In this first of a three-week, three-part series, we’ll be investigating how outstanding teachers keep their students on-task, entertained and engaged every single lesson.
This week, we’ll be focusing on two key areas of active engagement:
The personality traits and pedagogical attributes that are shared by all outstanding educators
The importance that a prompt lesson start has on engaging your learners, along with the best ways to implement this, practically.
For many of us, the end of the academic year is approaching, and many students will be in ‘let’s slack off’ mode right now. As teachers, we need to be more vigilant than any other time in the year right now, particularly with regards to lesson planning and keeping our students on task.
The following extracts come from the Active Engagement chapter of my debut book: The Quick Guide to Classroom Management. I hope the information is useful to you, and don’t forget: we welcome your comments with open-arms! If you’d like to share your thoughts with us then please do comment using the comments box at the bottom of the page.
Are you keeping your students engaged all year-round?
It’s parent’s evening and you know that the mother of your ‘problem child’ will be showing up, and she’s not best pleased! Or maybe you’ve been receiving e-mails from a parent who just won’t quit at nitpicking over the ‘little things’. Maybe you’ve had some personal complaints sent to you from a father who’s a bit ‘aggressive’, or maybe ‘complaints’ have been coming in to the school office and you’re finding out about them from your line manager.
First things first: If any of the above scenarios describe your current situation (or a situation you fear you might find yourself in), then please do not fret: help is at hand.
Working with parents should be a productive and enjoyable part of your job.
Any experienced teacher will tell you that we all face ‘challenging’ parents (although that word: ‘challenging’, conveys the wrong attitude, as I’ll explain shortly). What fewer teachers will tell you, however, is that the key to fostering good relationships with parents is this golden rule:
Parents are yourkey customers.Without parents; all parents, you wouldn’t have a job.Make sure that youtreat every parent like a valuable customer. Every parent deserves the very best level of service from their child’s teachers. This applies especially to parents who have complaints or who grumble on a regular basis.
Once you have this attitude firmly placed in mind, the rest of what I’m about to share will be easy to apply. I wonder how many teachers reading this will be resistant to adopt this mindset!
The following extracts come from my debut book,The Quick Guide to Classroom Management. In these pages, I write about the technique of ‘detached objectivity’, and how it’s a great problem-solver when dealing with parents who have complaints. I would welcome any comments you have from your own personal experiences (please write in the comments section below), and please feel free to share this blog post with anyone you feel would benefit from it.
Would you like the opportunity to appear in my next book?
After the unprecedented success of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management, I’m asking teachers all over the world to write a few paragraphs that would help out a total teaching newbie.
You’ll be helping new teachers, you’ll receive full acknowledgement in my book and I’ll even give away five free books to five lucky contributors!
This is something super cool that you would be able to show to your colleagues and future employers too!
I want to know what advice you would give to a new teacher who’s getting stressed out because they’re marking too much work. What advice would you give to help them reduce their workload, improve their marking efficiency and reduce stress when marking? Do you have a story from your own experience that you would like to share?
Please e-mail your advice to richard_science@hotmail.co.uk, along with your name and any other info you’d like to share about yourself (especially the country you’re writing from). Alternatively, you can comment on this blog post too (please write at least two paragraphs).
I look forward to receiving your replies!
Click on the picture below to find out about this great new book
Every good lesson should end with some form of plenary. A plenary offers the chance to review the concepts, information and skills covered in your lesson, as well as providing a fun way for students to end a session of learning.
Let’s take a look at some of the best plenaries out there – all of which have been tried and tested and have been found to work with any lesson and any subject area. I’ve tried to include those activities that draw out the most cognitive output from the students, and therefore have the greatest benefits. However, if you’re looking for hundreds of quick ideas, then both the University of Southampton and the University of Essex have published documents outlining, briefly, some great plenaries that you can try.
#1 ‘Splat’
This is such a simple game and it’s tons of fun! Any lesson you teach, no matter if it’s playing football in P.E. or writing sonnets in English, will involve the use of specialist vocabulary. Why not review this vocabulary with a fun game at the end of your lesson? It’ll provide your students with a short break and will help them to link concepts together.
#2: Use graphic organizers
Do you know what graphic organizers are? They are becoming increasingly popular in schools and offer a great way for students to link ideas, concepts, information, skills and background thinking in a visual way. Take a look at these examples below, kindly shared by Doug and Melissa over at Write Design. How could you use these (or others – please check the website!) to provide meaningful conclusions to your lessons?
