Classroom Management

Teaching English in Japan allows the opportunity to work in many different settings. A traditional school, language cafe, International school or private English schools where I found myself working for the past 4 years.

A private English school usually consists of small class sizes from private lessons to up to 8 or sometimes 10 students per class. Different schools have different requirements for class size, amount of time, and pricing but the curriculum and management of those classes are pretty universal.

Here in this post we want to discuss some of our classroom management tips for managing elementary school aged children in the private English school.

*Reminder*
The private English school business is ultimately a customer service based industry as well as an education industry so classroom discipline is very sensitive because we want the students to be happy with their lesson, the parents to be happy with their children's lesson and see their child learning English as an investment in their future.

Classroom Rules
Rule number 1 is always 'I can do it!'. My friend Richard Graham over at Genki English came up with this motivational rule and has worked for me in the classroom every week.

Rule number 2 should be the class's number one offense, each class may be different.
Examples may include:
Sit nicely; Keeps control with manners and keeps kids safe.
No elbows on table; Elbows on the table leads to putting heads on the table and looking bored. Alternatively this rule could be Sit up straight.
Keep hands to yourself; touching other students can lead to teasing or fighting.
No picking your nose; That's just gross! 
No eating your fingers; It's hard to speak with fingers in your mouth.

Rule number 3 No Japanese, English please! Of course if your in another country use the students native language, No Korean, English please! The English classroom is a safe environment for kids to learn and practice English speaking skills, but Japanese is their native language and some kids may not understand this rule and so shouldn't be punished harshly for something that comes naturally, although this rule usually combines with a no talking rule in which no Japanese is the customary response rather than be quiet. And always 'No Japanese' should be followed by 'English please'.

Rules 4-6 Should reflect the same as rule number 2 with each one being the lesser of offenses. Recently my students have been playing with name tags and this has been my usual rule number 4. Of course rules can change month to month. To practice routine I don't recommend changing rules every week so it's a good idea to write them down in your class notes to keep track of each classes rules.

I don't recommend overburdening them with rules to follow. For younger classes start with 3 then add 1 the next month etc. and here we have 6 but for one class rules shouldn't exceed 5, plus think about how much time you want to use explaining your rules.

What to do when the rules are broken (uh oh!)

One of my managers gave me the idea of putting tallies on the board for the student's to see how many times they committed an offense, but...

Think about this:
1+1=2
1-1=0

The problem with tallies is that your adding not subtracting. This motivates some children to model bad behavior in order to receive tallies that to them may represent points.

So let's do the opposite. Give each student a starting amount of points (I use 10) and subtract from that number each time the student commits an offense. Seeing their points amount go down each time they break a rule sends a bigger message, in my opinion, that putting points/tallies on the board.

Don't be afraid to be cute.
A coworker of mine gave us the idea with young students to start each student with three smiley faces and each time they break a rule erase one of the smileys or turn the smiley into a sad face.

It's not all about subtracting
When a student does a good job reinforce their good behavior by adding a point to their score, especially if a student lost a point find a way for them to earn that point back. Don't be to strict; saying sorry, participating well in the next activity can earn points back. Playing games is a good way for students to earn more points to their score even if they haven't lost a point. The student with the most points is that day's class champion!

The main goal to classroom management is providing expectations. With these rules we can give students the backbone to how they should behave in our class and from there we can learn, be safe and have some super fun!

Please share your classroom management ideas with Chromatic English. I would especially love to hear ideas about teaching in public school, Jr. High and High school.

Thanks for reading and happy teaching!