.

Elementary students often have short attention spans, so before starting the lesson, the teacher must give a clear outline of the things he would be teaching for a particular lesson and giving the students a thorough list of activities that they would need to do. He should also offer small incentives - he can say that if the class finishes early, they would be free to do whatever they want to do. This would then help the kids to be conscious of what the teacher expects from them and be motivated to finish ahead of schedule.

Instructors should also invent non-verbal cues that when used will communicate a predetermined message to the children. They can use objects such as bells to tell students that time is up, or use facial expressions so students would know that they are being too loud and need to tone down their voices.

Students in elementary levels often want attention, even if it stems from behaving inappropriately. Instead of giving kids focus and attention by scolding them in front of the whole class, instructors may call their name and include it with the lesson. This would let the child know that the teacher is aware that he has done something wrong without the whole class noticing.

Lastly, teachers must learn to always enforce positive discipline. When correcting papers, it is better to use calming colors such as blue or green instead of the traditional red ink because that particular color connotes negativity. If a student sees a lot of red marks in his test, he might automatically think he is stupid. Similarly, any mistake should be marked with a backslash or "/" rather than an "X."

These are only basic classroom management techniques but these suggestions will greatly help in building better classroom discipline to elementary students. With further research and incorporating personal teaching styles, teachers would surely become better at handling kids at this crucial stage of their development.