 Hello, this presentation is going to focus on the section of classroom management. We could start with a definition of classroom management as being the skill of organising the class, individual students within that class and what takes place within the class. Perhaps one of the most important resources for achieving these things is you. And in terms of you, there are a number of things that you can use to help with the classroom management. And they include, though they're not limited to, the use of your eyes, the use of your voice and the use of gesture. So let's take each of these in turn and see how they can be used to help with the management of the classroom. So starting with our eyes, first of all, the eyes can be used in a number of ways and they can certainly be used to hold attention. The eyes can be used to show when something is correct and the eyes can also be used to give encouragement to students and indeed to dissuade. Moving on to the voice. The voice itself will change naturally depending upon what you're doing in the classroom. And we should be careful that when using our voice that we enunciate every single word very clearly. In the same way that we write on the board in the form of print, we should try to speak very slowly and very clearly, making each sound as we pronounce those words. Another thing, it is very important that you only use language that is at the level of the students that you're teaching. In the same way as we're talking about enunciating every word, if your language is above the level of your students, then that perfect diction is going to be a waste of time. Perhaps the final thing that we could say here with the use of the voice is that the voice itself is going to change naturally depending upon what you're doing. So the stress and intonation when giving instructions is probably going to be different to when you're giving praise to feedback to your students. Finally, we have the use of gesture. Gesture has a number of uses within the classroom and some of the major ones would include to reduce the teacher talk time, so the use of gesture instead of actually saying something. Gesture can also be used to add to or convey meaning. Other uses may include the use of gesture to add visual interest, and perhaps finally here we can use the use of gesture to actually increase or decrease the pace of the class. So the use of the eyes, the use of the voice and the use of gesture are all very useful tools for managing the classroom process. Our next consideration is going to be how we actually group our students, and there are perhaps three types of grouping arrangement that we can consider, and within those we'll have a look at the potential positive and negatives of those particular arrangements. So firstly, what arrangements can we use? We could arrange our group as a whole class, so all of their activities will be done as a whole class. They could be working as individuals, and the final grouping arrangement we'll consider is that of small groups or indeed the use of pair work. So for each of these types of arrangement, what are the potential positive and negatives with that type of arrangement? For the whole class, certainly one of the main positive features is that it gives that class a sense of belonging. Secondly, the whole group can interact with each other, and perhaps the final benefit that we'll put here is as a whole class it's actually good for classroom control. There are some potential drawbacks however to having this type of arrangement. Obviously one of the first things is that it can reduce the opportunity for student talk time, because all of the class are working together. Secondly, for the shy students it can be quite off-putting having to work with the whole class together. Perhaps finally here, whilst it is good for classroom control, then it is more difficult having the whole class working together to actually manage the activities. Due to some of these potential negative reasons, what we often try to do is to arrange the class in a different way, for example as individuals. What are the potential advantages of arranging the class in this way? Well, it does allow the teacher to respond to individual students. If the class are working as individuals anyway, then if someone has a particular question by the teacher talking with them on a one-to-one basis, they're not going to disturb everyone else, whereas they would if they were working as a whole class. Another thing that it will do is allow the student to become more self-reliant. Obviously when they're working on their own, they're going to have to produce their own answers and that will help them with their self-reliance. Some potential drawbacks, however, to this particular type of arrangement, obviously if they're working as individuals, then there's very little chance for student-student interaction. And again, as with the idea of the shy students, when they're working on their own, they need to be producing their own answers and this can create more pressure on the students. Obviously if they're working in a group or they're working as pairs, then those answers that they create are due to two people and that takes a little bit of pressure off, whereas working as individuals, that extra pressure is there to create those answers. So perhaps on to the final arrangement that's used most often within EFL classrooms is the use of pairwork. The potential benefits of using pairwork are many but we'll just note a couple. The first thing that it will do is massively increase the opportunity for student talk time so that as the activity is taking place, if they're working in a pair, they can pass ideas backwards and forwards between each other and this creates a much safer environment for the student to work in. There are some potential negatives also for working in pairs and the first and perhaps