Examples of Graphic Organisers
#3: Play ‘corners’
This is so much fun that you often have to calm the students down half-way through! It’s a very competitive game, and lends itself well to both closed and open questioning. When you couple it with your schools rewards system (e.g. merits or house points) it can really get your kids motivated and thinking. Perfect for a Friday afternoon (trust me – I know).
#4: Cartoon strip
Students create a cartoon strip that goes through what they learnt that lesson. You can even print out a three or six-box grid for the kids if you like. Really gets the creative juices flowing! Students can do this by hand, or can even create comic strips online. The one below was created at http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/ and it only took five minutes!
#5: Bingo
Can be used with words or numbers. Takes some setting up, but is great fun and really helps the students to learn a lot!
#6: Mystery Word
Another simple game. Fun and takes minutes to set up. Kids love it!
#7: Who am I?
A fun and childish game. Kids of all ages love this (even at 18 years old!). Again, simple, easy, fun and productive.
#8: Musical chairs
Can be used with maths problems, vocabulary, concepts or actions. Be careful that students don’t trip up or fall! They need lots of room to run!
#9: Mystery Picture
This is probably the most cognitively challenging plenary that I’ll mention today. It really encourages deep learning, but requires the teacher to have a good control over the class. Worth the effort! Give it a go!
#10: Snake or Break
You’ll need space for this, but it’s simple and fun. Again, can be adapted to suit vocabulary, maths problems, concept questions, etc.
Did you enjoy this article? Why not check out Richard’s book? Now at a discounted price until July 14th!
To celebrate the birthday and life of Arnold Lobel(Born 22nd May 1933), The Quick Guide to Classroom Managementwill be offered at a 40% discounted price for 54 days (representing the 54 years of Arnold’s Life).
Arnold Lobelwas a famous writer who contributed greatly to the education of so many children through delightful books and stories such as Frog and Toad are Friends and Prince Bertram the Bad (which appeared on the famous Jackanory TV series).
He sadly passed away on December 4th 1987, aged 54 years.
Click on the image below to enjoy Richard’s book at this special, limited time price.
N.B.: Thank you so much for coming to my website! You’re amazing! Please comment on this post with your experiences and the methods you’ve used when everything seemed to just ‘go wrong’. I really want this page to be a sanctuary where newbie teachers can come and get some great tips about how to overcome their struggles (and to know that they are not alone!)
All teachers can make innocent, but devastating mistakes at work. As a new teacher, you’re bound to mess up a lot in your first year. So what do you do when everything goes South?
Illustrations byPop Sutthiya Lertyongphati. You can contact her atpopslittlespace@gmail.comif you would like her to do some beautiful illustration work for you too.
Being told off by your line manager when you’re just crossing the threshold of your new career can be an upsetting and stressful experience. You’re bound to make mistakes as a Newly Qualified Teacher, and you’re bound to be told off for them too. It happens to even the very best educators, and if it hasn’t happened to you yet, then don’t be complacent, because everyone can mess up at some point.
What follows next are some tips to get you through those tough times in a way that actually makes you look mature and professional at the same time.
#1: Admit when you’re wrong
Always apologise quickly and sincerely when you slip up. This could be for something relatively minor like forgetting to mark a student’s book, or something more silly like forgetting to turn up for a lesson.
Don’t be afraid of apologizing to students too. If you’re sincere, and you rectify things quickly, you’ll actually come across as being a genuine, human and approachable person. An example might be “Ah yes, Mark, you are right. I did agree to bring that textbook in for you today. It completely slipped my mind. I’ll make sure I pack it tonight for you and I’ll bring it in tomorrow.”
If you are genuinely to blame for what went wrong, then covering up your mistake can be the worst decision you make. When the real truth is uncovered later on down the road you’ll be seen as untrustworthy, deceitful and immature – the exact opposite of how you want to come across.
#2 Sleep on it
I know many teachers who have received aggressively toned, accusatory e-mails from bosses and line managers whilst in their early years of teaching, and later on too. It’s happened to me as well, and it can cause a wave of emotions to flood your thoughts and perceptions. Anger, fear, hatred, panic, worry and, of course, the desire to justify yourself.
