Ideas for Behaviour Management in the Classroom

If you want to tru­ly under­stand how wild stu­dents can go in con­fined spaces, observe any class between kinder­garten to the pri­ma­ry and high­er grades. With the non­stop chit­ter chat­ter­ing, throw­ing sta­tion­ary across the room, doo­dling on the board, and desks to fight­ing in a cor­ner like it were to be world war three! It is per­haps one of the few times when the human voice is test­ed to its full capac­i­ty. Some unlucky ones who can’t get their screams across try to ana­lyze, which two objects could they slam togeth­er and make sure they catch the class’s attention. Some tac­tics are uni­ver­sal. Slam­ming the duster on the board is one of them. If you want to know how calm you can be no mat­ter the sur­round­ings, all you must do is try man­ag­ing a class like that. Per­haps this is where the peo­ple man­age­ment was born! Undoubt­ed­ly, man­ag­ing a class­room can be very stress­ful and exhaust­ing. A poor­ly man­aged class will result in below-aver­age teach­ing, which then leads to bad education. Research has shown that very lit­tle impor­tance has been giv­en to train­ing teach­ers in class­room man­age­ment. How­ev­er, some meth­ods can be imple­ment­ed to main­tain some dig­ni­ty in the class­room. An order­ly envi­ron­ment will only ensure prop­er edu­ca­tion is giv­en to the students. In this arti­cle, we will dis­cuss a few strate­gies and tech­niques which can be used for var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions. Keep­ing in mind that every teacher has his/her unique style.

1- Being an Example

The best way to teach is to set an exam­ple of how you would want stu­dents to react to you depend­ing on var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions, for exam­ple, con­duct­ing a test, class pre­sen­ta­tion, group projects. An impor­tant thing to clear before teach­ing class is to make sure stu­dents under­stand when they can inter­rupt you. Some are okay with being inter­rupt­ed in between to ask a ques­tion, and some teach­ers would like stu­dents to wait till the end of the les­son and then discuss. It is also impor­tant to let them know when you are avail­able for clear­ing doubts after class hours. To make this learn­ing more inter­est­ing, you can con­duct mocks with a stu­dent or any school staff. Make sure to make it fun so that stu­dents don’t lose focus. While address­ing a class, it is essen­tial to keep a few things in mind like:

• Being polite.

• Using sim­ple lan­guage.

• Hav­ing good eye contact.

• Let­ting every­one speak with­out being inter­rupt­ed.

• Dis­cour­ag­ing the use of any elec­tron­ic items dur­ing class.

It is essen­tial to teach stu­dents how to polite­ly dis­agree with each oth­er with­out hurt­ing the sen­ti­ment of oth­ers. Stu­dents should be taught how to respect dif­fer­ent opin­ions, even when it dif­fers from what they believe. Encour­ag­ing class dis­cus­sions always helps in stu­dent devel­op­ment. Dur­ing these dis­cus­sions, a stu­dent will be able to under­stand and learn to accept dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives that oth­ers can have for the same topic.

2- Don’t be a Boss; Be a Guide

Your job is not to tell the rules that need to be oblig­ed. Per­haps it is impor­tant to know what the oth­er side has to say. Encour­age stu­dents to talk about what they expect from the class. What, accord­ing to them, is unac­cept­able and what rule can be bent a little. For exam­ple, should cell phones be switched off, or can they be kept silent? It might look like you are los­ing con­trol of the class­room by not being an author­i­ta­tive fig­ure, but what makes the stu­dents more adjustable to your tech­niques is let­ting them know you are open to suggestions. An under­stand­ing between a stu­dent and teacher should be mutu­al. There is a right bal­ance to be main­tained, which can be done with coop­er­a­tion. Throw­ing a stu­dent out for being five min­utes late might be too strict, how­ev­er, let­ting them go off once twice with a warn­ing might seem a good way to go.

3- Runbook

Often what has been dis­cussed in the begin­ning will be for­got­ten. These must be documented. Like how the syl­labus is main­tained, these rules can be hand­ed out at the begin­ning of each year, so all rules are well versed. Anoth­er way to ensure rules are remem­bered is to have the class mon­i­tor main­tain the run­book. When rules are writ­ten, they have more val­ue and can­not be ques­tioned about lack­ing clarity. Hand­ing these Run­books to stu­dents sep­a­rate­ly might end up in them being ignored. A way to ensure stu­dents at least once read through them is to hand them out in the same book­let in which the cur­ricu­lum is listed.

