What does classroom management include?

Classroom management is about how you manage what happens in the class and is really important for any teacher, especially for teaching children and teenagers in large classes. Here are some of the key things that you’ll need to start thinking about to help your lessons go as smoothly as possible.

Organising the classroom

Deciding what you want to do with the chairs and desks in the class. Do you want your learners to sit in rows? In a horseshoe? Café-style sitting around tables?

Organising the learners

Deciding how you want your learners to complete an activity. Do you want them to work alone? In pairs? In groups? As a whole class?

Eliciting

Asking learners questions to find out what they know and don’t know about an idea or about language.

Giving instructions

Telling learners what you want them to do in an activity.

Checking understanding

Asking learners questions to check that they understand the meaning of language or to check that learners know what to do in an activity.

Monitoring

When learners are doing an activity on their own or in pairs/groups, the teacher walks around the room to look at or listen to what learners are doing to check that they are doing the right thing and to help when needed.

Giving feedback

Telling learners how they are doing. This could be checking the answers to an activity in class or providing some correction. It could also be talking to learners about their progress.

Boardwork

Organising your board and using the board to help learners learn.

Task

What do you think are some of the challenges with classroom management? Do you think managing adults is more difficult than managing young learners? What about large classes, what are the challenges with those? Tell us what you think in the comments. If you have any questions about classroom management you can post them too and we’ll try to answer them at the end of the week.

All these words are in our Week 2 glossary. If you’d like to know more about classroom management techniques look here or in the document below.