Classroom Management

As a teacher there are a lot of things to consider when it comes to managing your classroom. I think that the first and foremost thing is to establish authority in your classroom with your students early on, which is achieved through gaining respect from yours students. In order to gain respect though you must give it. Giving respect to a student is creating a student teacher relationship with them, its indicating to them that you care about them and that you are going to do everything in your ability to help them succeed. It is also important to establish a routine in the classroom; keeping a consistency, an example of this is to make sure that you always start the classroom on time. These are are both examples of the behaviorist learning theory because these are methods in conditioning students on what to expect from the classroom and how to behave in it.

Another important aspect of classroom management is keeping students motivated to learn. If the students are not motivated then nothing that you do is going to matter because lets face it their not going to learn because they will completely reject anything that you try and teach them. In order to keep students motivated you yourself MUST know the content, how do you expect to teach them something you don't even know? Next, you need to plan your lessons out so you will know exactly how long they will take so that students wont have any idle time because once this happens once they will automatically assume that this is a routine in your class. This is all going back to BLT. Also, you must plan lessons according to where your students are at, making sure to keep the content within their ZPD so that they can stay actively mentally engaged in the class by participating and by being able to connect what they are learning to what they have previously learned in the past. Staying with this, to know where students are at a good teacher will observe students and take mental notes on how the students communicates and acts inside and outside of the classroom to fully understand where each student is at academically and in what areas students struggle and need attention to be drawn to. This is connecting to the Constructivist Learning Theory by scaffolding students learning to fit a certain mold given where there original knowledge had been at and where the end goal for them to be at is. A way in which teachers can do this is by constantly walking around the classroom, this way they are able to listen in on discussions when there are group activities so you can see who is participating in on the conversation and who is struggling with the content and also this helps to just control a classroom by keeping the students eyes on you instead of you facing the board and turning your back on them.

When teaching a lesson it is always important to keep the conversation in the class relevant to the content you are teaching. Create a friendly environment within your classroom by encouraging them to ask questions and to be able to contact you when they do need help. Also, allow for there to be some time for group work and for classroom discussions as this is a key time for students who dont necessarily grasp the concept fully to make the connections by listening to other students talk and create questions. This is going back to the Social Learning Theory by using the more knowledgeable peer strategy in the classroom. It is also important when creating lessons to set high expectations for your students and to with each day challenge them a little more so that they can begin to make more connections and to build on their knowledge of the criteria. This directly relates to the Developmental Learning Theory by starting off teaching students material in a very concrete way, therefore giving them a good foundation for the knowledge of the area and then to progress each day by teaching the material in a more abstract way therefore encouraging students to comprehend the material at many levels and in a more diverse and applicable way.

Now, these are obviously only some of the ways in which teachers can manage the classroom but clearly the only way to master this and for it to actually work to apply this every time you step foot into the classroom and to constantly make sure your doing these things. If you succeed in managing your classroom as a teacher then you can do anything because this is one of the hardest things to be able to do as a teacher but definitely the most important.