When this happens, the best thing you can do is take a deep breath and relax. If possible, wait until the next day to send your response or to speak to the person in question. You’ll be in a better frame of mind, and your brain will have had the chance to process the information and think about solutions, subconsciously and unconsciously, whilst you were asleep (and make sure you do sleep: Tomorrow will deal with itself. Don’t toss and turn in a fit of worry the night before. Life is too short.).
This approach can be phrased as being ‘proactive, not reactive‘.
The worst thing you can do when you receive a flame (the technical name for an angry or aggressive e-mail) is to react instinctively by sending an equally aggressive reply. You’ll be acting on the basis of emotion, probably with a high desire to prove yourself right, and you could end up really annoying your boss in the process.
#3 Focus on solutions, not on justifying yourself
I once worked with a colleague who was in a right fit of worry. He was a trembling wreck, and was convinced he was going to lose his job.
The previous week, he had been leading a really fun activity with his class which involved singing, dancing and making wall art. The class loved it, but one student decided to covertly record part of that lesson on his mobile phone. The video later appeared on YouTube, and was brought to the attention of my friend’s line manager.
“What the hell am I going to do Richard? This is it, I know it. I’m finished. My career is in the toilet now”
I calmed him down and told him that nothing was ever that final in life. I told him that the very first thing he should say to his boss was not “I’m sorry, it’ll never happen again”, or “I asked all the kids for their mobile phones and he hid his” or any other justification. The damage had been done. The first thing he should say to his boss is “How can we solve this?”.
He took my advice and later reported that the conversation with his boss went a lot better than he thought it would. As soon as he shifted his focus towards solutions, his boss agreed to ask that student to delete the video off YouTube and to ask him (the student) to apologise to his teacher, which he later did. The whole situation was forgotten about that same day, and life went on as normal.
My colleague was wise that day. He realised that justifying yourself when being accused of something by your boss, especially when you’re in the wrong, only leads to conflict and argumentation. By making the focus of the conversation squarely on solutions, my colleague came across as being mature, in control of his emotions and committed to the greater good of the school.
#4 Speak with your line manager
There will be times when things happen, and you just won’t know what to do to solve the situation. Whether this is because you’ve made a mistake or not, you should always speak with your line manager, or someone with more experience than you.
A classic example of this scenario happened to me in my first year of teaching practice. I was walking along the corridor on a free period when I saw a student, who was supposed to be in class, just walking about aimlessly.
I stopped him, and asked him if he was okay and if he needed some help, when suddenly his teacher popped her head out of the classroom door and looked at me as if I was the most evil man in the world. She ushered the boy into her room (she’d sent him out of class, but I didn’t know that).
After class that teacher saw me in the science prep room and gave me a right telling off. “Richard, don’t you ever talk to my students again. I am well-capable of dealing with behavior issues. I don’t need your help”. Woah!! Now where did that come from?
I was fuming. I was doing my job and being told off for it. Ridiculous, I thought. What an arrogant, silly old bat she is. I was really mad. I asked to speak with my head of department, because I’d rather he heard my side of the story before he received a complaint next week.
We sat down together and I told him the story I just told you. He calmed me down and said “Don’t worry Richard”. He explained how that teacher had a very disruptive and challenging class that Friday afternoon, and she’s probably a bit stressed out. He advised me to just let it go and have a good weekend.
I took his advice and I’m glad I did. The situation was never brought up again. It was totally forgotten about by everyone.
Oftentimes, as teachers, we worry too much about silly things. If you ever find yourself worrying about a situation, then you have nothing to lose by talking it over with a more experienced colleague. I’ve used this principle many times in my career with great affect.
#5 Listen first, then explain
If you genuinely haven’t done anything wrong, or if you’ve been misunderstood, then you’ll need to explain your side of the story. Failure to do this may cost you your job.
Your line manager or principal might be angry with you about something. Let them vent first. Don’t get tense. Relax, and listen. Don’t react to the bubbling up of your negative emotions.
When the chance arises, calmly and politely explain your case. You’ll be surprised in the change of mood this will generate in your once angry boss. You’ll come across as mature and level-headed.
#6 Keep people updated
I was once accused of allowing my tutor group to graffiti on the tables in the Science lab. Of course, it wasn’t my kids. I knew this because we only had ten minutes together each morning and my eyes were on them throughout this. But how could I be proactive in ensuring that my name was cleared?
I set up a ‘graffiti log book’, and every morning at registration I would get my students to tell me if they saw any new graffiti on the desks. I also diligently went around the class and checked the desks myself, to really make sure that it wasn’t my kids that were making the mess.
