ESL Classroom Management China - Disruptive Students
Students can be disruptive for a multitude of reasons from boredom to attention seeking to special needs there’s no one way to deal with disruption so here are some strategies I use.
I’ve found the most effective way to deal with disruptive students is peer discipline. I use a points tally reward system so If a student from a team is disruptive I will deduct a point from the team. Normally, the students from that team will let the disruptive student know that they don’t want them to be disruptive. NOTE: you should also get the disruptive students attention and make sure they see you deduct a point because of them. If peer discipline doesn’t work I will have a disruptive student stand. If they continue to be disruptive I will bring them to the front of the class. If they continue to be disruptive I will put them outside of class. If they continue to be disruptive I will take them to the head teacher / homeroom teacher (banzhuren) or take a picture of them and tell their teacher later. I do these things as quickly as I can to reduce class disruption and not to reward these disruptive students with my attention. I only give well-behaved students my attention. In my classes, I have some reward for if the students are good. Usually this is a short fun video at the end of the class. During this video I will take the disruptive students out of class and try my best to explain what I don’t want them to do and have them pinky promise not to do it again. If they are very disruptive they won’t get to watch any of the fun video at all. If you can’t take the student out of class you can also have them turn their chair around so they can’t see the fun video.