Managing Your Young Students

We always heard expressions like this “Arghh, tensionnya mengajar Tahun 1!” or sometimes like this “Hilang suara selalu nak kena jerit dalam kelas!”  Some teachers will say “Guna rotan saja terus diam nanti!”

Let’s think, what kind of messages that we convey when saying such words to our colleagues or may be we burst into madness and tell our students with these expressions or perhaps even worst uttering de-motivating language to them!

Will they continue making mischief? Yes! Will they continue talking their head off? Yes!

So what kind of strategies that we can use to at least reduce the chaos in the classroom? Here are some tips:

• Come out with strange or interesting chants

Asking students to clap their hands with the incorporation of weird actions when doing the chants will allow students to focus on you. They will stop from whatever activities they are doing and collaboratively say the chants and do the actions. The ‘weird’ actions actually require them to focus more thus makes them to look at you. This means you have to do the actions with them and indirectly it brings back the students’ attention to the classroom. Examples, “We will we will rock you”, “*scouts’ clapping system and then say Malaysia”, “I want no body, no body but you.

• Put on reward chart

Young students love rewards that motivate them to learn. You can have a reward chart by listing down their names or groups and points or marks will be given if they score, participate in lesson or show good behaviours. Interestingly, you can also use the chart to control your classroom by deducing their points or marks if they misbehave. By doing this, they will tend to ‘settle down’ or behave if you keep on reminding them about deducing the points. You can always ‘play’ with the points in the sense that you remove one point  if they misbehave and put it back once they are portraying good behaviours.

• Give positive reinforcement

In my previous school, I had rewarded my students with presents and sweets. Then, I realized these rewards were not that effective as they will only create extrinsic motivation. Once I stopped giving them, the students were not that interested to learn. Besides, these rewards were costly and not that healthy; presents were a form of material and sweets were not good for young students’ teeth. So, I think it is better if we give them positive reinforcement such as being a ‘Teacher’s Pet’. As Teacher’s Pets, students will have the privilege to help teachers such as distributing books in classroom or bringing books to the staff room and cleaning up the board which they really love to do. Besides, if they show good behaviours, you can also reward them with the opportunity to read fancy and attractive storybook like pop-out books, hardcover books or big books. They will enjoy reading the books or just looking at the pictures even though they don’t even know how to read yet.

Those are 3 tips that I found effective to apply in the classroom.  I will share more next time.
Admin