Classroom discipline

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tatsianal

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Hi,
I am a beginning teacher of English in Israel. I am going to work in High school and I am wondering what disciplinary strategies teachers use to manage disruptive behavior (except shouting and turning out of the lesson). Thanks for the answers :)
 

Rover_KE

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You need to review the school's policy and guidelines on managing discipline and what sanctions are available to teachers there against disruptive students.
 
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Walt Whitman

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I think it's all about classroom climate. It's about the students knowing you mean business if they break the rules.
You should set them from the beginning. Rules are about behaviours that everyone needs to abide by in order to maintain a positive environment.
You could ask the students to help make up the rules. In my experience getting them involved encourages the students to be more responsive to following the rules.
BUT the trick is working hard on building positive relationships.
Relationships take more work but are powerful motivators.
Also, follow Rover’s good advice about the school’s discipline plan.
How old are the students you’re going to teach?
Let us know how you’ll go and stay positive.
WW
 

Dewi_13

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Hello,

I'm still a teacher in training and since I had quite some problems with keeping the class under my control during my internship, I asked my mentor for a couple of tips. Like Walt Whitman said, it is important to set the rules from the beginning. It's best to make sure that they are clear to everyone and to ensure that students can't find any gaps in them to force you to make an exception (unless, of course, it is a special situation). I was also told that it helps to let the students think about a rule as well. That way, they cannot tell you that they disagree with the rules because they made them up themselves.

In my opinion, it’s best to indeed stay positive and give as little punishment as possible, although my mentor had a different view on this. If a pupil was too rowdy in class, she would tell them that they have to fetch extra exercises after class to make at home as form of punishment. However, he or she could still be exempted from the work if he or she would behave properly during the rest of the lesson. This usually seemed to work quite well.

What I also have noticed is that non-verbal warnings seem to work better than verbal warnings. In the beginning I often raised my voice and threatened with extra exercises, but that didn’t impress my pupils at all. Later on, I found out that one premonitory look or a simple tap on the table already helped more than raising my voice.

I think that it’s the most important to stick to your rules and show that there are consequences if they are broken. Pupils shouldn’t get the impression that they can get away with everything that I do. I still find that difficult too, though. I hope my tips are of help to you and I wish you good luck!
 

dobetter

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As teachers we are blessed with the joyous opportunity of working with young learners. At the best of times they are cute, amusing and a lot of fun to teach. However, even the most adorable of little angels can have their off days. So here’s a look at some of the in classroom nightmares and some ways the teacher could go about dealing with them.
 
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emsr2d2

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I have removed the commercial link from the previous post. It referred only to very young children and the OP said that he/she would be teaching in a high school.
 

Nur Habibah

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in my opinion, to overcome the disruptive behavior in teaching learning process is the teacher should not warn the students loudly. the harder the students warn them, the students will ignore the teacher's caution. in addition, the teacher should announce about the rule of teaching learning process by their agreement. the teacher may ask them first about what they want in the class and the teacher also share about his willingness during teaching learning process. by that discussion, there will be a fair rule in the class, and each students and teacher in the class will obey the rule. That can be called as "student-centered". If the punishment will be given, the teacher should not give the hard punishment, but the teacher should give the educational punishment such as memorizing vocabularies, summarizing the lesson given, and so on.

unfortunately, the disruptive behavior happens not only because of the students themselves, but also because of the teacher himself. when the teacher cannot manage the class as well, it means that the teacher has big homework about it. in that case,. the teacher also should highly pay attention about his method to teach in the class so, the students enjoy the class and the teaching learning process run well.

references:
Jeremy Harmer. How to Teach English.1998. Addison Wesley Longman
H.Douglas Brown. Teaching Principles- An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy.
 

eldaryandini

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Hi,
I am a beginning teacher of English in Israel. I am going to work in High school and I am wondering what disciplinary strategies teachers use to manage disruptive behavior (except shouting and turning out of the lesson). Thanks for the answers :)


In my opinion, you just tell them as a remembrance about the rules in the school, and then you just make your own rules in the classroom to avoid the disruptive behaviour or you just need to be democratic in making the rules in the first meeting by involving and asking the students' ideas and the consequences (forum contract).
 
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I think to a large extent it depends on your personality and the specific school environment. In general, I would recommend filling your lessons with as much praise and positivity as possible. Of course, you have to enforce the rules, but students won't hold that against you. Students will have a bad attitude if you criticize them or pass on too much negative energy, and this usually happens to me when I am too soft initially. So yes, I would say better to punish than to criticize.

Also, I would say try to be patient with discipline matters. Students should believe that your main concern is their long-term educational needs and not your own ego. Indeed, your objective is not to have a perfect class right now, but to have an excellent, hard-working group in the coming weeks and months. Deal with the issues as they arise, but stay calm and don't take yourself too seriously.
 
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In my opinion, the first important thing to do is you (as teacher) have to recognize the characteristic and the typical learning of your students’ so that it will be easier for you to control the activities in the teaching learning process.
 
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