Teach English in Gufeng Zhen - Wuwei Shi

Classroom management is the skill of organising a classroom in a friendly and relaxed manner while maintaining discipline. A teacher manages a class using eye contact, gestures and voice. Eye contact is essential to establish good rapport with the students. It ensures students understand what is being taught. Eye contact also maintains discipline in class. Gesture is used to convey the meaning of language and to reinforce instructions. Gestures add visual interest and increase the pace of the lesson. Gestures also reduce the need for verbal explanations. The voice must have correct clarity while making instructions. Voice must change naturally according to circumstances. The lesson can be livened up or quietened down by an alteration of voice. A dull tone might create boredom in students. Students can be grouped as a whole or in pairs or in groups depending upon the activities and class size. Each type of grouping has its respective pros and cons. Whole class grouping allows students to interact with any other class members. It is quicker and easier to organise. But shy students find it difficult to participate in front of whole class. Students working on their own allows teacher to give individual attention to each student and helps students be independent learners. But it restricts students from interacting with the class. Pair work is easy to organise and allows students to share ideas and thoughts before sharing them with the entire class. Pair work sometimes can become noisy and student may not like working with a student they don?t like in particular. Group work increases students? talk time and encourages students to communicate in English. But some group members may dominate and passive students don?t get adequate opportunity to participate. The seating arrangement of students depends upon the space available, nationality of students, the type of furniture and students? personality. Orderly rows is the most common seating arrangement and the best solution for a large classroom of more than twenty five students. It is easier for the teacher to get the attention of all students and the teacher can maintain discipline in the classroom. Circle and horseshoe arrangement is used in smaller classrooms. This allows students to be more focussed on the lesson. This arrangement allows students to have eye contact with every other member of the class. During a group activity, students are seated in small groups on separate tables. The teacher then can concentrate on one group at a time while the other groups can carry on with their activities. This seating arrangement can create discipline problems as the teacher will not be able to maintain eye contact with the entire class. While writing on the board, the amount of time the teacher has her back to the students can be minimised in a number of ways. Teacher can make use of an overhead projector or invite students to write on the board. However, if the teacher doesn?t want the students to see the board word, it can be covered with a sheet of paper until it is required. A teacher must know the names of all students. While asking questions, the students must be asked in a random order to keep the class on toes. Weak students should never feel they are being picked on and the teacher must work on their confidence levels. The teacher talk time and student talk time depends on the level of the students and the activity. Teacher talk time is more when presenting language input, giving instructions and establishing rapport. However, unnecessary TTT can be reduced by avoiding jargons, using gestures and carefully selecting the language according to the level of students. While giving instructions the teacher must ensure using simple language and visual clues when necessary. The beginners must be taught to follow instructions and students should be monitored to see if they are following the instructions correctly. A rapport must be established between the teacher and students to learn lessons in a relaxed environment. To establish a good rapport, the teacher must encourage the students in every possible way. The activities and material must evoke students? interest and get the students help each other. The teacher must ask for comments and opinions from the students. Maintaining discipline in the classroom is dependent on age of the students, motivation, class size and the relation between student and teacher. Behaviour problem in students may be due to family problems, low self-esteem, boredom, lack of respect for the teacher and class size. Behaviour problems can be avoided by establishing a rapport with the students, being enthusiastic about what we teach and showing the same respect to the student as we expect from them.