32. The Best Classroom Rules for Kindergarten (And What to Do When Students Break Them)

How many classroom rules do you really need in kindergarten? And what should happen when students don't follow them?

In this episode, we're talking about how to keep kindergarten classroom rules simple, explicitly teach your expectations, and choose consequences that actually make sense to five- and six-year-olds. You'll learn why consistency doesn't mean giving every behavior the same consequence, why consequences should be timely and connected to the behavior, and how visuals can help students understand what's expected of them.

If you're looking for a practical approach to kindergarten classroom management that teaches students how to be successful in school instead of simply punishing misbehavior, this episode is for you.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

🔗 Classroom Rules Posters
🔗 Classroom Visuals Bundle
🍎 Kindergarten Behavior Blueprint

📝 Show notes:  https://kindergartentoolbox.com/best-classroom-rules-and-consequences-for-kindergarten/

🎧 Follow The Kindergarten Toolbox so you don't miss future episodes with simple, practical kindergarten classroom management and teaching strategies.

Transcript

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How many classroom rules do you need in kindergarten? And what happens when they break a rule? Do they lose a point, miss recess, get a warning, move their clip? Choosing kindergarten classroom rules is the easy part. Figuring out what to do when a five-year-old doesn't follow them is where things get tricky fast. So today we're talking about classroom rules, which ones you should have, consequences, and how to make both of them actually work in real kindergarten classrooms. Welcome to the Kindergarten Toolbox Podcast. I'm your host, Amy Murray, here to help you simplify kindergarten with tools and strategies that actually work with real live five- and six-year-olds. Let's dive into your shortcut to calmer days and more confident writers. Think about all the things we want kindergarten students to do. Walk in the classroom, keep your hands to yourself, push in your chair, raise your hand and wait to be called on. Listen when someone else is talking, use kind words, take care of your supplies, don't write on the tables, don't misuse your scissors, don't throw the crayons, don't crawl under the table. I could go on and on. I mean, we could have like 147 rules by the end of the first week if we made a rule for every single thing a kindergartner might do. And they would remember approximately zero of them. When I taught kindergarten, I kept my rules as simple as possible. And I set the rules because I was the grown-up. I know you'll hear a lot of experts tell you to make your rules with your students. And I do think that there is some merit to that in the older grades where students already know how to be students. But in preschool and kindergarten, kids are learning how to be students and how to be in school. And our jobs as the teachers and the grown-ups in the classroom is to guide them. So in kindergarten, I set the rules. And they were four very, very simple things. Be safe, be kind, be respectful, and do your job. And that's it. I liked having four broad rules because they covered almost everything that happened in our classroom without giving them a giant list of rules that they were expected to remember. What do those rules actually look like in a kindergarten classroom? Well, let's start with be safe. Be safe covers a lot of ground in kindergarten. We walk in the classroom because that's the safe thing to do. If we run, we could trip. We push in our chairs because we don't want someone tripping over them. We use scissors the way we've been taught. We keep our hands and feet to ourselves so no one gets hurt. We use our school tools safely. I don't need to have separate rules that say don't run and another that says don't hit, or keep your hands to yourself, or don't wave your scissors around in the air. All of those things fall under be safe. Then we had be kind. We use kind words, we help our friends, we don't hurt people, we include others. Basically, we're learning how to be good humans. And obviously there's some overlap here, keeping your hands to yourself is safe, but it's also kind, and that's okay. These weren't built to be four little boxes for every behavior to fit perfectly, they're just rules to guide us. Then we have be respectful. We're respectful of our teachers, our classmates, our classroom, and our school tools, and the school itself. We're not writing on tables. We're taking care of our materials, we're listening when someone else is speaking, we're raising our hand and waiting instead of talking over someone else. And finally, do your job. This one was sort of my catch-all. If it's time to sit on the carpet, your job is to sit. If we're working at tables, your job is to be doing your work. If it's time to clean up, yeah, you guessed it, that's your job. Your job changes throughout the day, sometimes minute to minute, but kindergarten students can learn to ask themselves, what's my job? Am I doing my job? And honestly, if you're being safe, kind, and respectful, you're probably doing your job. But that means you're doing exactly what you should be to be a great learner in our kindergarten classroom. Posting the rules is not the same as teaching the rules, especially in kindergarten. I don't want you to print out four adorable posters, hang them on your wall, and point to them the first day of school and think, great, rules are done, they get them. Because remember, these are five and six year olds. If students don't understand the expectation, they can't meet it. We have to actually teach what these rules mean. What does being safe look like when we're in the hallway? What does it look like in the classroom? How about being respectful when someone else is talking? And what does do your job mean when you're at the centers or at the carpet? This is also why I love visuals in kindergarten. I can say be safe, but a picture gives my students another way to understand and remember the expectation, what it can actually look like. If you're going to teach it, model, practice it, and reinforce it, probably more than once. Because saying something one time on the first day of school does not mean a five-year-old has mastered it. Boy do I wish it worked that way. It would make kindergarten a whole lot easier. But pairing it with a visual so they can see and understand and explicitly teaching these expectations, that will go a long way. Okay, now for the question everybody really wants an answer to. What happens when students break one of the rules? Because they're going to, because they're human, because they're five, and they're learning how to be in school. Having clear classroom rules does not mean everybody is going to follow the rules all of the time. Our goal isn't perfect behavior. Our goal is a simple, predictable way to respond when misbehavior happens. In my classroom management plan, we had four basic consequences. The first was a verbal or visual warning. Second was a loss of a privilege. And third was taking a break. And fourth was a note or a phone call home. But I want to explain this because