Essay #2: Classroom Management Assignment

Irene

Teachers occasionally face with some unexpected situations and have some trouble with setting a classroom policy and making students follow it. Among some difficulties, now, we can just assume three scenarios which may come in a class.

First, teacher can apply 'English Only' policy for improving students' language proficiency. Teachers need to inform the necessity of using English to the students and set specific rules which students can follow. It is difficult to make the students use only English because they continuously attempt to use mother tongue for easy communication. Because 'English Only' policy is not for punishment, but studying English, first of all, teachers have to arrange classrooms to be appropriate to studying English. Attaching wall charts which contain various expressions and dialogues can be a good way of it. As a group activity, teachers want the students to make wall charts and they can learn authentic expressions directly by making it together. Whenever students forget the expressions they want to say, they can find them easily in a wall charts. Also, if students don't try to use English in a classroom, teacher can use putting stickers on the wallpaper. For instance, a student speak Korean, then teacher put a sticker above his name on the wallpaper. Later on, a student who get the most stickers will get the punishment like additional assignments or cleaning the classroom after the class. Stickers can be used as an effective tool for classroom management and giving some feedback.

Second, some students tend to be late or absent classroom. In this situation, teachers must not ignore it, they have to deal with this matter actively. Students need to be aware their faults and change their bad habits into good ones. There are some methods for giving punishment to the students for either tardiness or absence: cleaning classroom after the class, showing their own talent in front of the class for everyone's pleasure, and doing special assignment, etc. If teachers just forgive students' wrong attitude without any punishment, those students may think that they can do that kind of things on end. So, according to the situation, teachers need to give negative feedback to the students as soon as possible so that they notice their faults immediately.

Finally, learning the way of lesson presentation is necessary thing to do in a classroom activity. Teachers can help students prepare it as a guide. They can give diverse materials to the students and inform how they can search for information through the internet, books, and etc. Before students present their writing, teachers can give some feedback and correct some grammatical errors after reading their first draft. And during the presentation, teachers can use electronics such as computer and camera to record students' presentation. This recorded material can be used to check out his/her presentation and give a lot of feedback later. Presentation was a very tough thing when I was a students. I had to memorize most of my contents for smooth speech, and pay attention to my voice and smiling face also while I was presenting. At that time, my teacher recorded my presentation and then gave some sincere feedback for me. So, I could feel that presentation was not easy but very useful experience. If my teacher hadn't given any feedback for me later, I couldn't recognized my weak points and developed my presentation skills.

In conclusion, classroom management skills are absolutely necessary both teacher and student to make authentic classes. Teachers have to ponder the proper ways which are suitable for students' properties.