After two weeks I presented my log book to the line manager that had accused me originally. I politely suggested that the graffiti was probably happening in the main lessons of the day, when students have up to an hour per session to scribble something on a desk.
My line manager appreciated my diligence, and we set up a monitoring system to ensure that kids who graffiti’d were identified quickly and made to clean up their mess. We even had special ‘graffiti cleaning kits’ set up in the prep room.
#7 Seek Advice
There will be times when you don’t know what to do. Instead of stewing around and worrying about things, or even plodding along and just ‘getting by’, use your inexperience as a chance to grow and develop.
A story from my own life journey comes to mind here. I was an NQT (Newly Qualified Teacher) at a school in northern England and I was having problems with Behaviour in one of my Year 9 classes. I tried sanctions, tellings off, rewards for good effort and even bringing in chocolate to give to the students if they worked hard. Each strategy worked to some degree, but collectively things were still not perfect .
I spoke with a senior colleague of mine in the Science department and he gave me one tip that had an almost instantaneous transformative effect on my classroom management. He advised me to focus my attention on the work being done and not on the student who was being disruptive. “Instead of saying something like ‘John, why aren’t you working?, or ‘John, you’re not concentrating’, try ‘John, how’s that work coming along? Are you finished yet?” Wow. Such a simple piece of advice but it helped me a lot. I would later write a whole chapter about behaviour management in my debut book, in which this technique played a significant part.
Speaking with your colleagues about your problems presents another benefit too. The people from whom you seek counsel will feel flattered that you consider them in such high esteem and will, consequently, be happy to help you out. By seeking help you also show that you are mature enough to realize that you don’t know everything, and when you share your problems you’ll often find that other people are going through similar problems in their lives too.
Did you find this post useful? Why not check out Richard’s books? Rated 5 stars on Amazon, and enjoyed by thousands of teachers globally, Richard’s work has earned a place in the global pedagogical hall of fame.
Book trailer: The Quick Guide to Classroom Management
I’m 33 years old and my life has been filled with technology since I was little nipper. At five years old I was beating up bad guys and firing bombs from cars on the Atari ST computer and at school I was playing word games on a BBC Microcomputer that had green text on a black background. That was the eighties – full of innovation, colour and 8 bit music.
Me fighting bad guys in Double Dragon – a classic game from the eighties played on the Atari 520 ST. This game built up my hand-eye coordination and problem-solving skills, and intiated my interest in martial arts. I would later start my journey learning Shotokan Karate – which I’m still practicing 22 years later! This picture is from my iPad – lots of old games can now be downloaded as apps.
Three decades later I find myself teaching students who have never known a world without the internet. It’s often hard for me contemplate the significance of this, especially when I think back to my teenage years when I spent many a long night and weekend studying from (dare I say it?) textbooks, at Flint Library.
We’ve made huge leaps and bounds as a human race in the past three decades, and when our current students enter the world of work and business they’ll be using technologies and systems that haven’t even been invented yet. Now how on Earth do we prepare them for that?
The answer is simple in theory: expose our kids to as much technology as possible and, crucially (and this step is seldom completed in classrooms today): get students to reflect on what technology they could have used (real or imaginary) if they had had access to it.
Let’s take a look at some easy steps you can take right now to bring more technology into your teaching.
Encourage your students to use their smartphones and tablets
Smartphones and tablets can often double-up as great learning tools! Try these actvities and you’ll see this for yourself. If some of your students don’t have smartphones then be sure to book iPads or school tablets in advance of the lesson.
QR Code Treasure Hunt
Step 1: Plant ‘clues’ around the school that each have some content on them. I often print A4 sheets of paper, each with a stage on it (e.g. one stage of cell division). Make sure that each piece of paper has a QR code clue on it that tells the students where to go next (e.g. “This is where you have fish and chips on a Friday”). An example of one of these sheets can be seen below.
Instructions for using QR codes treasure hunts in your teaching practice.
Step 2: When you’ve placed all of your clues around the school, make sure that your students have downloaded the ‘QR Reader’ app onto their smartphone. Split them into groups and get scanning!
Step 3: When the students have collected all of the clues they can then come back to class and make a display or poster of them. This can then lead on to a cool game such as the poster game and others.
