CHAPTER 4: Competent Teachers: Effective Classroom Managers

MANAGING THE CLASSROOM WELL IS IMPORTANT IN TEACHING AND LEARNING SITUATIONS

A knowledgeable teacher may fail in teaching due to inability to work effectively with students.
Students may be entertaining each other during class time, talking aloud or walking around aimlessly in
the classroom. What can be done to help students learn in these situations?

Here are some tips in order to manage the classroom well:

1. Set Rules and Procedures That Students Are Expected to Follow

The teacher must communicate the rules clearly to the students. Clear communication entails a
clear discussion of every rule its rationale. A final critical strategy is to find out if students understand the
rules and commit to abide by them. Class rules, procedures, and notice of upcoming activities are posted
in convenient places to help students stay on track. Students follow class routines for daily chores
without nagging. In a well-disciplined class students understand what they are expected to achieve each
day and how they are to go about them.

2. Let Students Actively Engage in the Pursuit of Knowledge

Active learning generates a much higher noise level than the silent classrooms of the past. There is
movement, laughter and noise. Students are up and out of their seats while engaged in a variety of
interesting activities that encourage thought and discovery. They do more talking than the teacher on
most classroom learning experiences.

3. Lead Students to Take Responsibility for Their Learning

In a well-disciplined class, teachers may lead students, but they do no coerce them into good
behavior through threats of dire punishment. Teachers encourage students to understand the
importance of choosing good behavior over the short-term thrills of bad behavior. In an orderly class,
self-directed students not only encourage each other, but they also work with their teachers to achieve
academic and behavioral goals that they themselves have established. Successful teachers employ a
variety of strategies to promote responsible decision-making and create self-reliant students.

4. Respect Everyone

Teachers and students treat each other with obvious respect. This is evident to such nonverbal
interactions as body language and tone of voice as well as in what students and teachers say to each
other. Students speak with confidence because they feel their opinions are valued. Students in well-
disciplined class also respect their classmates. They have been taughtto appreciate each other's unique
contributions to the class as well as appropriate ways to resolve conflicts. There is a general sense of
togetherness and steadfast courtesy.
 CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES

How do teachers manage the first days of the new school year to set the stage for the entire year?
Here some classroom management techniques:

Management of Instruction

This refers to the smooth flow of the instructional processes. Smoothness involves circulation to
facilitate students' cooperation and discussion as they work in small groups.

1. Maintain smoothness of the instruction and avoid jarring breaks within the activity flow.

2. Manage transition from one activity to another, from subject or from lesson to recess and give clear
signals.

3. Maintain group focus during lesson so that all students in the class stay involved in the lesson even if
the teacher calls on only one student.

4. Maintain group focus during a seatwork by circulating to see how they are doing.

5. Develop withiness and be aware of student's behavior at all time.

6. Develop overlapping skills and be prepared for all scenarios in the classroom.

Management of Discipline

This refers to the means of preventing misbehavior from occurring or the manner responding to
behavioral problems in order to reduce their recurrence in the future.

1. Start the year right with a clear, specific plan for introducing the student ti classroom rules.

2. Set few class rules for the students to follow.

3. Create an atmosphere where there is respect to one another.

4. Apply the principle of least intervention for routine classroom behavior problem. Create varied
interesting lessons to make students pay attention to class discussion and students do not engage in
activities that disrupt class discussion.

5. Manage serious behavior problems through applied behavior analysis.

6. Prevent serious behavior problems and remove' the causes of misbehavior.

7. Formally develop the desired behavior by teaching (not telling) the behavior.
Management of Relationship

This refers to emotional climate and communications affecting learning conditions.

1. Maintain positive climate characteristics which allow students to choose a variety of activities to
achieve common goals.

2. Develop sense of interdependence, common bonds, defined group expectations and relationship
qualities that enhance wholesome emotional climate.

3. Develop communication characteristics that promote wholesome classroom relationship like positive
constructive conversations aimed at understanding on another's point of view.

4. Render different forms of assistance by providing class meetings or students to have an opportunity to
examine the ideas and feelings that influence value judgement.

Management of Physical Environment

This refers to the organization of the learning environment, supplies, and materials.

1. Organize supplies and materials for activities that occur frequently in most readily available accessible
place, and must be governed by the simplest procedure.

2. Rules must go with territory and insist on respect for them. Expectations regarding beginning and end
of class behavior must be clearly expressed.

3. Avoid interruptions during class program.

4. Arrange the physical setting and maximize visibility and accessibility. Students' desks are separated in
rows facing toward the chalkboard and away from the window.

5. Materials and equipment stations are available in sufficient qualities and are located to minimize
congestion in traffic lanes.

6. Bulletin boards and wall spaces are used to display student work and complement current class
activities.

7. Set explicit procedures for getting materials from returning them to designated classroom locations.

Management of Time

Refers to the organization and use of allocated time in the classroom.

1. Make good use off all classroom time

2. Start teaching at the beginning of the period and the end on time.

3. Establish routine procedures.

5. Teach lessons that are so interesting, engaging and relevant to student's interest.

6. Maintain momentum through avoidance of interruptions or slowdown like phone calls, knocks on the
door and other disturbances.

Management of Routines

Refers to the established activities or procedures that are repeatedly done.

1. Teach pupils to learn how to form various grouping and return to standard arrangement with
minimum confusion.

2. Do not use the first few minutes of the class session to collect materials when students are potentially
most alert to instruction.

3. "Overlapping" technique is used for collection and distribution of materials. It refers to the teacher's
ability to attend to the task at hand and at the same time prevent an extraneous situation from getting
out of school.

4. Prepare for transition by planning district types and sequences of teacher-pupil activity e.g. checking
homework assignment, presentation of new material, giving assignment monitoring seatwork.
Transitions should be quick and quite.