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Hi Alexandra,
I am also a pre-service educator nearing graduation. However, I was able to experience running a classroom full-time during my summer job. Setting clear expectations was one of the aspects that I struggled with the most at the beginning, but by the end of the camp season, I felt like I had finally gotten the hang of it. Of all the ideas, my main advice would be to allow students to contribute to the expectations. This can look a lot of different ways, but I found the most success with having students write their ideas on sticky notes following a class conversation. I then reviewed the ideas and synthesized 3-5 big ideas for the class which we reviewed and signed the next day.
In terms of procedures, I think, beyond the obvious safety procedures, they are largely dependent on the way you want your classroom to run. Do you want your students sharpening pencils while you talk, or do you want them to put them somewhere specific and use a different one? Do you want your students to form a line when they have questions, or just give you a hand signal and wait in their seats? Do you want your students to enter your room in a specific way at the beginning of the day, or is whatever okay until the bell rings? You will need to explicitly model each routine for students, and hold them to high expectations. For me, this looked like having students try things multiple times until they got it correctly from the beginning. This allowed them to see that I was serious, and the expectation was that their behavior aligned with what I had shown them.
Best of luck!
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