Teach English in Jiuzhaigoufengjingmingsheng Guanliju - Aba Zangzu Qiangzu Zizhizhou —

An extremely important factor in teaching children and obtaining successful results with them is classroom management. I chose this topic because when I first started teaching children, I suffered tremendously from proper classroom management skills. I would spend most of the class time just trying to maintain order in the class instead of teaching. Therefore, the results that were yielded from my teaching (as I viewed it) was tremendously unsatisfactory; I knew that I could do a lot better with the children I taught if I could only have adequate classroom management. While taking this CTEYL S course from ITTT and carefully reading the section about Classroom Management, I have actually been able to improve order in the classroom from the points in this section and consequently obtained more successful results from my young learners. One of the things that caused me to suffer in classroom management was being over-friendly with my students from the first day of class. This was mentioned as one of the top ten things to avoid in Unit 4 of the classroom management section. On reading this point, I realized that this was one of my problems and possibly the major cause of other problems that resulted from this. Due to my over-friendliness to the young learners, they quickly felt comfortable to behave naughty. Sometimes my reaction to their bad behavior was not always appropriate; I would end up shouting at them in order to gain control. This did not help much in controlling the situation properly, nor did it help in my students’ learning. In retrospect, I realize now that the shouting may have had the opposite intended result of the children becoming more disobedient and may have also inhibited their learning. One of the most important take-aways I learned from this chapter is that it stated on page 13, “Students will respond to your demeanor; how you present yourself is the single most important factor to maintaining order in the classroom.” I realized that if I could be 100% conscious of my mannerism in the classroom and also control my reaction to students’ bad behavior using the techniques that were mentioned in Unit 4, I may be able to maintain adequate classroom management. I implemented more non-verbal gestures and more direct eye contact in order to stem errant talking or bad behavior. I abstained from shouting completely when responding to any students’ disobedience and changed to using a low tone in my voice to show displeasure with their behavior. I started using students’ names every time I spoke to them to eliminate their feeling of anonymity and to make the classroom more personal. I increased in praise and showed students my excitement to their correct answers. This, in turn, stimulated them to actively participate and pay attention more in order to be able to answer questions correctly to get that praise and display of excitement for their correct answers. I also improved my preparedness in order to move from one activity to another; not allowing the students the opportunity to get bored or to have any free time to be naughty. The implementation of strategies for classroom management has helped me tremendously to maintain order in my young learners’ classes. Consequently, being able to have better classroom management skills has also assisted me in yielding better results from my students; it has helped their learning to increase vastly. I am happier as a teacher to my young learners and my health has actually improved due to less stress from my classes. Thank you ITTT for this course and particularly this section of the course which I have gained so much from.