Looking for the best classroom management tips? Wondering how you can go about managing classes effectively as a teacher?
While many experienced educators know the keys to good classroom management, commanding student attention can be difficult for newer teachers to get a handle on. Fortunately, great classroom management skills can be learned and improved upon over time.
In this guide, we’ll tell you how you can have an easier time managing your classroom as a teacher.
1. Set Clear Rules
One of the best things you can do to better manage your classroom is to set some clear rules for your students to follow.
Be sure to let your students know what your classroom rules are from the very beginning and make sure to emphasize how important they are. Make sure that your students understand not just what the rules are but also exactly why they should follow them.
Explaining your rules thoroughly and letting students know how certain kinds of behavior can disrupt the classroom and the learning environment for those around them can be helpful.
2. Give Positive Feedback
To make sure that your students are on your side, you should get into the habit of offering them a lot of positive feedback. You should do everything you can to celebrate their successes and reward them when they do a good job in class.
It’s a good idea to set a schedule and start calling out individuals or groups of students for their accomplishments once per week. Celebrating their accomplishments publicly in class can be a good way to show you appreciate their hard work.
You may also want to start making some positive phone calls or sending positive letters home to parents when a student does good work. This will make it more likely that students will feel appreciated and they may be more willing to behave in class as a result.
3. Make the Most of Your Voice
To better manage your classroom, you should think carefully about how you use your voice. The way you use your voice can have a big impact on whether students feel comfortable in the classroom and will be willing to follow your instructions or not.
When teaching your students, you should use a natural and normal voice tone. When asking students questions about a story, a problem, or an assignment, be sure to use an inflective, questioning tone and speak in a friendly and conversational way. When giving instructions or trying to command attention, you may want to use an authoritative and matter-of-fact tone to do so.
4. Learn How to Communicate Nonverbally
While the way you use your voice can have a big impact on classroom behavior, perhaps even more critical is to make great use of body language and nonverbal communication.
Making strong eye contact with students to get their attention can be helpful. You should also hold your body upright in a confident and comfortable position when teaching. It’s important to be both approachable and commanding with your body language and posture.
You can also use gestures to get the attention of students and to command your classroom as well. Coming up with routine gestures to use can be helpful. For example, you may raise your hand to quiet the class down and refuse to speak until everyone is silent.
Clapping your hands can also be useful at times as well. For example, you may choose to clap three times and train your students to clap back twice to show that they are paying attention to you.
5. Quickly Deal With Behavior Issues and Conflict
One of the keys to improving classroom management is to take note of any bad behavior or conflicts and to take steps to resolve them quickly. Smaller problems can lead to much bigger issues if left unchecked.
It’s typically best to address any bad behavior in the classroom after the class has ended to avoid disrupting the lesson. Ideally, you should talk to a student in private if they are having a behavioral issue or if they have failed to follow your rules. If there is a conflict between multiple students, you may also want to speak to them privately instead of during your class.
By dealing with behavior issues and conflict quickly, you’ll ensure that your classroom stays calmer and that students have a great learning environment.
6. Keep Your Students Engaged
One of the reasons that students may cause disruptions or be difficult to manage is simply that they are bored and haven’t been fully engaged by a lesson.
You should be sure that you’re preparing your lessons well and are making them as interesting as possible to your students. Add variety to your lessons and ensure that you’re engaging students in a variety of ways, such as through group activities or exercises.
Also, understand that it’s often better to be overprepared than underprepared. Prepare extra activities to keep your students occupied if your main lesson gets done quicker than you anticipated. This will help prevent students from getting bored and causing disruptions.
7. Use Software
One of the ways that you can become more effective at classroom management is to get extra help with software.
School management and classroom management software can help educators keep track of student information and give them the best education possible. Classe365 software, for example, can be very helpful for educators.
With great school management software, administrators and teachers can easily manage admissions, courses, learning strategies, and student information. The right software can help teachers keep track of students and communicate with parents more effectively, helping to create a more focused approach. This can help teachers manage their classrooms more wisely.
Managing Classes Successfully With These Strategies
If you want to have an easier time when managing classes as a teacher, you need to be sure that you think carefully about the approach you take. Be sure that you try out some of the strategies above if you want to have a great time with your students in the classroom.
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