Authorised TEFL Programs

Classroom ManagementAs a teacher and to the students your classroom is home away from home for you and your students. Make it attractive and functional. Consider grade/age level appropriateness, the type of classroom activities you will be implementing, and your particular style. For example, consider the various areas of the classroom and design those areas for use in a variety of activities. The physical aspects of your room include room arrangement, seating, white board, displays and physical climate. Each of these should be carefully considered with both individual students? needs and instructional goals in mind. While you consider how to arrange your classroom, several things are important to remember. The seating arrangement should be designed in a systematic way so that the organization of the seats helps the students to feel more organized. Sometimes, this sense of organization is helped if students have assigned seats. Make sure the classroom has charts and pictures that are functional and useful to students. The entrance to your room and the hallway outside should not cause distractions to students during lessons. Additionally, seats should be arranged in such a way as to reduce traffic distractions. For example, as students get up to go to the bathroom or pencil sharpener they should not overly distract students they pass. Allow plenty of space for foot traffic, especially around areas where supplies are stored. Physical climate is one the most important aspect. Your classroom?s lighting and temperature will affect student achievement. They should be should be comfortable and conducive to student learning. Some students need more light than others; some may want it to be warmer or cooler than others. These things will have to be worked out through compromise. Generally speaking, make sure that the room temperature is moderate to cool. Warm classrooms tend to lead students to be more sleepy, inattentive, and consequently bored and disruptive. If necessary use a fan to maintain a good airflow, keeping the room cooler. Make sure that the lighting in the room is adequate. If you have bulbs that need to be replaced, inform the manager to change them. If your classroom has windows with blinds, make sure that they are operable so that you use natural light as an additional lighting source. Learners behaviour in class, One of the most common is when a student falls asleep while the lesson is being taught. Sleeping in class is usually considered rude. Most faculty believe it should not be tolerated and is best curbed up front by waking a sleeping student and asking them to step outside with you. Once there faculty often tell students that it?s best for the rest of the class if they return when they are awake enough to be an active participant. This occurs from time to time and you obviously are the one to choose lenience or punitive action. If it?s one of your more regularly involved students, perhaps give them an option of recovering the days lesson (maybe they can get help from one of their class mates to catch up on the lesson) they can then bring it to class the next day covering the subject matter they missed while they were sleeping. An alternative approach is to assume that the student does not feel well, was up most of the night with a sick child, or has some other condition that results in sleepiness when still for long periods of time. You might simply choose to wake the student and ask them if they are feeling alright. To pull this off you need to approach it with true concern for the student's health and well being. Most of the time, student's are so embarrassed and so appreciative of your genuine concern that they don't let it happen again. Encourage students to actively participate, take notes (explain that this is helpful to their learning as it stimulates memory in the brain) and in particularly long classes break up the session with activities or paired conversations about a topic to ensure that students stay engaged. students don't learn much from listening, so remember that the more they "experience" the learning process the more you are really teaching. Manage a disruptive classroom. When you have classroom disruptions, it is imperative that you deal with them immediately and with as little interruption of your class momentum as possible. If students are talking amongst themselves and you are having a classroom discussion, ask one of them a question to try to get them back on track. If you have to stop the flow of your lesson to deal with disruptions, then you are robbing students who want to learn of their precious in-class time. So if the student really does not listen, it would be better to talk to him/her after the lesson. Remember not to shout the students or be violent. Just have a talk with him or her about his/her behaviour in a polite way.