Classroom Management

'Classroom management' is the term that defines the process of carrying out class lessons successfully. With a good classroom management, the students rarely misbehave, and, on the contrary, get engaged with the class. So, the term implies any technique that helps to keep the students engaged and prevents misbehave before and after it happens.

Without good classroom management techniques, it is difficult to achieve the curriculum goals in the class, period or semester. Some good classroom management strategies are:

• Anticipate problems and be creative. When the semester begins, it is time for anticipating problems and establishing rules, but the teacher can do it creatively by asking dumb or funny questions, and the students who don't follow the protocol must be 'punished'.

• Avoid punishing the entire class. Even if it seems that the whole class is misbehaving, there are always some students who follow the rules; punishing the entire class is unfair for them, and it can encourage them to misbehave as their classmates do.

• Give students choices. By asking the students things like "Do you want it to be solved in class or as an on-line quiz at home?", the students get more engaged in the class and feel that they are an important part of it.

•  Establish routines. To avoid a chaotic class, establish a schedule and keep things predictable is a good option.

Time

Other important part of classroom management is time management. To optimize the use of time during the lesson, it is divided into four parts or categories:

 1. Academic learning time.  It occurs when students participate actively in the class and learn the topics successfully. Effective classroom management maximizes this part of the class as it is possible.

 2. Allocated time. It is the total of time assigned for teaching, learning, routines and procedures, checking the attendance, delivering homework assignment, and so on.

 3. Engaged time. Also called 'time on task', engaged time involves any activity in which students are interacting actively with the knowledge, such as asking or responding questions, working on worksheets, making presentations or role plays, etc...

 4. Instructional time. It is the time that remains after classroom routines, such as attendance checking, are completed. In other words,  it is the time in which teaching and learning actually takes place.