Classroom Management Training
Classroom Management Techniques and Strategies
In my last poll, I saw a definite need for providing research, articles and journals on classroom management and techniques and ideas for the more seasoned teacher. So I will give some pointers and tips for teacher classroom management in hopes that they will also help enlighten those more seasoned teachers .
Here are a few general pointers-
After introducing a few rules during the first week of school, plan on reinforcing them for the next few months to come. I tend to stick to the 90% reviewing classroom procedures and rules and 10% amount of teaching. By procedures, I am referring to also study skills such as how to present and keep their work, pair and group work and test procedures. I also keep in mind the pace of particular classes with special needs and some classes need more review on reinforcing the rules than others.
What is a rule?
In the beginning, I was in a rush to teach and happily talked about my rules as if they were a theoretical treatise. A rule is an expectation that also has a consequence. Reconsider your rules and their consequences because your students need to be held accountable.
Still Have the Personal touch
At the beginning of my teaching career, I was too preoccupied with my rules and wanted to quickly begin teaching. But you as teacher need to quickly build your teaching style to read your students and their social, emotional and cognitive needs.
Greeting them, talking to them and guiding them is part of our many roles beyond the simple ‘disciplinarian’.
Lastly, consider your Teaching Style
With every teaching style, there is a separate classroom management system of procedures. Most seasoned teachers will tell you to get a hold of your class before you give group tasks. While there is no real ‘right’ time to start introducing them, you might want to start out by experimenting with these types of classroom interaction. See which ones fit where you are now in terms of classroom management and of course, your own personality.
Individual Work. The teacher gives a task or set of tasks, the students work on them independently; the teacher walks around monitoring and assisting where necessary.
Fluid Pairs. Each student exchanges information briefly with a partner, then moves on to exchange with another.
Teacher talk. This may involve some kind of silent student response, such as writing from dictation; but there is no initiation.
Self-access. Students choose their own learning tasks, and work autonomously.
Open ended teacher questioning. There are a number of possible ‘right’ answers, so that more students answer each cue.
Collaboration. Students do the same sort of tasks as in ‘individual work,’ but work together, usually in pairs, to try to achieve the best result they can. The teacher may or may not intervene. (Note that this is different from Group work, where the task itself necessitates interaction.)
The one type not mentioned is group work, which involves a lot more student autonomy and much less teacher intervention.
Which of these classroom types have you used? How do you feel about their effectiveness? How ready were you in terms of your classroom management skills? Where are you now in terms of rule setting and reinforcement? Join the discussion and send a note of your progress.