most obvious one is that they may not actually get on with their partner and this will obviously reduce all the potential benefits if they're not particularly willing to talk to each other. Throughout the use of any activity and the ways in which they're grouped, we should pay attention to using the student's names and we'll go on to have a look at that now. It is very important that wherever we're doing an activity that we use the student's names wherever possible when we're asking for feedback and so on and so forth. There are a number of benefits to using the student's names and they can include helping to actually organise the class itself, certainly to acknowledge when a student has given a correct answer and so forth to indicate who should respond rather than just asking a general question to the whole class by using the names we can ask an individual to respond to that particular question. One point to note here is that if you are going to ask an individual student it is very useful if you put their name at the end of the question. This is useful because if you start with their name then all of the other students know that you're not going to be asking them whereas if you leave the name until the end of the question everyone at least will have the chance to think about the answer in case you actually call upon them. Moving on from the use of their names, the use of your eyes and voice and gesture what about the actual classroom arrangement itself? The dynamics of classroom interaction is often dictated by the arrangement of the classroom itself and the way in which the classroom is arranged could depend upon a number of factors and they might include things such as the age of the students. So for example we're unlikely to have the same arrangement for adult learners as we would have for young learners. It could also depend upon the actual physical space available. The physical space may determine how we have to arrange our classroom to maximise the opportunity for interaction and so forth. It will also depend on what material is available and by material in this case we're talking about the actual desks and chairs and so on and so forth. Perhaps the final thing we might put here is that it could also depend upon the students' personalities. So within the idea of classroom arrangements there are a number of possibilities and those possibilities we need to think about a number of questions as to how we arrange the classroom. Perhaps first and foremost how is it going to affect the actual classroom atmosphere? Secondly, which actual classroom arrangement is going to be most conducive to our classroom control? Thirdly, will it allow for maximum student-to-student interaction? So we could call that student talk time. Finally, is it possible with the particular classroom arrangement that we've got to do all of the planned activities that we have created for this lesson? So before you actually arrange the classroom in any particular way ask these questions of yourself and think about the physical space, the age of the students and so on and so forth and from those parameters decide which classroom arrangement is going to be best. So now we'll consider the actual classroom arrangements themselves in terms of the physical desk layout. There are possibly three main types of arrangement that are used within classrooms and we're going to indicate the desks here as being black boxes and the arrangements of the students within those desks will be blue crosses. So here we have the desks arranged in rows and the students sitting within those rows. The second arrangement could be the use of horseshoes or semicircles and finally the use of individual desks. So for each of these arrangements what are the potential advantages and disadvantages of arranging our seating in this way? Let's take the rows first of all. One of the potential advantages is that it does give the teacher the opportunity if it's arranged correctly to move around freely within that arrangement. The second potential advantage is that it allows the students to have a clear view of the teacher at their prominent position at the front of the class. There are however some potential drawbacks to this particular arrangement and firstly and foremost it can be very difficult with this type of arrangement for whole class interaction so it's difficult for people to get up and move around. Secondly it has a very formal feel to it and whilst this might be okay in certain situations if we're doing communicative activities we don't want that formal feel because it will reduce the opportunity for students to talk to each other. So one potential way of getting around this is to use the actual horseshoes and some of the advantages of this system is that the teacher appears less dominant within that horseshoe arrangement and secondly with the horseshoe it's very easy to arrange pair work. There are some potential disadvantages however to this particular arrangement perhaps the most important is the actual position of the teacher within this horseshoe. If the teacher moves inside the horseshoe then some of our students will actually be behind us and therefore they will not be able to see our mouth when we are speaking. They will lose a lot of information by not being able to see our mouths. So one of the major disadvantages is that the position of the teacher becomes very important and not moving into that horseshoe. So our final arrangement then is the individual desks and the potential advantages here is that it's easy to give individual attention by just working with one student at one desk and you're not going to disturb the person next to them. The second potential advantage is that if you are giving a didactic teaching lesson so you're explaining information this particular arrangement is very useful for that system. So it's good for a lecture type situation. There