I hope you understand just how important it is to keep your students busy when they are in your class. We both know what happens when students are unengaged and bored, dont we? Thats when trouble happens.
Strong teachers get students to behave in an effortless and positive manner. Much of that stems from their ability to keep students engaged for the duration of the class. How can you manage this on a day-to-day basis?
1. Plan effectively. As you gain more experience, you'll be able to gauge exactly how long different tasks will take you and your students to accomplish. Plan enough so that you won't have any extra time at the end of class. None! Not even a minute. Create a habit of teaching right up to the last second of class.
2. Order your daily tasks so that time critical elements happen first. This way, if you need to speed up other tasks or cut some tasks short, you can. Then you won't have any extra time at the end of class.
3. Be aware of your clock. This sounds simple, but many teachers struggle with this, and a little foresight will go a long way to effectively managing student behavior. When you see that your students are going to finish early, be thinking ahead. Do you have anything you can do with your students that will fill up those dreaded free minutes that occasionally crop up at the end of class?
4. Have something engaging you can always turn to in a time emergency. I love the book Lateral Thinking Puzzlers by Paul Sloane. It has hundreds of challenging little scenarios for the students to figure out. For example, "Romeo and Juliet are lying dead on the floor in a puddle of water. How did they die?" The students ask you yes or no questions until they figure out that Romeo and Juliet were really goldfish whose bowl had been knocked over. Definitely this one is for older students, but it works great at using up extra minutes at the end of class.
5. Stay flexible. If you see that the lesson youve carefully planned just isnt engaging the students and some students are starting to get others off task, then try moving the students on to a different task. We as teachers need to be quick thinkers! Avoid being so attached to your lesson plans that you cant see when a lesson is failing you and your students.
If you keep your students busy everyday, they'll learn that when they come to your class, they are going to be too busy to cause disruptions. Eventually, disruptive students will simply save their disruptive tendencies for other less engaging classes.
Doesnt that sound nice?
Strong teachers get students to behave in an effortless and positive manner. Much of that stems from their ability to keep students engaged for the duration of the class. How can you manage this on a day-to-day basis?
1. Plan effectively. As you gain more experience, you'll be able to gauge exactly how long different tasks will take you and your students to accomplish. Plan enough so that you won't have any extra time at the end of class. None! Not even a minute. Create a habit of teaching right up to the last second of class.
2. Order your daily tasks so that time critical elements happen first. This way, if you need to speed up other tasks or cut some tasks short, you can. Then you won't have any extra time at the end of class.
3. Be aware of your clock. This sounds simple, but many teachers struggle with this, and a little foresight will go a long way to effectively managing student behavior. When you see that your students are going to finish early, be thinking ahead. Do you have anything you can do with your students that will fill up those dreaded free minutes that occasionally crop up at the end of class?
4. Have something engaging you can always turn to in a time emergency. I love the book Lateral Thinking Puzzlers by Paul Sloane. It has hundreds of challenging little scenarios for the students to figure out. For example, "Romeo and Juliet are lying dead on the floor in a puddle of water. How did they die?" The students ask you yes or no questions until they figure out that Romeo and Juliet were really goldfish whose bowl had been knocked over. Definitely this one is for older students, but it works great at using up extra minutes at the end of class.
5. Stay flexible. If you see that the lesson youve carefully planned just isnt engaging the students and some students are starting to get others off task, then try moving the students on to a different task. We as teachers need to be quick thinkers! Avoid being so attached to your lesson plans that you cant see when a lesson is failing you and your students.
If you keep your students busy everyday, they'll learn that when they come to your class, they are going to be too busy to cause disruptions. Eventually, disruptive students will simply save their disruptive tendencies for other less engaging classes.
Doesnt that sound nice?
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