Dealing with disruptions

The best teachers are those who are passionate about what they do and want to spend their time teaching. Dealing with classroom disruptions takes away from the time spent teaching. Here are some tips to help reduce the negative impact disruptions can have.

Grab their attention

Make sure to have everyone’s attention before beginning class. That means the lesson won’t be started, the lecture won’t begin and nothing will be written on the board until everyone is in a seat paying attention. Open with a couple of attention-getting comments about the weather, current events or other topics of interest to your audience. Keep the conversation going until all eyes are on you.

Reigning-in disruptive students

Use non-verbal signals for those students who may be distracted or otherwise disruptive. If they are talking, pause and look toward them. Walk toward the student and stop near their seat. Having you so near usually turns off the unwanted activity as the rest of the class’s attention is directed toward the misbehaving students. Direct a question to the student who is not paying attention; calling on them by name will help them snap to attention.

Give them ownership

One way to give students ownership is to allow them to sit where they want as long as they are attentive, engaged and not disruptive. By choosing their own seats, they have “ownership” and often will behave well to avoid being assigned a less desirable seat, like one at the front of the classroom.

Motivate with incentives

Ungraded assignments may not yield the desired effort or be neglected since they “don’t count.” Tell students you will randomly collect one person’s assignment to get better performance on an ungraded assignment. If that assignment is done well, then the whole class will be “off the hook,” and the student instantly becomes the class hero. If the randomly selected assignment does not meet expectations, then all students must also turn theirs in.

Establish consequences

Setting up consequences on day one helps students understand what’s expected. Two things to consider when developing these consequences are knowing what is most impactful to your students and determining the ease of your follow-through if those consequences are needed.

Starting the school year on the right note will help pave the way to ongoing success.