Effective Classroom Management

Editor's Notes

• #2: Welcome to this induction programme for the recently promoted lecturers. I am RAJU, retired lecturer – your facilitator for this session. This 90 minute presentation aims at giving you an idea of what goes into the teaching-learning process, both inside the classroom and beyond the classroom. It touches upon the curricular and co-curricular activities that make the process of teaching-learning more effective. This presentation also aims at giving you an idea of factors relating to student evaluation.
• #3: Let’s begin with an icebreaker. Call out the letters L E A R N by turns and form five groups. All Ls together, all Es in one place and likewise. Each group - sit in a circle or in a compact group. Discuss with the members of your group “why do we teach” and shortlist three important reasons. Nominate a spokesperson for your group and make one-minute presentations on your group’s views. Avoid repeating what the previous groups have already listed.
• #4: Teaching-Learning should foresee the practical scope for giving students opportunities to know more, comprehend better, acquire both physical and mental skills. It should not just stop there. It should also aim at strengthening the application skills of the learners. This is particularly important because our system usually stops with the imparting of information. Information literacy is a student’s ability to distinguish, classify and tell apart what is what and what belongs where. This ability to discriminate is a basic educational objective.
• #6: Expanding the horizons of imagination, inculcating a creative bent of mind and building the right aptitude and attitude are the responsibility of teachers, irrespective of the subject they teach, especially the humanities teachers. Teachers have a very significant responsibility to build right aptitudes and mold positive attitudes. Imagination and creativity need yo be infused into the young minds of our students at every opportunity.
• #10: Teaching-Learning process is the next important concept that we need to understand clearly. Teaching-Learning is a comprehensive and all-encompassing term. It includes everything that happens in the sphere of educatoin, starting with the needs analysis and statement of expected outcomes, goes on to a detailed description of objectives for the course, then deals with the choice of educational experiences, teaching-learning content, appropriate materials, effective methodology of delivery and goes on to evaluation and beyond. It may also include thrust areas, value additions etc. Take a few minutes and discuss with your partner which aspects of curriculum does the teacher have a command over and which ones he does not.
• #11: Let’s begin with an icebreaker. Call out the letters L E A R N by turns and form five groups. All Ls together, all Es in one place and likewise. Each group - sit in a circle or in a compact group. Discuss with the members of your group “why do we teach” and shortlist three important reasons. Nominate a spokesperson for your group and make one-minute presentations on your group’s views. Avoid repeating what the previous groups have already listed.
• #17: What is it? How is it done? Have you ever used it?
• #21: By splitting the students up into small groups, you will instantly increase communication, interaction and engagement because they will have to work with each other to complete the task. Once they have finished their group work, they may feel more comfortable sharing with the entire class because the spotlight will be distributed to three or four of them, instead of resting solely on the shoulders of one student.
• #34: Keep these guidelines in mind when you administer any kind of evaluation. A good evaluation includes questions of various kinds – questions that promote both high order thinking and low order thinking. Questions may test the factual, inferential or experiential knowledge of students. Language teachers should include questions on vocabulary and subject teachers should test the knowledge of basic concepts and definitions. Where is this induction training happening? What is the most important objective of this induction? Can you define ‘induction’? How have you benefited from this induction so fare? These are four different kinds of questions. There should be at least a few questions included to test the student’s application, creativity and imagination in the target subject. Keep your students’ entry level behavior and expected exit level behavior in mind while designing evaluation. The answer sheet is a mirror report of the student’s mind.
• #35: These four factors should be kept in mind while designing your evaluation tools. Validity refers to whether a test measures what it is supposed to measure. Reliability deals with the trustworthiness of the test results. Washback means the effect of testing on teaching and learning. Negative effects include teaching only to the test and memorizing possible test questions. Positive effects, if the test is valid, include focusing teaching upon what is important. Practicality is a matter of the extent to which the demands of the particular test can be met within the limits of existing resources including time, staff and test administration.
• #37: Use of appropriately designed teaching aids makes the teaching-learning process highly effective. Each teacher may make a wise choice of the aids depending on factors such as availability of infrastructure, cost effectiveness, reusability, student achievement levels etc. The web is a very rich resource for ready-to-use teaching aids. However, be warned that it is a dense jungle where you may easily get lost, if you do not predetermine your exact needs. Activity: Which ones do you prefer and why?