How to Manage Classroom for Young Learners

One of the biggest challenges facing teachers of young learners is classroom management. On one hand, we want to be friendly and kind for our students. It means that we want to be their friends. On the other hand, we want to maintain in order our classroom so that instruction can take place. Creating both environments are not as easy as we think. According to Linse (2005), to solve this, we will look at some classroom management that will provide an environment that is conducive to learning.

1. Establish Clear Rules at the Beginning of the Year

There are 2 kind of rules that I will stated in this article. The rules are class rules and schools’ rules. Firstly, the class rules means that the teacher and students make the rules together in order that a classroom becomes conducive during learning and teaching process. Secondly, school rules are regarding to schools’ policies. Your supervisor should be able to tell you if a set of rules exist. They may also be a list of rules as in the teachers’ handbooks because one set of rules may have updated. Whenever possible, the rules should be consistent among different teachers. The consequences for breaking the rules should be consistent among the member of students.

Children appreciate knowing what our expectations are. It is important to have rules that are stated in positive terms and establish what the children are expected to be clearly. At the beginning of the school year, and whenever you feel the students need to review the rules, demonstrate or point out expected behavior. You can also see 7 activities for welcoming students back to school.

It is also important to communicate the rules to learners a swell as their parents. The list of rules can be sent home to students in their native language. However, you shouldn’t assume that the parents have taken time to go over the rules with their children. Therefore, you should also read and explain the rules to your students. I personally like demonstrate in English with hand-drawn pictures to illustrate them.

2. Teach the Concept of Appropriate and Inappropriate Behavior

The terms good behavior and bad behavior are relative and can be problematic. When you tell children that they often internalize it that they are bad children and not that their behavior at the moment could be interpreted as bad. As a teacher of young learners, you need to monitor yourself to make sure you comment on appropriates of your learners’ behavior and not on the children themselves.  For your learners, it’s important that you spend time discussing the concept of appropriate and inappropriate behavior. For example, you may to teach children that is inappropriate to shout and run in the classroom, whereas it can be very appropriate to shout and with their friends outside on the playground.

3. Offer Reward Judiciously

Often teachers will give children rewards for good work. Unwittingly, by misusing rewards, teachers can contribute to an atmosphere of competition that is unhealthy. It is important to instill in your learners some sense of pride in their own accomplishments rather than a reliance on external gratification. Having said this, there are times when rewards are in order. If a child has gone from consistently not finishing her work during the allotted time to finishing it on time, then you might want to let her select a special sticker to attach to her paper. Personally I am concerned about the use of candy as a regular reward 

4. Plan More Than You Think You Will Need

Always be sure to have enough activities to keep children engaged, paying attention, or on task. Nothing leads to chaos more quickly than children who don’t have anything to do. You may want to prepare a set of back up activities that you or substitute teacher can use at a moments’ notice. It is easier to not get to all your planned activities than to come up with an engaging task while a class full of fidgeting students is eagerly looking at you and you and asking “what’s next

You can also find the article about differentiated instructions for young learners (6-12 years old)

5. Balance Activities

Most children do not have very long attention spans. Also not every child is going to enjoy or learn the same type of activities. In order to keep children engaged, you will want to include a balanced I mean that you want some noisy activities and some quiet ones, some large-group activities mixed with some group or individual activities.

These are 5 things that teachers should be aware how to manage classroom for young learners

References

Linse, T Caroline, A. 2000. Practical English Language Teaching to Young learners. New York. McGraw-Hill ESL/ELT