4- Identify the Root cause

Pun­ish­ing an entire class or a whole group for the mis­be­hav­iour of one stu­dent should not be done. The stu­dent who caused the prob­lem must under­stand the reper­cus­sions of not being cordial. It makes the class under­stand that every­one will be treat­ed fair­ly. Will also make stu­dents dis­cour­age their class­mates from caus­ing fur­ther disturbances. It is also impor­tant to learn how to deal with trou­ble­mak­ers. They are usu­al­ly not the ones that can be dis­ci­plined with a sin­gle warning. The stu­dent needs to main­tain calm and not show frus­tra­tion dur­ing these sit­u­a­tions. Keep­ing a calm tone and yet let­ting them know undis­ci­plined kids will not be tol­er­at­ed is important. If all efforts fail, it is impor­tant to below-aver­age the stu­dent lat­er, and the issue can be esca­lat­ed to their parents.

5- Encourage Growth and Creativity

Growth and cre­ativ­i­ty must always be encour­aged. Good efforts made by stu­dents must be praised, and all improve­ments made in any field must be rewarded. Stu­dents should feel they their efforts are being appre­ci­at­ed and acknowl­edged. Such behav­iour not only improves the stu­dent-teacher rela­tion­ships but also helps the stu­dent to have a less­er stress­ful environment. Behav­iours will also encour­age oth­er stu­dents to improve them­selves. Such moti­va­tion only spreads. A class that seemed a bore before that becomes a fun class to be in. Teach­ers should let stu­dents it is okay to ques­tion what is taught in the text­books. Stick­ing strict­ly to text­book meth­ods might curb their creativity. They should be encour­aged to test out new ways to solve a math prob­lem, and if they do, that must be praised. Let­ting stu­dents know that good behav­iour has a direct impact on year-end grades will encour­age stu­dents to rein­force behav­iour­al activ­i­ties inside the classroom.

6- Keeping Parents Updated About Student’s Progress

Rather than let­ting par­ents know only when a stu­dent dis­obeys, it is cru­cial to let par­ents know how well their kids are doing. Every improve­ment must be acknowl­edged. If a stu­dent who has always received a grade D final­ly gets a C, this must also be acknowledged. Par­ents will also be hap­py know­ing their kids have been doing well. When kids are appre­ci­at­ed by their par­ents, it boosts their con­fi­dence to a whole new lev­el. It fur­ther moti­vates kids to push them­selves harder.

7- Symbiosis Effect

It can help if stu­dents are paired in such a way that they can teach one anoth­er. A stu­dent good in math can be paired to sit with a stu­dent good in chem­istry. Anoth­er weak­ness in sports can be grouped with a stu­dent who is excelling. This way, they get to work on their weak points.

8- General Discussions

Gen­er­al dis­cus­sions are for the end of the day when all stu­dents can gath­er togeth­er and talk about some­thing that was the high­light of the day or dis­cuss some­thing that seemed to have dis­turbed everyone. For exam­ple, a stu­dent who met with a seri­ous accident. Each stu­dent must be encour­aged to talk about some­thing once in two weeks. It ensures a healthy and friend­ly environment. Every­one should be taught to respect each oth­er. These dis­cus­sions should be short meet­ings that last for up to 10–15 minutes.

9- Taking a Break

It is essen­tial to give breaks. Not just lunchtime, but in between class­es, even if it is for 5 minutes. If a class goes on for more than an hour, then after a dif­fi­cult top­ic dis­cus­sion, giv­ing stu­dents a break will help them recharge their minds rather than caus­ing exhaustion.

10- Curriculum Planning

It is impor­tant that you plan the cur­ricu­lum in such a man­ner that they have enough time to pre­pare and practice. They can use the time before the midterm to focus more on what they have not under­stood and clear their doubts. It helps in reduc­ing their last-minute stress.

11- Create Curiosity

While teach­ing, try to make them curi­ous about the sub­ject. For exam­ple, why do you guys think it is dif­fi­cult to cure a com­mon cold? Assign­ments must be attrac­tive, which moti­vates stu­dents to do more research and come up with a new take. Let them know they can come up with an answer in the next class, and who­ev­er does his research will get extra credit.

Last but not least,

The above tech­niques will help in improv­ing stu­dent and teacher rela­tion­ships. It will result in cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment that is less stress­ful for both parties. A class­room should be for learn­ing and grow­ing. Stu­dents might for­get what you taught them, but they will always remem­ber how you treat them!