are some disadvantages to this particular arrangement and possibly the first one is that it's difficult to maintain eye contact with all your students and finally here it's quite difficult to get student-student interaction with this particular arrangement. So it's quite important that we think about our classroom arrangement and the potential advantages and disadvantages of arranging in any particular way. So far then we've talked about the use of the eyes the use of voice and the use of gesture to help with managing the classroom. We've also looked at the actual classroom arrangement in terms of the physical space and the material within that classroom and we've looked at three of the most common types of arrangement in terms of seating. There are some other classroom management issues that we need to consider and they may include issues such as writing on the board giving students individual attention the use of teacher talk time the way in which we should give instructions to our students the building and maintaining of rapport with our students and finally the one that perhaps most new teachers particularly spend a lot of time worrying and thinking about is the issue of classroom discipline. So what we'd like to do is to take each of these in turn and look at some of the major issues surrounding these classroom management issues. One of the major ideas here when writing on the board is that we need to be aware that whenever we're using the board to write down information we should not be talking and whenever we are talking we should not be writing on the board. This will inevitably lead to what's known as dead time when nothing is being said as we're putting information on the board. This dead time is not a problem but we can actually minimise it by using a number of techniques. We could use prepared material so we put information onto large pieces of paper and then instead of writing on the board we actually stick those materials onto the board as we go through the class. Another idea is to actually ask students to write on the board for you. Another thing is that we could actually put work up onto the board before the class starts and then to cover that work with pieces of paper which we can then take off as and when we get to it. Another very useful technique is to actually, during an activity particularly study activities once the activity has got going and we've monitored to check that the students are all working correctly use that study time to actually put material up onto the board. As mentioned before it is very important that when we're writing on the board that we do print our letters out individually and clearly. Our next main issue is going to be that of giving students individual attention. Here many classroom management and even potential discipline problems can be avoided by applying some simple rules to giving your students attention. The first one is to think about the way in which you ask questions. Don't ask questions in a predictable order. If you just go around the class asking questions from one person to the next then the person at the end of the class will know that it's going to be some time before you actually get to them. So try to mix up the way in which you're asking questions. In the terms of answers to questions don't allow individual students to dominate all of the answers. One of the things that we can do to help this particular issue is to use the students names as mentioned before but remember put those names one of the things we need to do as the teacher is try to keep a note in our mind of who's actually answered various questions so that we can be as inclusive as possible. However one point that we should put on the end of this is that we try to include everyone to give us answers when they can but if they can't then don't force students to answer. This is particularly important in countries where actually giving a wrong answer could cause that person to lose face. So don't force a student to answer if they're not sure. When considering teacher talk time we can perhaps look at the major advantage and disadvantage of the teacher actually talking. The major advantage is that you as the teacher are usually the only real model for the language, the source of direct English. So at some stages your talking time is very important to the students. So when you're modelling language that use of teacher talk time can be very advantageous. There are major disadvantages to overusing teacher talk time however and perhaps the major one is that whenever the teacher is talking the students are listening and if the students are listening themselves cannot be talking so teacher talk time reduces the opportunity for student talk time. So we should try to minimise the use of teacher talk time wherever possible. How can we do that? Well there are a number of simple ideas. We've already looked at the idea of using mime and gestures and here we could include pictures. Secondly then we need to make sure that we're only a language that's at their level. For a low level group it means that the language available to us as the teacher is going to be quite limited. That limited language will in itself reduce teacher talk time. And perhaps the final idea for this particular list is to make sure that we avoid the use of jargon and elaboration. Perhaps the main message here is to keep it simple. The definition is that of giving instructions to our students. In order for all the students to effectively carry out an activity we need to make sure we have given clear and ambiguous instructions. It's also very important to check that the students understand the activity before you start. If you've done that work correctly then the teacher shouldn't need to say anything once an activity has started because the students are very clear about what they're supposed to be doing. So some ideas