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larger-sized classroom management? elementary

 
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Ghost_Gorilla



Joined: 25 Nov 2012

PostPosted: Fri Nov 01, 2013 7:07 pm    Post subject: larger-sized classroom management? elementary Reply with quote

I'm new to the public school game, and have no idea to how to control 20-30 elementary school kids. I've taught at hagwons but the class sizes were WAY lower. Any creative ideas, without getting too critical or degrading to students?

Usually for hagwons, I just write the word "GAME" on the board and if any or all of the students misbehave I erase one letter at a time. If there are no letters left, then no game. This usually works like a charm but I don't really see it working for larger classes. Any tips are appreciated. Thanks!
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YTMND



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Location: You're the man now dog!!

PostPosted: Fri Nov 01, 2013 11:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's not a larger class. It's a bunch of smaller classes. Accept this. Conquer and divide, don't try to march them in step like a parade unless you want monkey/clown antics.

Next, present something clearly on the board or computer screen you want to teach and give the average to higher level students something to listen to. The agenda for them is to be quiet and listen. You will lose their attention and then proceed to the activity stage. Give small groups an activity to work on (dialogue, sentence writing, spelling exercises if need be, picture drawing for lessons you can talk about later like food, animals, or jobs, etc...).

Find 1 or 2 groups that successfully completed the activity to your satisfaction (sometimes this means you need to give them some help). Then, they come up and demonstrate for the rest of the class. You and a co-teacher if available go to the back of the classroom and police the students to be quiet while the good group performs. Repeat if possible or find another group and help them improve what they have.

Sometimes a good student will have social issues at the elementary school stage. So, the idea here is not to enforce rules on them but to repeat them each lesson. Eventually their social IQ will reach their intellectual IQ and you can call on them later to demonstrate for the class.
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schwa



Joined: 18 Jan 2003
Location: Yap

PostPosted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 2:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thats solid advice above, especially putting them in small groups.

Dont dangle "game" as an incentive. Just teach & then use fun activities to reinforce. Vary your activities. Elementary kids tend to like presenting to the class.

Be firm about expected behavior, but with humor.
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mayorhaggar



Joined: 01 Jan 2013

PostPosted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 5:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Teaching big classes (20+ kids) is challenging but I do it every day. For me the main problem is that the kids are either super rowdy or too shy to participate. Here's the kind of stuff I do:

1) bomb games and other powerpoint games...these are good for focusing everyone's attention. Unless all your kids are high level, you're probably just going to have about 3 to 5 kids who can participate--basically the ones who go to English hagwons every day. Obviously you can make the games easier but you might still have kids who are too shy to raise their hands. Basically I use these just so the weaker/shyer students can see the higher-level kids practicing the target language.

Something I've tried recently is handing out celebrity cards to all the kids and then I pull their names out of a bag, and the person with that card has to give the answer. That way they can't weasel out of it by waiting for the 5 smarter kids to raise their hands.

2) Role-play. Have them practice together then you can have volunteers come up and do it in front of everyone. Some kids really get into this, other kids just sit there doing nothing.

3) Survey activity. IMO this is the best activity and I try to do it as often as I can. Basically give them one information sheet and one answers sheet. They have to go around the class presenting their information and the others have to take it down on the answers sheet. So student A will ask student B "how many cows do you have?" B says "I have 4 cows." Then A writes "4" under cows on the answers sheet. I don't know why but all my levels of students really get into these, and they all speak English while doing it rather than just yelling in Korean like usual. Have them go around talking to 5 people or so and you've just killed 10 to 20 minutes with 25 Korean kids speaking good English for the entire time. No other activity I know of gives me that kind of return on investment.

4) drawing activities. If you're doing a reading/writing lesson these are good...Korean kids love drawing and light crafts though I think they don't get enough craft activities when young so they have trouble with slightly complicated stuff. Have them make a menu, or a travel brochure, or a party invitation. Then at the end of class you can have the kids vote on the best ones, or have them present them for some speaking practice.

Main thing to remember is that elementary kids have a lot of energy, and they're wired for learning, but they have a short attention span so you have to change what you're doing about every 10 minutes. Having different phases in a game or activity is great for this. I like to teach from the book (basically just showing videos from the book CD and asking them a bunch of questions about it, or doing written worksheet stuff in the book) for about 20 minutes, then spend 20 minutes doing a game or activity I created so they can practice what we learned in the first half of the class.
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