Making videos and stop motion animations
Great for any subject, movies and stop-motion animations are fun projects which can really encourage students to approach a problem from creative perspective. The result?: Memory of the concept is greatly enhanced when compared with traditional teaching methods.
Children enjoy making and editing movies, and they are learning great skills that will help them later in life too.
Stop-motion animations do take a long time, and are more suited to processes and systems (e.g. DNA replication, corrie formation, steps in differential calculus, etc.), whereas movies have a wide-range of applications. An example of a stop-motion animation is given below:
Making graphs and charts and editing images
Any form of data set can be graphed in various ways by tablets and smart phones. This could happen in a history lesson in which you’re studying the number of new cases of the bubonic plaque over a set period of time; a mathematics lesson where the students have conducted a simple survey; a science lesson where the kids are measuring the light absorbance of different solutions or even an English lesson where you’re studying the frequency of particular adjectives in different texts. Good graphing apps include ‘Numbers’, ‘Viz’, ‘3D Charts’ and ‘Chart Maker’ (Apple™) and ‘Simple Graph Maker’, ‘My Graph (Chart)’, ‘ChartGo’ and ‘Juice Labs’ (Android™).
Portable homework diary
Are you sick of your students forgetting their homework? Does your school still use those old-fashioned homework diaries where everything needs to be written down? If your school isn’t using a homework database or a VLE to set assignments, then one way to solve this is to get the students to take a photograph of the homework task after you’ve written it on the whiteboard or projected it. This is also a very good option for students with additional learning needs and those who are operating with English as their second language. Additionally, if the homework is complex and involves multiple steps (e.g. navigating through a particular VLE portal), then students should be encouraged to take photographs of each step in the process.
Online Learning Games, Simulations and Activities
Book your school’s ICT lab and get your students to play some games or complete activities. Make sure you’ve checked out the website first so that you can give your students some direction before the lesson starts. Some suggested websites are given below:
Languages:Digital Dialects, Duolingo (be careful with this on as it allows students to create a profile and connect with other users)
Monsterland Challenge from Cool Math Games
Don’t be afraid of using social media in your teaching
Go back two or three years ago, and the thought of using any kind of social media in lessons was still very taboo in most schools. Now, however, a growing number of high schools are seeing the benefits that platforms such as Facebook™, Twitter™ and Instagram™ can bring to the classroom. Whilst all of this is very exciting, and very ‘modern’, we still have to tread very carefully. Some golden rules that we must follow as teachers when using social media with our students are as follows:
Always make sure that your students are of the permitted age to use the platform
Always show the students how to delete their account if needs be, and how to turn off notifications (some students and parents get very annoyed when they’re constantly receiving e-mail updates from whichever social media platform it is that they’ve signed up to)
Remind your students of the SMART acronym:
• Stay Safe: Don’t give out your personal information to people or places you don’t know
• Don’t Meet Up: It can be dangerous to meet up with someone you’ve only been in touch with online. Always check with an adult first
• Accepting Files: Accepting images, e-mails, files or messages from people you don’t know can cause problems
• Reliable: Is the website or person telling the truth? Always check information before you believe it.
• Tell Someone: Always inform an adult if someone or something online makes you feel uncomfortable or worried
If you follow these guidelines, then social media can offer a wealth of excitement, enrichment and interest to your lessons. It can encourage students to produce rich content, and can be examined instantly in a whole-class context.
Here are some ideas for using social media in your practice. Can you think of others? Please feel free to download and share this image.
Conclusion
I’m still fighting bad guys like you can see in the screenshot at the top of the page. The bad guys of making mistakes, fear, hatred, disappointment, loss and resentment. Just like in Double Dragon I still get my butt kicked by life, but I get back up and keep playing like I did as an excited 5 year old all those years ago. Isn’t that what life is all about? Perhaps games and ICT activities can teach our kids to be resilient, as well being open minded.
Some teachers are resistant to this rapid development, mostly because it causes an inconvenience for them. The days when we could know our subject and teach the same material the same way for years on end are over. Totally over. The modern practitioner must constantly skill-up and learn new tools and techniques, often at a faster rate than the students do. This has proven to be real challenge for me too, and I can still can’t figure out how to record a good podcast or YouTube video series, but I’m working on it (and you’ll be the first to find out about it when I do figure this out!).
