Classroom
Management - art or skill?
Being
a teacher of English is not just about teaching English.
Whatever the subject, teachers have to manage their classes,
and the way they organise students, the way they coax student
participation, and their responses to misbehaviour are crucial
skills for any education professional.
This
month's Development Pack looks into three aspects of classroom
management:
Members
- download the Classroom Management
Development Pack or go to The Forum
to find out when the next Live Chat session is.
Managing
behaviour in the Classroom
Student
behaviour (and misbehaviour) is a subject which is discussed
all too rarely in EFL literature, yet it is at the heart
of all teaching experience. What can teachers do when faced
with serious discipline problems? How can such incidents
be avoided?
Student
misbehaviour can happen in any class. Yet if a teacher has
set out ground rules for a class and if, when it occurs,
he or she deals with it appropriately, it can usually be
handed effectively. Nevertheless it is still a major problem
in some more extreme situations.
Why
won't students speak English?
'My
students just won't speak English!' is the cry of exasperated
teachers all over the world. Their students seem determined
to speak to each other in their own language, and when the
teacher tries desperately to encourage them to try and speak
in the target language they are met with some resistance.
This
is only one manifestation of L1 use in the language classroom.
Should teachers ban its use altogether (that was the position
of early 'direct method' teachers)? Are there good and entirely
understandable reasons why students may not want - or even
be able- to use English in the class?
Part
of the Development Pack in
this module suggests that teachers can help to make the
use of the target language both possible and appropriate.
Both by setting tasks which students can complete with the
English at their command, and by their behaviour during
an activity, students can be coaxed to speak the target
language most of the time. But there are also times when
the use of the students' L1 seems entirely justifiable.
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What's
the point of putting students into pairs?
A
feature of modern classrooms in the use of pairwork and
groupwork. Part of any teacher's management skills involves
changing student groupings for different activities.
Is
pairwork useful? Some teachers - and more importantly
some students - are not great enthusiasts, seeing it as
some kind of teacher neglect, and complaining about the
people they end up working with. The same doubts apply to
small groups.
Pairwork
can be over-used, of course, and where students are grouped
inappropriately it can be very demotivating. But if care
is taken about how to group students and manage pairwork
and if teachers help it to succeed by what they do before,
during and after it, it a valuable part of a teacher's management
armoury. The Development Pack
discusses these issues and shows how pairwork can be used
successfully.
Discuss
these issues with me in the Live Chat session - go to The
Forum for details.
Jeremy
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