The role of classroom management in FLT

Classroom management is the way the teacher organizers her/his classroom and learners, it is, as Jim Scrivener says, the moment-by-moment decisions and actions concerning organization of the classroom and activities (e.g. seating and grouping arrangements, starting and stopping activities, etc.).

How to organize the classroom? Organizing the classroom teacher should create favourable learning conditions, both physical and emotional environment. Under physical environment some physiological conditions (noise, light, temperature) are meant, together with equipment and educational aids used by teacher in the classroom. An important constituent of physical environment is seating arrangement of learners, which in its turn depend on the character of the activities proposed and helps to create a special emotional environment of lesson.

Experiments with seating arrangement on the one hand can help recreate new and unexpected situations, and on the other give some physical relax involving moving activities. Changing seating arrangement can help students interact with different people. In many pedagogical journals and teaching manuals language practitioners can find the ideas what grouping, seating, standing arrangements are most appropriate for each activity they do in class.

For example, traditional classroom setting can be successful in teacher-class interaction and pair work. However, the variety of activities in communicative classroom is hardly limited to these modes of interaction. Thus, traditional classroom setting can be improved in order to bring variety to language classroom, make it more motivated and funny. The most widely used mode, group work, needs appropriate seating arrangement. The classroom should be prepared for group work either beforehand (with furniture moved for convenient group interaction) or the existing setting should be adapted for the purpose (e.g. students may interact face to face each other around one desk). Moving the furniture in a classroom might be too time-consuming. Nevertheless, if group work is used for the majority of activities in a lesson and the group members have to mingle and change the partners several times, then moving desks is desirable for successful implementation of teacher's ideas. Two more pictures show the variants of classroom organization which are helpful for group discussions, exchanging ideas, brainstorming some problems etc. Deliberate and well-considered classroom arrangements help teacher organize the classroom, making lesson more vivid and emotional.

Besides the classroom itself, teacher has to organize learners. Teacher is responsible for the character of teacher-student interaction, depending on which classrooms may be learner-centered or teacher-dominated. A traditional teacher-dominated classroom contradicts with the mainstream pedagogical approach to putting learner in the centre of the educational process, encouraging their active participation and involvement in classroom interaction. The teacher role of a controller (in a teacher-dominated classroom) is shifted to that of a facilitator, whose job is to think not only about the procedure of the lesson, interesting and useful tasks and activities, but also about motivational factors that will influence successful learning.

The creation of favourable classroom atmosphere is one of these motivational factors which leads to establishing rapport between teacher and learners. The teacher's manner to run a lesson and communicate with students; his/her personal interest in students' needs create trust and confidence in relations between teacher and students. It is a well-known fact that enthusiastic teachers have enthusiastic learners, so the teacher's own enthusiasm about their job, activities proposed and materials used encourage students' active participation and involvement.

Relaxed, supportive classroom atmosphere is also related to the variety of activities proposed by teacher during a lesson. The activity is lifeblood of language lesson. Proposing different activities in the classroom teacher should think over procedures and techniques for performing them in order to meet learners' expectations and create their positive attitude to the target language. Teachers should thus be prepared to develop fewer teacher-dominated activities and tasks, while remaining conscious of their students` need for guidance in setting objectives, for appropriate models of and feedback about the target language, and for constructive and supportive evaluation of their progress. In this case, teacher faces the problem of effective management.

Classroom management involves both decisions and actions teacher has to do every minute of lesson. The actions are what are done in the classroom, e.g. rearranging the chairs. The decisions are about whether to do these actions, when to do, how to do them, who will do them, etc. The essential basic skill for classroom is therefore to be able to recognize options available to teacher, to make appropriate decisions between these options and to turn them into effective and efficient actions. As teacher grows in experience the awareness of possible options will grow.

Дата добавления: 2017-01-13