Students who don’t already have a career in mind, she says, are then encouraged to think in terms of two other questions: “What do you like?” and “What are you good at? ”Those are both perfectly fine questions, as far as they go. “But they don’t go nearly far enough,” Fortgang says. “Counselors — and […]
Classroom management is one of those all-encompassing, dynamic ‘systems skills’ that lies at the foundation of effective teaching. Most seasoned educators will tell you that mastery comes with experience, and this is true to a certain extent. However, there are some simple actions you can take to improve the effectiveness you have in the classroom, even if you are a complete novice.
#1 Don’t speak unless the students are paying full attention
Be patient and wait. Wait a few minutes if you must, but do not accept any talking from your students if you are trying to talk at the same time. It’s disrespectful, and it will soon grow into major disruption if you allow it to. Let them take an inch, and they’ll take a mile.
Now this doesn’t have to be confrontational. You can wait and use body language to suggest to your students that you are waiting for a few people to settle down. If this takes too long, you can even say something like “I really need to take this lesson forward, but I’m waiting for one or two people to listen” or, even better: “Thank you to those who are listening, and thank you to those who are paying attention. I’m just waiting for one or two”.
I was told this trick by a former colleague of mine when I was a PGCE student. Sometimes I would wait and wait until I thought I couldn’t wait any longer. I found the method to become more and more effective the more I used it. Slowly but surely, the students would cue each other: “Be quiet, he’s trying to tell us something,” “come on, stop talking,” and “hey everyone, be quiet.” (The kids did all the work for me!)
My patience paid off and yours will too!
#2 Manage behaviour issues quickly and properly
John has just graffitied on his desk, and Louise is laughing her head off about it. Meanwhile, you’re trying to get your kids to watch and interact with a simulation that you’ve spent ages preparing. What do you do?
First and foremost on your mind should be the need to address the behavior issue right away. If you’re mid-activity (as in the example above), and you don’t want to stop the flow of the lesson, then you can do the following:
Walk over to the students and have a private word with them
Stop the activity and get the disruptive students focussed by using a pause or a verbal prompt
Speak with the students at the end of the lesson
How would you rate your relationship with your students? Are you as happy as this?
Sanction properly
Make sure you apply sanctions fairly, but don’t be afraid of repealing or lightening a sanction if a student redeems themselves through good work or behaviour. Everyone deserves a second-chance, and sometimes students back themselves into a corner and the teacher can make the confrontation worse by being over-zealous. This doesn’t help anyone. I talk about this ‘intelligent leniency’ in detail in my debut book, and other authors like Sue Cowley and Andy Vass make similar assertions too.
Apply sanctions fairly too. Don’t discriminate, and make sure you use your school’s sanctions system if it has one. Being the oddball by operating differently to your colleagues can cause all kinds of problems later on down the road.
# 3 Start taking a GENUINE interest in your students
I cannot stress enough how important this is. The cornerstones of successful classroom management are the relationships you build with each student. Start noticing when the school’s football team win a match, and make sure you congratulate each team member. Go along and watch the school hockey team when they play away. Ask the Year 9 pianist how her lessons are going, and when her next piano exam is. Take an interest when a student tells you how bad their weekend was. Be a good listener. Stop students in the corridor and ask them what they’re having for lunch today. Ask them how their day is going. Dale Carnegie put it this way:
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people, than you can get in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. “
Whilst it must be emphasised that we’re not trying to make the students become our friends (professional distance has to be maintained), we are trying to get them on our side. Showing them that you care, and that you’re approachable, will have an almost instant transformative effect on your interactions in the classroom. You’ll be amazed at how quickly this will work for you.
Do you praise your students enough?
Another important element of showing a genuine interest in students involves praising them consistently and never forgetting to give positive subject specific feedback. You’ll find more tips on this here. Feedback is vital in the rapport-building process, and by empowering your students with meaningful praise you’ll make them want to work hard in your lessons.
#4 Do you start your lessons promptly?
As a 17 year old ‘A’ – Level student at a Roman Catholic school in North Wales, I was a typical lovesick teenager. I was easily distracted, and if I got the chance to slack-off, I was sure to take it! I look back at those days and, to my embarrassment, I sometimes have to cringe! However, one question does come to mind quite often – which lessons were the most productive for me at that time? The answer: it was always, without exception, those lessons that began promptly and had a definite focus.
As teachers we’re always very, very busy. There’s so much to do in such a small amount of time, and it can be tempting for us to take a rest whilst we’re working. Whilst a relaxed environment is generally conducive to the learning process, there is a danger that we can cross the line and create an atmosphere that’s too relaxed: one that encourages our students to be unproductive. To illustrate this I can use an example from my personal journey. Perhaps you have had a similar experience?
