Marmara Elt Resources

Effective Classroom Management Is About Getting Pupils To Follow Your Instructions
When we are put in stressful situations the directions and instructions we give out to pupils who are causing problems us are often very unclear and impulsive. As such they virtually guarantee conflict when they are stated.Children become confused unless the instructions we give them are very specific – especially when they are in a state of anxiety themselves.
Let’s not also forget that a large proportion of pupils in our classes are EBD, ADHD or on the autistic spectrum and as such, have a genuine need for unambiguous, precise instructions.
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Giving and Checking Instructions

Some of the activities that we use in the classroom are fairly complex in terms of the way they’re organised, and I doubt if there are many teachers who can honestly claim that they’ve never got a class totally confused by the way they’ve given instructions. How can you make sure that your instructions are as clear and comprehensible as possible? Here are some guidelines :

* Plan how you’re going to give the instructions before you go into the classroom, and make sure that you can explain them within the limits of the language which the students can understand. For example, the following instruction would be fine for an intermediate class, but would lose a group of beginners : You’re going to hear a description of a famous person and you have to guess who it is. For beginners, Listen to my description of a famous person. Who is it? would be far more comprehensible. Think too about the speed of your speech - slow down slightly if necessary - and insert pauses to allow students to take in each piece of information before you go on to the next.

* Make sure that your instructions are fully explicit – don’t take anything for granted. Because we are so familiar with the activity types, we often assume that certain things are obvious. How often have you explained an activity but forgotten to say explicitly Don’t show your information to your partner - only to find students happily doing just that. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Classroom Management Tips To Silence A Noisy Class
(By Rob Johnson)

1. The first thing to remember is that you are the boss.

Self belief is incredibly important in this job. You can’t expect pupils to respond positively to you unless you believe, really believe, that you fully deserve their respect and compliance. The thought that you are the leader in the classroom must be at the forefront of your mind.

If you give any sign at all that you are NOT in FULL CONTROL, children will sense this and exploit your weaknesses. You MUST project strength and the impression that you will not tolerate any disobedience.

All too often a teacher will enter a lesson filled with dread and give out the signal that they are beaten before the lesson even starts. Pupils sense this. If you’ve been having a hard time with a particular group they will come to expect that you will be a walk-over and get into the habit of talking freely with total disregard for your threats.
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Some Tips For Classroom Management
● Take control of where the kids sit. Even if you don’t allocate the exact seats, get each student simply to sit in a different seat from the one they had in the last class.
● Keep desktop clutter to a minimum – provide pencils/paper, etc yourself.
● If you want the kids to move around, give clear instructions, including a quick diagram on the board even, before they start moving.
● Divide the lesson into ‘circle time’ for presentations, games, recycling, etc, and ‘table time’ for book-based work.
● A non-verbal signal to be quiet is better than a loud noise or raising your voice – don’t get into a competition with them!
● The fewer and simpler the rules, the better.
● Positive reinforcement is better than negative commands: try asking noisy students to do something specific or answer a question rather than saying Stop …!
● Remove misbehaving students from their audience (the rest of the class). Put them just outside the door, in the back of a colleague’s classroom, in the corner out of the sight line of the other students, etc.