Classroom management
Managing a class full of young learners is surely a hard thing to do. One can never know what to expect and what can happen during a lesson. That is why a successful teacher should be flexible.
Chit-chat?
Coming back to the class management, I’ve observed some interesting things about it during my practicum. The most frequent disruption is obviously chit-chatting between students. Talking is natural for humans, but once you enter the classroom with the aims to achieve, it might become difficult because of the noise. I asked myself, why do they talk? Except for the fact that I mentioned, that talking belongs to human nature, it might have some causes that could be overcome. From my observations, it came out that students talk when they are excited about something. It might or might not be connected with the lesson, still, it strongly influences the course of events. For this reason, the teacher has a nice way of dealing, as she follows the topic and asks students to share with her in English. I find it a great idea to practice and use meaningful language from the point of both, students and teacher.
The time when they talked the most during the lesson is usually its beginning. Students come back to their desks after a break, so they are still energized and playful. Also, this one is handled pretty nicely, as the teacher notices students’ needs and she starts with some kind of fun activities and games. God bless warm-up! This example assured me that proper warm-up activities are a must if one wants to conduct a successful lesson.
Another moment when students start to talk between each other is the task time. When they don’t understand the instruction, when they don’t know what to do, they like to switch off and talk with the neighbor. Some time ago I shared a post about instructions, you can find it somewhere between my previous posts if you’d like to refresh your knowledge. You did it? Great! So now you will understand that this kind of situation happens rarely, as the instructions good and clear, and if the teacher sees that someone doesn’t understand, she uses various of methods to make sure that each of the pupils’ will get it at the end. By the way, I am impressed by the skills of my mentor teacher. She does not only teach very well but also she is an active observer of the class and she sees problems quickly.
Unexpected behaviors?
Unexpected is a big word, especially while working with children. Because you can actually expect everything that you don’t expect to happen in your classroom. Yelling, jumping, beating, crying, weird questions and situations, all sort of things that are more or less usual. Misbehaving at school has many faces. It would take ages to mention all of it.
The teacher has many tools to overcome them, such as dots (instead of minuses in some classes, as they are perceived as a negative stimulus), red lights used in the school’s system, lack of monsters to color, as they color a monster after a lesson if they behaved well. This system works pretty well, especially because parents are aware of it and check students registers often to see how is the school going.
To sum up, it is very important to be a good class’ manager. One can achieve it thanks to an active observation, reflection and variety of methods and systems to use for this. One day, when I get a full-time job I would like to work on a system like this for my students as it gives tools to manage the classroom and improves the teacher-parent contact.
Thanks for reading!
PS I know it’s been a while since my last post, due to some personal issues I was not able to write posts regularly. But, from now on I will work hard and try to pass the semester.
Chit-chat?
Coming back to the class management, I’ve observed some interesting things about it during my practicum. The most frequent disruption is obviously chit-chatting between students. Talking is natural for humans, but once you enter the classroom with the aims to achieve, it might become difficult because of the noise. I asked myself, why do they talk? Except for the fact that I mentioned, that talking belongs to human nature, it might have some causes that could be overcome. From my observations, it came out that students talk when they are excited about something. It might or might not be connected with the lesson, still, it strongly influences the course of events. For this reason, the teacher has a nice way of dealing, as she follows the topic and asks students to share with her in English. I find it a great idea to practice and use meaningful language from the point of both, students and teacher.
The time when they talked the most during the lesson is usually its beginning. Students come back to their desks after a break, so they are still energized and playful. Also, this one is handled pretty nicely, as the teacher notices students’ needs and she starts with some kind of fun activities and games. God bless warm-up! This example assured me that proper warm-up activities are a must if one wants to conduct a successful lesson.
Another moment when students start to talk between each other is the task time. When they don’t understand the instruction, when they don’t know what to do, they like to switch off and talk with the neighbor. Some time ago I shared a post about instructions, you can find it somewhere between my previous posts if you’d like to refresh your knowledge. You did it? Great! So now you will understand that this kind of situation happens rarely, as the instructions good and clear, and if the teacher sees that someone doesn’t understand, she uses various of methods to make sure that each of the pupils’ will get it at the end. By the way, I am impressed by the skills of my mentor teacher. She does not only teach very well but also she is an active observer of the class and she sees problems quickly.
Unexpected behaviors?
Unexpected is a big word, especially while working with children. Because you can actually expect everything that you don’t expect to happen in your classroom. Yelling, jumping, beating, crying, weird questions and situations, all sort of things that are more or less usual. Misbehaving at school has many faces. It would take ages to mention all of it.
The teacher has many tools to overcome them, such as dots (instead of minuses in some classes, as they are perceived as a negative stimulus), red lights used in the school’s system, lack of monsters to color, as they color a monster after a lesson if they behaved well. This system works pretty well, especially because parents are aware of it and check students registers often to see how is the school going.
To sum up, it is very important to be a good class’ manager. One can achieve it thanks to an active observation, reflection and variety of methods and systems to use for this. One day, when I get a full-time job I would like to work on a system like this for my students as it gives tools to manage the classroom and improves the teacher-parent contact.
Thanks for reading!
PS I know it’s been a while since my last post, due to some personal issues I was not able to write posts regularly. But, from now on I will work hard and try to pass the semester.
Comments
Post a Comment