Begin each lesson promptly with a quick, fun activity
As a pre-university student back in 2001, I remember some of my chemistry and biology lessons particularly well, but for all the wrong reasons. Some of these lessons would typically begin by the teacher having a nice, casual chat with all of the students in order to create a ‘relaxed feel’. Sometimes we would even begin by making a cup of tea for each other before we began, and this made myself and my peers feel ‘adult’ and ‘special’, reinforcing the fact that we were the big kids in the school and we had a certain status. This ritual would sometimes last for 15-20 minutes before any real learning took place, with one of my teachers in particular discussing anything that came into mind, whether it was a story from her past or an incident she had had with another pupil. After this long ‘introduction’, in which approximately a quarter of the lesson had been eaten up, we would begin the lesson properly. But were we motivated at this stage? How had this casual entry into the lesson content affected our ability to learn thereafter? The answer is that for many of us it had generated a lazy frame of mind, and it was difficult to come out of a relaxed state and go straight into a learning activity (which was often rushed, because of the time wasted at the start of the lesson). Charles J. Givens, author and once a multi-million dollar business owner, summarizes this problem very eloquently:
“Success requires first expending ten units of effort to produce one unit of results. Your momentum will then produce ten units of results with each unit of effort.”
From this we’re able to understand that for students to achieve results, they need to gain momentum within the lesson. However, momentum can only be achieved if the teacher initiates it with an appropriate starter activity that requires at least some effort to complete. So, as soon as the lesson starts (or better: as soon as the kids walk through the classroom door) give your students something to do! This can be:
A quick quiz or worksheet (requiring around five minutes to complete)
A question written on the board that the students have to answer
An ICT based task (e.g. using iPads to find out how Oliver Cromwell died, completing an online quiz about dinosaurs or writing a short blog post)
A role-play or conversation starter with students working in small groups (particularly good for language classes)
A practical construction activity (e.g. ‘Use the coins to make fifty five pence’, or ‘Use the molecular modeling kits to make a molecule of glucose’)
Cut and stick activities (e.g. matching words to descriptions, adding labels to diagrams, making pictures out of shapes, etc.)
Surprise scenarios (e.g. turning your classroom into a ‘crime scene’, and getting your students to take samples and follow clues)
A treasure hunt (these are particularly good fun, and are also a great way to build ICT into your lessons too – e.g. by scanning QR codes with iPads).
# 5 Play learning games with your students
It goes without saying, but as teachers we should definitely be utilizing the positive primers of memory when we are choosing activities for our students to complete, and one of the most effective of these ‘primers’ are games. I wrote a whole blog post (which was beautifully illustrated by my former student) about effective games here (please note: these activities can be used at any point in a lesson, not just as starter activities).
An example of a simple game you can play. Find more like this here.
Games provide a number of benefits, all of which can enhance your classroom management:
They can be used as a reward for good behavior and effort
They break up your lesson into chunks, providing variety and maintaining student interest and engagement
The interactive nature of games forces you, as a teacher, to build up a good rapport with your students (and remember: rapport is the cornerstone of effective classroom management)
They add an element of competitiveness, which can be channelled into encouraging your students to work hard (especially when partnered with your school’s existing rewards system – e.g. offering merits or house points for first, second and third place)
They are great for encouraging knowledge retention and are a perfect way to engage ESL, SEN and kinaesthetic learners
Summary
Classroom management is a fun skill to learn and master. It does take time, but you can greatly enhance your classroom management skills today by:
Starting your lessons promptly with a quick, fun starter activity. Don’t be afraid of giving your students something to do as soon as they walk through the door.
Building up positive relationships and rapport with your students by taking a genuine interest in their welfare, lives, hobbies and interests. Use praise to empower each and every learner.
Nip poor behaviour in the bud by dealing with it on the spot. Use your schools sanctions system fairly and properly. Allow students to redeem themselves if possible.
Bring variety and engagement into your lessons by using games and interactive tasks. These are also perfect for the Friday afternoon slump!
Don’t speak to the class unless every student is listening. Insist on this. Use pauses to bring the focus back on to what you are saying.
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Did you enjoy this article? Why not check out Richard’s book, which is filled with tips to help you master your classroom management:
