Approaches to managing student behavior

Using praise

Students who receive more teacher praise than reprimands focus up to 30 percent more according to a study in Educational Psychology (Caldarella et al, 2020). In fact, the research indicates that any increase of praise improves on-task behavior, and researchers urge teachers to consider using praise as an effective classroom management strategy.

Research has also shown that, while general praise (e.g., “Good job”) can be reinforcing for some students, the most powerful praise is specific to a student’s behavior (Thompson et al, 2012). Behavior-specific praise is when students receive positive verbal feedback indicating approval of social or academic behavior (e.g., “Jim, I like how you came into the classroom and went to your desk to get started the activity). With this classroom management strategy, the teacher lets the student know exactly what he or she is doing correctly. This encourages not only this student, but others to repeat this positive behavior.

Using nonverbal communication

Nonverbal communication refers to facial expressions, gestures, eye contact, body language, posture, and other ways people can communicate without using words. Teachers can often influence student behavior without saying anything by establishing eye contact, using facial expressions or making gestures that let students know they are either on-task and doing well or off-task and misbehaving. Using nonverbal communication helps teachers to silently manage student behavior without disrupting a lesson. For instance, a teacher could hold one hand in the air and make eye contact with students as a signal to his or her class that they would like them to stop talking and focus on their teacher. Other techniques include shaking a shaker, clapping hands, ringing a bell, or flicking the lights off and on.

Monitoring

As we saw in Module 2, classroom management is affected by how seats are arranged in the classroom. It is important for the teacher to consider how classroom design will affect a lesson and make adjustments as needed on an ongoing basis. Any seating arrangement should be designed in a way that allows the teacher to easily move around the room and monitor student behavior.

Moving around the classroom to check on students’ progress, which is known as ‘monitoring’, helps to ensure that students are on-task. Teachers can offer one-to-one encouragement and praise as they monitor, and it also provides a great opportunity to interact naturally with students by talking about their work in English.

Verbal reminders

Even when classroom rules are clear, fair and developed by the students, there will be times when students may not follow them.Sometimes the nonverbal cues and monitoring techniques discussed will also not be enough to curb some negative behaviors. In these cases, verbal correction may be needed. Here are some different ways verbal reminders can be used.

Group correction is a quick, verbal reminder that lets a group of students know what behavior the teacher wants to see instead of what he or she is seeing.

Anonymous correction is a verbal reminder to the entire class that is directed at the behavior of an individual or group of students. The goal in this case is to not only prevent this behavior, but use this incident as a teachable moment to make sure others do not repeat this behavior. This is done without naming the student(s) whose behavior is in need of correction.

Individual correction is a reminder given to an individual student. To minimize disruption and embarrassment, for both the teacher and student, this is best done as discreetly as possible. For instance, a teacher may move close to the student and speak in a quiet voice so only the student hears the discussion. Or the teacher could ask the student to come to another part of the classroom where the teacher and student can talk privately.