Class Meetings - A Master Key to Effective Class Room Discipline

In this digital era, where in majority of the student are exposed to internet, and plethora of information is at each student's fingertips, a teacher's life is getting too challenging to keep pace with the students. The classroom discipline is totally at stake as the children are already well informed on the new concept or subject to be taught unless teachers show effective leadership every minute while attending to her students in the classroom.
As so much stressed by Jane Nelsen in her book Positive Discipline - a teacher's A-Z guide, one of the most effective ways to get your class back to control is through conducting regular classroom meetings.
SCANS (Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) Report of US Department of Labour lists following competencies, skills and personal qualities as vital to the children's future:
*Resources-identifies, organizes, plans, and allocates resources,
*Interpersonal - works with others,
*Information- acquires and uses information,
*Systems - understand complex interrelationships,
*Technology: works with a variety of technologies.
Each of the above competencies and skills can be accomplished or enhanced through the Positive Discipline class meeting process.
Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence stresses the great need to have greater EQ than IQ for life success. The positive discipline class meetings addresses all of the emotional intelligence skills, and teachers who use this tool of having regular classroom meetings have fewer discipline problems and have more energy to focus on the actual work of teaching.
Classroom meetings can be conducted in a Circle time, which could be very effective for primary and elementary students. The Circle Time is the time when all the students of the class sit face to face making eye contact with their peers and along with their class teacher too.
The teacher can take notes on the topics agreed and discussed, ensuring all in a group to co-exist harmoniously in a classroom. Any misconduct or behavioral problems of any particular student could be discussed indirectly, and the whole class students could brainstorm to come to conclusion on how to solve the problems. I personally have tried this tool of conducting classroom meeting as a teacher, and I have found it the most effective tool ever to get best results in behavior as well as in academics.
The class meetings should be conducted regularly, preferably twice a week to get the maximum discipline and build effective rapport with the students.
As social skills and emotional skills are far more important than the IQ, I believe, this implementation of conducting regular class meetings, in every school, is one of the most effective tool to address all the problems needed to succeed in pursuing goals, to help focus on a task, to cooperate with others, manage anger and resolve conflicts.
So focusing on developing emotional skills through effective classroom meetings will have a great positive impact in attaining effective class room discipline which in fact will reflect on the overall discipline of the school without the child being punished or rewarded.
The teachers must acknowledge the fact that life skills are as important as academic skills and that two must go hand in hand if the student is going to be effective, as an adult, in the working world in the future.
So, class meetings can be held regularly preferably twice or once a week. However a word of warning is that students must not be allowed to use any of form of punishment or blame or to inflict shame or pain on one another.
Nevertheless, the class meetings can only fail when students are not seated in a circle; not holding the meeting regularly; not trusting the process and not going around the circle and allowing every student to speak in a circle or pass.
Though the concept of innovative strategies of giving rewards might help few of the students to motivate and perform better, yet it is definitely not the effective tool to be utilized to maintain positive discipline.
Thus, for every kind of problems faced by a teacher in a classroom like lying, crying, blaming, hitting, clinging, using foul language, the idea of conducting regular classroom meetings is a great tool to maintain an effective and interesting classroom with maximum positive discipline.

Tackling New Comers and Others In A Classroom

 

Children are young and definitely adaptable. Students who have to shift to another school either due to job transfer or other calamities find it difficult to adjust to the new environment.

Students who are extroverts might not face substantial challenges during the shift to another school as they are social and can adapt to new changes yet might take a little time to get adjusted.

However, the introvert students who are either fussy or do not mingle too much, change of school is not a joke at all. The child might get drawn to herself or himself. It might also lead to behavioral problems and more complications.

To add fuel to the fire, the child might also find it difficult to pick up the concepts taught in classes and might take a long time to get adjusted.

Nevertheless, a good school with effective teachers will see to it that the child gets adjust in a fortnight or a month.

A lot of activities related to socialization like team work, circle time, class meetings etc. will definitely enhance the child's morale and help the newcomer get adjusted to the new environment. This will also attain a co-operative class without effective classroom discipline and team spirit.

During the first few months of joining, a lot of emphasis and priority must be given to the newcomers by class teachers till they get adjusted to their schools, classmates and teachers.

As children are in other words very young adults, therefore, skills to socialize using Circle Time, Team Work, Class Meetings should be emphasized consistently so as to build their social and communicative skills.

Strategies to Make Classroom Interesting

 

Effective classroom discipline is effortless when a teacher has well-planned structure of her lesson plans wherein even a single minute of her 40 minute period is not taken for granted. Following the following lesson plan structure and strategies, children get engrossed and become highly attentive in the classroom.

Moreover, when a class room is managed or teaching is executed using the below five activities, it grabs the attention of the all types of learners.  This is especially true for primary and elementary school students whose attention span do not last for more than 10 minutes at a stretch for a particular concept.  So, by inculcating the habits of incorporating these five activities for one period that lasts for about 40 minutes, will bring in effective classroom management and make every child deeply interested and committed to the theme taught. These five activities are:

1.   Preparatory Activity:

The Preparatory activity could a preparing activity so as to hold the attention of your classroom. This could last for about 2-5 minutes with a warm up exercise, aerobics, or narrate a poem or rhyme or a meaningful song related to the theme or subject.

            2.       Supporting Activity:      

                        The Supporting Activity could be a relevant activity that could support that day’s lesson  or topic to be covered. It could last for not more than five minutes.  This activity could be even a recap of previous day’s portion eliciting answer from all children one by one.  Or it could be asking meanings of particular text, define terms or phrases taught previous day or even in a chain story or events of topics covered the previous day.

                        3.       Learning Activity:

                        This is the activity where the actual learning for the day takes place. You could start with everything you wanted to be taught this day and could last for about 15 minutes. This is also the time for children to clarify doubts related to the topic or concept taught today to ensure learning is complete and, is being understood by students.

                        4.       Evaluation Activity:

                        This is an activity where in you may ask questions verbally, or in writing by giving questions on the board or by distributing worksheets pertaining to the topic taught that day.  This could last not more than 10 minutes.

                        5          Closure Activity:

It is a very short one where in the recap is done and wind up for that day’s learning.

Always remember the golden rule of making every child involved in activity. For e.g. if the class has a strength of 25 students, an effective teacher would utilize 5 students each for each of the above activities in eliciting the answers thus ensure all the children in the class have participated in her teaching session of one period.