Personalising YL classroom management

Personalisation is often discussed in the context of motivational theories. The received wisdom is that learners will perceive greater usefulness of lesson practice if they can use language relevant to their real-life needs.

The usual way

My default position, which is influenced by my British upbringing, is to refrain from imposing blanket classroom rules on my students. I have instead explored various ways of implementing classroom management:

• Teens - I usually ask my students to discuss what kind of classroom environment they would enjoy, so that they can learn effectively and achieve their end-of-year goals.
  

• YLs - I usually ask my students what is good and what is not so good for their classroom.

The result is more or less similar across all classes - my students almost always come up with generic rules, such as 'listen to the teacher' or 'be nice'.

Personalising rules

Every class has a different set of characters.

For quieter Young Learners or Teens groups, any explicit classroom management would be an unnecessary step for the teacher. In fact, I didn't have to use any when I taught a KEY for Schools class of five young teens last year.

For energetic and lively groups, I find it works more effectively when I respond to specific challenging situations by adding new rules. This is what I mean by personalising them.

• With a Teens PET for Schools class, we negotiated a deal of using more games in exchange for less disruptive chattering in the students' first language. Those students who earned themselves a bad name last year have become more willing to participate in lesson activities. Chattering is tolerated so long as it does not impede task achievement or make the whole class feel cliquey. (I also focus on the positives and ignore the petty negatives with a disapproving stare.)
  
  
• With YLs, rules have to be devised on the spot as we encounter any new challenging situation. Such new rules include 'going to the washroom once', 'leaving the classroom for water breaks once', and 'English only for five minutes' among others. 'One person speaks at a time' is also helpful - except in pair or group work. Those YLs who keep talking randomly are now better at understanding when they are supposed to listen.
  

Both the teacher and the students are happier now.

Teaching YLs: a more refined take on student-centredness

I was teaching animals (vocabulary) with can/can't (grammar) to a group of 9- to 11-year-olds.

It started off with the idea of engaging my students at the planning stage. (Yes, it's always been my nightmare to have a group of bored faces who would zone out during the lesson!) As I was delivering the in-person lesson, I noticed a  special vibe which I had never experienced in all other previous YL classes. It was akin to the concept of 'flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book, Finding Flow (New York: Perseus, 1998) - wonderful to take a back seat and see the whole class of YLs working so calmly in pairs.

Looking back on the lesson, I've identified what particularly worked well:

Warm-up routine

I've been a language learner and there were occasions on which I wished I'd had the chance to get to know certain classmates. Hence I decided to use 'rings of circle' as both a GTKY activity in the first lesson and a warm-up routine.

The student-to-student rapport was overall excellent. We continued building on the familiar routine of standing in two rings of circle, so that everybody has the chance of talking to each other through rotation and turning towards each other.

Presentation of vocabulary

I realised that whenever I mimed along with flashcards, it was always me, the teacher, who imposed the actions on my students.

What I did this morning was that I elicited the mime of each animal from individual students. Then other students followed their classmates, which worked wonderfully.

(Thanks to my colleague, teacher S, for guiding me on drawing flashcards with a marker pen. Teacher development for next year: learn how to draw?) 

 

Practice of vocabulary and grammar: guess which animal

Team games worked well. For vocabulary, an individual student had to mime the animal while the teams compete against each other in writing the answer most quickly. (N.B. One benefit of not having gone for 'saying the answer aloud' is that it might be harder for the teacher to judge who have raised their hands most quickly.)

For grammar, a representative of each team was given the same animal. They went back to their teammates, who had to ask them 'Can you + verb?' (questions). The representative could only answer 'Yes, I can' or 'No, I can't', and their teammates needed to guess the animal as quickly as they could.

I ended up showing the answer once by accident - didn't hide it well in front of my students. They were honest enough to tell me, so each team earned a point!

 

Positive points system

The implication of catching YLs being good is that I've started giving points to the well-behaved opposite team when a student started misbehaving. (The key word is 'opposite'.)

I've also started using the points system more consistently when grabbing students' attention for giving instructions, asking students to tidy up/put things away, etc. 2 points are sometimes given to the 'good' team, whereas the 'bad' team still get 1 point if they are just a bit slower.