I don't want you to think I had a clipboard, and every time somebody did something wrong, I was checking boxes and automatically moving them to the next consequence number. What happened after they broke a rule really did matter. Whenever possible, I wanted the consequence to make sense to a five-year-old. So let's say you're goofing around with scissors. I've taught you how to use scissors safely, we practiced and practiced and practiced, and you know the expectation. And now you're using them in a way that isn't safe. You may lose the privilege of the scissors right now. That makes sense. It's immediate. If you're goofing around during a center and you're keeping everyone else from learning, you may need to leave that center and complete something independently. If you're playing unsafely with other students at recess, you may need to take a break from that activity, or from other students in general if you're having trouble being safe. Notice I'm not saying you ran in the hallway, you lose three dojo points. Because what does losing three dojo points have to do with walking safely in the hallway? That's one of the things we talked about in last week in behavior systems. I want the response to make sense to the kid. Sometimes the response is a simple reminder. Sometimes we need to practice again. Sometimes a student needs to lose access to something because they're not using it appropriately or safely. And sometimes it gets to the point where they just need a break. And sometimes, yes, I need to communicate with their family because it's becoming a repeated concern or something pretty serious happened. But I'm not trying to catch them breaking a rule so I can hand out a consequence, and it's not necessarily the same exact thing every single time. I'm trying to help them learn how to be successful students in our classroom. Now you've heard me say a lot how important consistency is for classroom management. But consistency does not mean that every behavior gets the exact same consequence. Consistency means that my expectations are predictable and I'm enforcing them consistently. So my students know we're expected to be safe, kind, respectful, and to do our job. They know I'm going to address it when those expectations are not being met, no matter what that is. I'm still the teacher. I can look at what happened, why it happened, whether the student understands the expectation, whether it's the first time or the 25th time, and decide what makes the most sense. Because that's a big difference between a student who forgot the hallway expectations and needs a quick reminder to be quiet, or the student who repeatedly chooses to run after we've practiced over and over again that they need to walk to the carpet. Kindergarten classroom management still requires us to know our students and use our professional judgment. Another important thing to remember about consequences in kindergarten is that it needs to be pretty immediate. Five and six-year-olds aren't always able to connect something they did this morning with a consequence that happens at recess three hours later, or even worse the next day. If students are repeatedly calling out during carpet time and it's driving you absolutely crazy, hi, I've been there too. Telling them they're going to lose five minutes of recess later isn't necessarily teaching them what to do differently now, and taking away a dojo point or two or finding them classroom money is even more abstract. Instead, think about what you can do in that moment to help the student be successful. Maybe they need to move to the back of the carpet where there's fewer distractions. Maybe they need to sit right next to you so you can give them a quick visual reminder before they call out. Maybe you need to stop and practice what it looks like to raise your hand and wait to be called on. And if it's something that's happening repeatedly, then yes, maybe you also need to talk with their family and their grown-ups about how you can work together to support them. But I wouldn't want to wait until tomorrow to address what's happening today. Your consequences need to make sense to kindergartners and they need to be timely and connected to the behavior. If you're misusing the scissors, you lose access to the scissors right now. If you're not able to play safely with your friends, you take a break from playing. If you're calling out at the carpet, we need to make a change or practice the expectation right now. Because the goal of the consequence isn't just to make a student lose something. It's not a punishment because they broke a rule. The consequence should help teach and reinforce your expectations. Some people call these logical consequences, but what it really comes down to is they need to make sense for your kindergartners. I don't want a student just thinking, I lost Rhesus because I was talking this morning. I want them learning. When I have something to say at the carpet, here's what I'm supposed to do instead. That's what makes the consequence useful in kindergarten. It's timely, it's connected, and it helps to teach the behavior we want to see. If you're thinking, okay, I love the idea of keeping my rules simple, but I really like the visuals, so I don't have time to make all this myself. I've got you covered. I'll link our classroom rules down in the show notes. You'll get the visuals that you can use, and the text is editable, so you can change it to meet the needs of your classroom. It's also included in our class visuals bundle. So if you're looking for visuals beyond just the rules, I'll link that option too. And if you're already a member of Kindergarten Behavior Blueprint, don't go by anything. These classroom rules are already included in your toolbox. Because remember, behavior systems are just one part of strong classroom management. Rules and expectations, relationships, independence, and the simple systems you use consistently all work together. I'll put all three options down in the show note, and you can choose what makes the most sense for your classroom right now. So before you go creating a poster with 27 different rules and expectations, keep it simple. Your five-year-olds don't need to memorize every possible thing they're not supposed to do. They need to understand what safe, kind, respectful, and doing their job looks like in your classroom. Teach it, show them, practice it, and when they make a mistake, respond in a way that helps them to understand what to do next time. Because that's what we're doing here. We're not trying to catch them breaking rules. We're teaching them how to be successful in school. Until next time, have a great week. Thanks for listening to the Kindergarten Toolbox. I'm Amy Murray and I'm so glad you're here. Be sure to check the show notes for all the links and resources from today's episode. For even more tips, tools, and support, head to teachingexceptionalkinders.com or connect with me on Instagram at Teaching Exceptional Kinders. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow along and subscribe to the show and take a minute to leave a review. It helps other kindergarten teachers to find us too. Teaching kindergarten is tough, but you're not alone. Here's to calmer days and more confident writers. You've got this