Why TEFL Teachers Have to Understand The Principles of Classroom Management
Managing the classroom is a task that should be considered among the first things for a TEFL teacher when preparing oneself for a new class. The way that it is arranged can be the deciding factor of efficiency for teaching. There are many variables to consider when preparing a classroom for students who will be attending. One of the variables is the amount of physical space that is available in the classroom. It is essential to know how much space you have to work with to plan accordingly. Another thing is the types of desks and chairs that will be used within the classroom. With this in mind, the teacher can strategize how they will optimize the desk formation to more comfortably engage in the lessons, be it in group tasks during the study phase or merely paying attention to the TEFL teacher during the engage phase.
This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Julian T. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.
Students' Background
Several other more specific factors determine how the classroom should be arranged, such as the age, nationality, and personality of the students. For the race of students in a classroom with a lot of diversity, it is most likely better to mix the students as much as possible so that they do not get too comfortable speaking with one another concerning matters that are not in the target language. The idea is to keep students on their toes so that they are always pressed to speak as much English as possible whenever they have questions or express themselves. Mixing ages among students will also be helpful to balance the progression between the different age groups. Finally, it is essential to note student personalities so that potential conflict can be predicted and prevented. Furthermore, mixing students who are less motivated with more highly motivated students will almost always lead to the best overall learning progression results.
Students' Persanality
It is essential to learn and remember every students' name. Knowing your students' terms and calling on them using their name establishes rapport with them and makes them feel important, and they belong in the classroom. For smaller classrooms, this can be relatively easy. Bigger classrooms, on the other hand, can be more challenging to memorize everyone's names. For bigger classrooms, it is the TEFL teacher's responsibility to organize introductions, games, group projects, or other employed tactics to understand the many different students individually. Doing this will help with learning and memorizing their names and the know-how they learn and approaching them personally.
Classroom Environment
Finally, I believe that it is highly beneficial to reassign seats for the students periodically. It's good to have students work together and make friends with one another, but it can also be counterintuitive to become too familiar with each other. In the real world, they will need to get used to speaking to people in English with whom they are not so friendly. Changing their seats once in a while will allow them to get more experience communicating with strangers and learning how to overcome their hesitation with speaking English. Breaking the ice with as many people as possible in the classroom will inevitably build confidence in their abilities in the classroom so that they can be better prepared for the future
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