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Here’re some of the tips that might be helpful for your classroom management!
Hi everyone! Eric here! I’m from China. Like you, I am an English teacher, but differently, I taught K12 English offline in real-world classrooms. I have 3 years’ teaching experience. And today I’d love to share some of my stories and technique on both how to manage K12 classes and how to make kids behave following the set rules.
Most kids from 3-6 year old aren’t able to self-control during the class, especially when they lose patience of what teacher told them or asked to concentrate for a long time. On the contrary, 6-12-year-old kids are able to better manage their behaviour, yet still, the teacher has to train their ability of teamwork and creative mindset. Is it possible to achieve those abilities for a teacher who doesn’t have any experience with it? I certainly believe everyone can achieve it, here’re some of my suggestions on how to teach the kids from 3-12 years old.
3-6 years old: Listen to them, use TPR and music
Younger kids are easily losing both patience and enthusiastic. They’re too young to control their body to sit in their seat nice and quietly. That’s because they’re eager to play and spend more time doing sports and making conversation. The teacher should be more patience to train the younger kids. Kids are willing to imitate what adults talk to others; they’ll learn how to talk to others through their conversations.
Is your preparation in the class enough for attracting younger kids?
Here’re some suggestions: Playing interesting music or speaking loudly, using your enthusiastic to captivate kids’ attention. In order to attract them, the teacher can also play interactive games with the kids such as tapping the flashcards or throwing sticky balls. You need to show your love to the kids. This is very important; kids can detect one tiny little detail by your emotion or behaviour. They are sensitive to your emotional change. So the teacher should always be aware of this. How to make your class become more interesting? A good teacher will not only speak in front of his/her students but also perform gestures or actions to them. For example, when younger kids are learning English, most of the kids don’t know what it means. The teacher can use TPR (Total Physical Response) and music to show kids the meaning of those words in order to use body language to make them understand clearly. So this can be considered as an important technique on how to well manage the class.
6-12 years old: Teamwork, unique and creative.
Elder kids are easy to be managed; they’re more mature than a little kid. For obvious reason, they’ll still face some troubles during the class. As a core leader in the classroom, the teacher plays an important role in the class, your responsibility is training your students to learn how to corporate with their classmates or share to others. The teacher can establish the rules for the teams which were set up at the beginning of the class. And also don’t forget to tell them to accept others opinions, it’ll be great for a teacher to mention it when the class begins, teamwork is supposed to design for improving each other.
Elderly kids think they’re unique, who are better than others. Well, rebel personality is still one of the problems among these teenagers nowadays. The teacher should let them know they’re right on their sides, but they also need to know that others might think the same too. Build up a friendly mutual relationship is one of the most important things for them. Being creative isn’t simple. The teacher has to tell the kids that the answers which others told you might not be the truth, they have to keep testing and finding the true result. A question cannot have only one solution; there must be other ways on how to solve it.
Conclusion
Depends on different ages, kids have different personalities. No matter what are they doing during the class. The teacher should be patient during the class. Your encouragement and compliment is the sunshine. You have to give your instruction and set up the classroom rules at the beginning of each class. Also, you have to set up reward system once if the kids behave nicely, you can draw a star on the board in order to encourage them to become better. Elder kids might not interest that, so maybe you can try to make friends with them. Or let them watch cartoons as a reward after class.
