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"In well taught lessons, with pace, variety and challenge, behaviour problems were uncommon; in others order was maintained by spending a disproportionate amount of time quelling trivial but continual disruption and talking about behaviour, often to the detriment of pupils' learning."
- OFSTED Access and Achievement in Urban Education 1993
"Where teaching is poor and teachers' expectations are low, pupils get bored and behaviour deteriorates."
- Gillian Shepherd, Education and Employment Secretary 1996
"We conclude that the central problem of disruption could be significantly reduced by helping teachers to become more effective classroom managers"
- Elton Report 1989
Hence the following tips are offered as suggestions for improving classroom management by more effective teaching and learning:
1) Give students an overview of what they are learning. Don't teach isolated segments of content without showing how they link into the whole.
2) Help students to understand the relevance of what they are learning. Not only in terms of practical usefulness, but also how it relates to other areas of knowledge or the overall subject matter.
3) Use a variety of approaches for both input and student presentation of work. Research shows that students have different learning styles so a variety in both input and output allows more students to work in their preferred style. It is not only to encourage the participation of students less able in reading and writing, but also allows more able students to develop creativity.
4) Make tasks clear. Investing time at the outset by giving a full explanation to the whole class can save time later having to clarify the task for individual students. This may also involve teaching the language of the subject so that instructions are understood (key words and definitions can be kept on display in a subject classroom).
5) Use tutorial groups to have regular personal contact with students in a manageable way. Establish ground rules for this so that the rest of the class remain on task whilst you are talking to a particular group.
6) Use a variety of resources - video, audio, pictures, books etc and establish a system (colour coding, clear labelling) which enables students to access and replace resources easily so that the teacher does not become the resource manager.
7) Design activities to develop understanding rather than closed questions to produce the right answers (right answers and understanding do not always go hand-in-hand). Activities that require the student to process information rather than just transfer it from one place to another will improve motivation by challenging the student as well as deepen understanding.
8) When producing your own resources make them into learning guides which give an overview of the learning objectives of the task, provide prompts as to which resources could be used, and how the presentation of information could be made etc to avoid students being over-reliant on the teacher to start and get on with their work.
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