The Best Strategy to Accelerate Student Participation

Teachers often struggle getting students to participate, managing their classrooms and dealing with unruly participants. New teachers have the hardest time facing all of these challenges but many experienced teachers also never learn the right strategies to solve these issues. On that note, this is the best strategy I've found to overcome the most common classroom management challenges and by making classroom management a breeze and setting expectations in order to keep all their students on task, engaged, and most importantly participating!

All you need to start using this strategy is a deck of flash for each of your classes. Th

ese flashcards should be representative of the students in your class (one card for each student marked with the student's name). This strategy relies on creating a routine where names drawn from the deck of flashcards becomes the standard for calling on class participants. So each time you're looking for a participant, randomly call on a student by drawing one flashcard from the class deck (instead of asking for volunteers or picking them on your own). Here is where it gets good...

If members of the class are misbehaving you can still call on them directly. Since students will gain an understanding that typically you use the deck to randomly call on participants in class, by calling on a misbehaving student directly, you would be passively sending the entire class a message that you do not approve of the unwanted behavior while at the same time trying to refocus that misbehaving student. This method is great because it doesn’t require you to derail the class to address the behavior. This method is similar to the technique of closely approaching misbehaving students

and standing by them as you continue to conduct class normally. In both instances, you don’t even need to address the behavior directly and students typically get the point and begin to shape up.

Remember, words are only a fraction of how we communicate so learning how to leverage other forms of communication will only make you a better teacher. If students repeatedly continue to misbehave, you may want to speak with them one-on-one after class assuming their behavior is not too disruptive. If their behavior is disruptive (to the point of disrupting the class) you can stop what you're doing and redirect your attention to the misbehaving students with a nice wide-eyed baffled look while remaining silent. If the behavior continues afterwards you can give a direct verbal warning and ask the student if they need to leave the classroom. For those of fond of baseball, you may know what happens next: three strikes and you’re out!

I've never once actually had to ask a student to leave my classes. Remember asking students to leave the classroom should rarely every happen and would only ever be done if a student is consistently disrupting the entire class (not just whispering among nearby classmates). Be patient and give misbehaving students the opportunity to improve by communicating effectively with them. Ultimately, what you want to do is send a message that you are expecting students to be on task and ready to participate which is the exact dynamic you will be setting up by using the flashcard participation technique. Of course, it's a lot easier to get really great student participation and engagement in your classes when your lessons are filled with captivating and engaging content. Truth be told, a lot of misbehavior in the class stems from boredom.

TEFLspot specializes in creating captivating and engaging TEFL Lesson Plans for the classroom with ready-to-go PowerPoint presentations and detailed teaching notes. Try them in your class!

Thanks for reading.

All Best,

Matt Aufiero