Effective Classroom Management

Most of what a student learns at school is learned inside one room. If that room is dark, cramped, dirty or noisy, even a very good teacher struggles to hold the class, and students find it hard to concentrate. Making the room fit for learning is therefore as important as the teaching itself. This work is called classroom management.

The word environment here means more than the air, the light and the benches. It also includes how students feel in the room: whether they feel safe, welcome and ready to join in. Meaningful teaching and learning happens only when the classroom is managed effectively. If the room is disorganised, learning stays incomplete even when the textbook and the teacher are both there.

No single arrangement makes a classroom effective. Several things have to be in place at the same time, and none of them can be skipped:

• Seating for the students, arranged so that every student can see the teacher and the board.
• Fresh air, daylight and electric lights where they are needed.
• Space for students to move in and out, and space for the teacher to walk around the whole room.
• A place to use teaching materials and a place to store them.
• Space for students to take part in activities, form groups and carry out group work.
• A clean room with suitable decoration.

All of this has to be planned according to the size of the room and the number of students. A small room with twenty five students cannot be arranged in the same way as a large room with sixty. In a crowded class the teacher must take extra care to leave paths between the rows of benches, or they will only ever reach the students at the front. However well the furniture is arranged, a dirty and cluttered room still puts students off learning, so cleanliness and decoration need just as much attention. A classroom is managed effectively only when all of these things are looked after together.

Classroom management has three sides that must be looked after. The first concerns the room itself and the physical things in it. The second concerns the teaching materials used in lessons. The third concerns the teaching activities that take place in the class.

A subject corner is a part of the room set aside for one subject, where its charts, models and materials are kept together, such as a science corner or a maths corner. Physical management also means checking things like whether opening the windows lets in air and light, which way the benches should face so that sunlight does not glare on the board, and whether the path to the door is kept clear.

For example, hanging maps and charts on the wall or rolling them up so that they do not crease, keeping glass items on a low shelf where they cannot fall, and keeping chalk, the duster and the ruler within easy reach are all part of this. When materials are sorted by their nature, no lesson time is wasted searching for them.

Here the classroom is arranged with three kinds of activity in mind: activities done individually, activities done in groups, and activities done using materials. Individual work needs enough writing space for every student. Group work needs benches that can be turned so that four or five students face each other. Work with materials needs a table where the materials can be placed so that everyone can see them.

The things a teacher has to think about when managing a classroom can be shown on one chart. Classroom management sits in the middle, and arrows go out from it in ten directions. Each arrow points to one thing that classroom management must include.

The chart is not only about physical things. A child friendly psychological environment is one where students can ask questions without fear and everyone is treated fairly. Discipline, and care and safety, show that every student must be kept orderly and safe. Suitable teaching boards and notice boards turn the walls of the room into a learning resource too. When students have a separate place for their bags, bottles and exercise books, the floor and the paths between benches stay clear.

Imagine a Class 7 room with forty five students. At the start of the year it looked like this:

• The windows stayed shut, so the room was dark and stuffy.
• The benches were pushed right up to the walls, and the teacher could not reach the students at the back.
• Maps and charts lay piled in a corner and had started to tear.
• There was no space for group work, so every task was done alone.
• Scraps of paper and school bags lay all over the floor.

The class teacher worked on all three sides of management, one after another:

• Physical management: she opened the windows and fixed the curtains, rearranged the benches with paths between the rows, and turned one corner into a science corner.
• Teaching materials: she hung the maps and charts on the wall and sorted the other materials by kind on a small shelf.
• Teaching activities: she set a rule that during group work every second bench turns round so that groups sit facing each other.
• Cleanliness and belongings: she made a cleaning roster, placed a waste bin, and set aside a place for bags.

A few weeks later it was the same room, the same students and the same textbook, yet the class looked different. Students at the back began to ask questions, group work became possible, and no time was lost hunting for materials. Nothing new had been bought. Only the management had changed.

Management is called an art because no single rule suits every classroom. A teacher has to look at their own room, their own students and their own subject, and decide for themselves what works. When a classroom is well managed, it becomes easier to achieve the objectives set out in the curriculum. Students keep what they learn for longer, so learning becomes lasting and effective. The relationship between teacher and students grows stronger, and the class can build good habits and values together, like a family. The points below show what classroom management helps a teacher to do:

• (a) create a learning environment that suits the students
• (b) keep the class safe from cold, heat, wind, storms, rain and noise
• (c) arrange the students' seating in a suitable way
• (d) arrange the furniture and the space for student-centred activities
• (e) use teaching materials properly and keep them in good order
• (f) draw students' attention to the class and help them become disciplined
• (g) make teaching and learning purposeful, practical and meaningful
• (h) make interaction between the teacher and the students possible
• (i) make the decoration of the classroom support learning
• (j) make the classroom a place that motivates students to learn and makes learning easy

Point (b) is easy to picture. On a stormy monsoon afternoon, if the window panes are broken, rain blows in and the lesson stops. With the panes and curtains in good repair, the lesson goes on even on that day. Point (h) works the same way. When the teacher's walking path is clear, they can reach the students at the back, look at their exercise books and talk with them, so interaction is not limited to a few students at the front.

In this way classroom management makes the whole teaching and learning process effective and favourable to learning. Learning becomes student-centred, and every student in the class benefits, not just a few.