when giving instructions. As we've mentioned, use simple language. Secondly, rather than trying to explain an activity then do a demonstration which is visual. Thirdly, try to use wherever possible common words that come up within every activity. Things like look, listen, your partner, think and so on and so forth. Instead of continually changing the way you try to describe an activity if we use these common terms such as look and listen use them as often as possible for as many activities as we can then those instructions will become clearer to the students as time goes on. Final thing here is to be very sure that the students have understood our instructions and we can't rely on questions such as do you understand. Quite often they will say yes whether they do or not. So in order to check that the students understand the instructions ask them what they're going to do. If they cannot adequately answer that question there's very little point in moving into the activity itself and we need to go back and demonstrate again. Our next consideration is going to be building and maintaining rapport. The importance of rapport is that within our communicative activities we're asking the students to talk to each other. If they feel comfortable with each other and with us then that interaction is much more likely to be useful. So how do we actually build and maintain rapport? The easiest if we consider two stages of the course itself what we can do at the start of the course and what we can do throughout the course to help build and maintain that rapport. So at the start of the course it's very useful if we ask the students to create a name card and to make that name card visible to everyone. Secondly we need to try to do some ice breaking activities to allow the students to interact with each other and perhaps give a little bit of information about themselves. Once we move into the course itself there are a number of techniques that we can use to help maintain that rapport so that students are comfortable with each other when doing communicative activities. So throughout the course use pair work as often as possible or indeed small group work that allows for interaction to take place whenever possible. Don't let single students dominate. Thirdly, allowing students to correct each other will often help to maintain the rapport within the class. Perhaps finally here try to personalise all activities wherever possible. Quite often you'll be taking activities from course books and if those course books if you take the activity and write out the names of people given within those activities substitute those for the names of the people in your class so you have personalised it for your class then that will help to build and maintain rapport within the class. Our final consideration here then is going to be discipline within the classroom. From your own experiences at school you will know that some teachers have more discipline problems than others. There are no set rules which will work for all situations that you find yourself in but there are some things that we can do to stop problems arising in the first place. One of the major causes of problems is when students do not respect the teacher and there are some things that we can help to build and maintain that respect from our students. Perhaps a short list of some of the major things that you should consider it is very important that you are always seen to be fair that you are punctual that you are always well prepared in terms of your materials and activities that you do not make threats within the classroom and then not carry them out. Also here it's important that we show respect for our students in all situations. This can come down to very simple things like when we give homework we should make sure that we take that homework in and that we mark it promptly and give it back. Finally, one of the major things that we can do to help maintain the respect of our students is to always be enthusiastic. Our final consideration here in terms of discipline is going to be your response to problem behaviour. Your responses are actually critical as to whether the problem is going to be increased or decreased. Here's a few simple things to remember in terms of your responses to discipline. Firstly it's very important that you act immediately before the problem can get worse. Obviously people's ideas of discipline problems will be different in terms of their severity and so on and so forth but wherever possible we should try to use non-verbal techniques first. If for example two students are talking to each other while you are talking then just stop. Look at those people who are talking and it's very unlikely that they're going to continue to do so. So without saying anything using non-verbal techniques we can avoid this type of behaviour. Next it is very very important that you always keep calm and that you never shout. From your own experience you're probably aware that there's very little to be gained by shouting. Make sure also that you keep within the school discipline code. Make yourself aware of what that discipline code actually says so that any responses you have to discipline problems you're not yourself moving outside the actual discipline code of the school or language centre. Perhaps finally here what we might say is although it can sometimes be difficult, try wherever possible to use humour to dissipate discipline problems. It would be very nice if we could just give a list of things that you would need to do in order for you to never have any discipline problems in your career. But that list does not exist. Most of your responses to discipline problems will be learnt over time. You will find out what works and what does not work. But when you first start if you keep these sorts of ideas in your mind then it does mean that discipline problems shouldn't escalate.