Win a free copy of Take Control Of The Noisy Class – FREE Sweepstake
Click here to enter the sweepstake. … [Read More...]
Classroom Management Strategies To Deal With Rude Comments & Personal Questions
This is a big problem in tough classrooms – rude students making it their mission to offend or embarrass a teacher by asking personal, probing questions. One of the worst things you can do in response to such comments is show that you’re bothered. If you give them an emotional response of any kind you’ll have rewarded them with exactly what they wanted. Take a deep breath and try one of these ideas instead… … [Read More...]
Mindfulness and meditation for stressed teachers
Those of you who have been on my list for any length of time will know my business has had something of a rocky road over the last five years or so. It all started when my poor mother developed Alzheimer’s; I had to shut down the business to care for her and keep her from being put in a home. Around that time, my partner Sally and I were almost killed in our sleep. The Post Traumatic Stress from that incident went on for several years and was almost too much to bear at times and I am not embarrassed to admit that I felt suicidal on more than one occasion. More recently, my father is now in the late stages of Parkinson’s and leukaemia – he requires 24 hour care and I recently moved in with him to facilitate this. … [Read More...]
Seven Ways to Get Students to Follow Your Instructions
i) Make sure you have their full attention before giving instructions Make sure they are looking at you and not fiddling with a pencil, turning around, looking at a book, etc. One quite ingenious way of getting eye contact is to hold your pen up in front of you and then move it slowly so that it is in front of your face. The pen will attract the student’s gaze and they will then follow it until their eyes are in line with yours. It works - like magic! … [Read More...]
25 classroom management strategies to get silence from a noisy group of students
If you struggle to get your students’ attention during lessons I've put together a nifty collection of ideas which may help. This sample of classroom management strategies has been taken from the full ‘55 Ways to Get Silence from a Noisy Group’ which is available with our Take Control of the Noisy Class teacher pack. To get the first 30 ideas, see the end of this post... … [Read More...]
Novel ways to get silence from noisy students
Wey Hey! Here's a bumper (and ever-growing) collection of strategies to keep noise levels down in your classroom. Read them, try them out and let us know how you get on. You can also help us grow this collection for teachers around the world by leaving your best classroom management strategy for getting noisy groups of students to stop talking when you need their attention in the comment box below. Try to keep your idea as succinct as possible and be sure to keep coming back here to see the new ideas. SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE COMMENTS … [Read More...]
A few novel ways to get student attention
What better way to start the day than with another excerpt from our Take Control of the Noisy Class program. Today I thought I’d share a few novel ways to get student attention when you present them with work tasks. We’ve included more than 50 in the full program but these should keep you going for a day or two. CAUTION: Trying too many ideas to get student attention is counter-productive. Don’t be tempted to jump from one idea to another at the expense of being consistent. And remember – ‘fun’ ideas such as those listed below are all well and good with some groups. Really tough groups may well benefit most from simple, stepped consequences delivered calmly and deliberately. More about that in the full version of Take Control of the Noisy Class. … [Read More...]
Innovative positive reinforcement strategies
Most teachers know that positive reinforcement is a very powerful classroom management strategy – it’s certainly the approach we recommend in Needs Focused Classroom Management. The problem is, praise phrases such as ‘well done’ and ‘This is fantastic Jonny’, tend to get very tiresome by the end of a lesson and they lose their effectiveness. To be really effective, there needs to be some variety in the way you acknowledge appropriate student behaviours so in this post I thought I’d share a few of our ‘innovative positive reinforcement strategies’ from our Take Control of the Noisy Class program. If you like them, please leave a comment in the box below… … [Read More...]
What else do you need to manage tough student behaviour?
For the last week or so I've been sharing some complimentary video training on managing tough student groups. In this training I've been sharing some of the ideas and strategies from our Take Control of the Noisy Class program which will be available very soon. I have to say the response has been AMAZING - we've had HUNDREDS of positive blog comments, emails and even 'phone calls (!) from people saying how much the training has helped … [Read More...]
