The best teachers are those that are passionate about what they do and want to spend their time, well, teaching. Dealing with classroom disruptions takes away from the time spent teaching. Here are some tips to help reduce the negative impact disruptions can have.
Grab their attention
Make sure to have everyone’s attention before beginning class. That means the lesson won’t be started, the lecture won’t begin and nothing will be written on the board until everyone is in their seat paying attention. Open with couple of attention-getting comments about the weather, current events or other topics of interest to your audience. Keep the conversation going until all eyes are on you.
Reigning-in disruptive students
Use non-verbal signals for those students who may be distracted or otherwise disruptive. If they are talking, pause and look toward them. Walk toward the student and stop near their seat. Having you so near usually turns off the unwanted activity as the rest of the class’s attention is directed toward the misbehaving students. Direct a question to the student who is not paying attention; calling on them by name will help them snap to attention.
Give them ownership
One way to give students ownership is to allow them to sit where they want, as long as they are attentive, engaged and not disruptive. By choosing their own seats, they have “ownership” and often will behave well in order to avoid being assigned a less desirable seat, like one at the front of the classroom.
Motivate with incentives
Ungraded assignments may not yield the desired effort and may be neglected since they “don’t count.” To get better performance on an ungraded assignment, tell students you will randomly collect one person’s assignment. If that assignment is done well, then the whole class will be “off the hook” and the student instantly becomes the class hero. If the randomly selected assignment does not meet expectations, then all students will need to turn theirs in as well.
Establish consequences
Setting up consequences on day-one helps students develop an understanding of what’s expected. Two things to consider when developing these consequences are knowing what consequences are most impactful to your students and determining the ease of your follow through if those consequences are needed. Starting off the school year on the right note will help pave the way to ongoing success.
