15 Classroom Management: A Case Study

. 179

15
Classroom Management: A Case Study
Professor Fan Yi

15.0 Introduction With the aid of other approaches, communicative approaches have been widely employed in the English language teaching in Singapore schools. Communicative approaches are established on such an psycholinguistic assumption that effective language teaching and efficient language learning only occur in a positive class climate, which involves three essentials ---easy atmosphere, motivating environment and active participation (Widdowson, 1978; Littlewood, 1984). An easy class atmosphere makes pupils feel emotionally easy with learning tasks and the teacher. A tense atmosphere makes pupils nervous and thus hinders them from participating in communicative activities. Setting up a motivating environment requires the teacher to supply pupils with comprehensible, relevant and interesting input and large varieties of class activities, such as role-play, pair work, group work and class discussion so that the pupils are entirely involved and immersed in the given learning activities (Krashen,1981). Communicative approaches attach great

importance to pupils active participation in classroom activities, with a firm belief that without pupils active participation teaching work will certainly fail, no matter how well it has been planned. In fact, both easy class atmosphere and motivating environment serve this purpose. Unlike traditional teaching approaches, which claim that effective instructions are achieved in good class order and discipline (Fantana, 1985), communicative approaches try to involve pupils into learning activities so that they produce less discipline problems. The teacher encourages pupils to speak up, play their parts, raise questions, even argue with their peers or the teacher, so long as

 21

. 180

their topic sticks to the lesson. For communicative approaches, good class order and control are not the precondition of effective instruction, but the result of effective classroom management. Thus an English language class may look less disciplined than classes of other subjects. However, if a teacher of the English language resorts frequently to strict discipline, he may achieve a good order and control over the class, but at the same time he may as well destroy the easy atmosphere and the motivating environment which effective English learning vitally needs. In this case, he gets his instrument at the price of losing his aim. As a matter of fact, the contradiction between class discipline and class participation sets a higher demand for the teachers classroom management. Having abandoned external forces, such as threat of punishment and severe criticism in public, the teacher is supposed to build up a positive class climate out of pupils self-consciousness and participation. This chapter makes a case study of a double-period lesson of reading comprehension that the writer personally observed in Tiong Bahru Secondary School, Singapore, during his teaching practice. By recording some typical management problems in an English language class and by evaluating the strategies dealing with them, the chapter is intended to give supportive evidence to the thesis that the effective classroom management for an English language class is to create a positive class climate for learning.

15.1 Scenario 15.2.1 Background information Teacher: Miss Jeja, a qualified and experienced teacher. Class: a secondary 4 class, express, of 24 students. School: a government school of relatively low academic level, located in an HDB estate. Lesson: a double-period lesson of reading comprehension from 10.4011.50 a.m., immediately after recess. Topic: Eating in Singapore, an essay of approximately 950 words.

 15 Classroom Management: A Case Study

. 181

15.2.2 A profile of the classroom management When the bell rang, the teacher came into the classroom only to find a small proportion of the class had been present. Where are the other students? the teacher asked. Around the campus lah. a pupil said casually. In the dining hall lah. another pupil argued. The teacher had to wait until all the pupils came back to the classroom after recess. While the pupils were settling down, the teacher began to brief the objectives of the lesson and learning activities. She had to shout because the class was very noisy. Only few pupils had concentrated and listened carefully. When the class eventually became quiet, the teacher gave her instruction: Sit in five groups, please. A boy pupil asked: What to do lah? The teacher had to repeat: Please sit in five groups. Each group has five pupils. Another chaos arose in the classroom. The pupils were moving their desks and chairs, some were walking across the classroom to join in their group. Two pupils were even fighting with their books. Seeing this, the teacher could not bear it any longer. She lost her temper and shouted to the two pupils who are fighting, Get out of the classroom, and stay at the door until I call you in. The class was shocked by the shouting and the punishment. They became quiet immediately, but there was a tension in the classroom. Fifteen minutes had passed. With an angry look on her face, the teacher repeated the briefing. The pupils listened quietly. First of all , you read the first part of the text in silence. When you finish, discuss in your group questions from No.1 to No.4, and write your answers on the transparencies. Then the teacher distributed to each group the transparencies on which eight comprehension questions were printed, and she appointed a representative for each group and asked him/her to write down the ideas contributed by the group members. The pupils began to read. The teacher walked around the classroom to ensure that

 21

. 182

every pupil was reading. Five minutes passed. The teacher reminded the class that they should begin to discuss the comprehension questions. While the pupils were discussing, the teacher kept walking around the classroom, and stopped at times to

listen to the discussion. When she found one group was in silence, she approached to give them leading questions. Soon she noticed that some pupils spoke in dialect, some stayed idle in day-dreaming, and some were talking about things irrelevant to the lesson. Only the group representatives concentrated on the given work. Attention, please. Everyone of you must contribute your ideas. Ive noticed some of you are speaking dialect. Thats not good. This is an English class. Only English is allowed. the teacher said loudly. The group representatives came to the front in turn and made the presentation. The teacher gave immediate feedback for their answers and explained some new words and difficult expressions in the text. The bell rang and the first period ended. For the second period of the lesson, the teacher changed her strategies, which would be fully recorded and discussed later.

15.3 Analysis of the management problems We can easily identify a number of management problems from the profile. But in order to achieve a general significance out of our analysis, we are not to deal with all the problems recorded here. We will only concentrate on three serious management problems that are closely related to the concern of communicative approaches for classroom management. They are tense class atmosphere, poor motivation, and poor participation.

15.3.1 Tense class atmosphere There was a chaotic class order at the beginning of the lesson. Despite the teachers instruction, the pupils did their own things. It took fifteen minutes to get the class ready for the lesson. There were several causes behind. On the pupils part, they had just had a recess of twenty minutes. They were still excited with their various sorts of enjoyment. Habitually, they brought them into the classroom. On the teachers

 15 Classroom Management: A Case Study

. 183

part, although she knew that there was always a chaotic state at the beginning of this double period lesson, she ignored it. By raising her voice, she wanted to tell the pupils that the lesson had begun, and she hoped that they would spontaneously become quiet. However, as she ignored the excitement in the pupils, the pupils ignored her instructions. Even worse, under the aegis of her raised voice, the pupils were bold enough to talk loudly and fight each other. By resorting to strict punishment and her fierce temper, the teacher eventually ceased the chaotic state of the class and achieved a good control over the class. But the easy class atmosphere had been destroyed at the same time. With the teachers shouting rolling around the ears and two peers standing at the door, the class was put in a stressful and anxious mood. There was a tension on every pupils mind.

15.3.2 Poor motivation The teacher did not begin the class by motivating the pupils. Instead, she directly gave them tasks to do even though she found the pupils still in the excitement. She intended to use the learning tasks to force them to be quiet and to involve them in learning activities, but her effort was obviously in vain. Scarcely motivated, the pupils were not interested in what they were supposed to do. They gave all the work to the group representatives. They stayed idle or did their own things. In fact, it was very easy to associate the topic of the lesson with the pupils personal interest because they had just had their morning tea in the canteen during the recess. The writer had observed the same lesson in another class, 5D, normal, which began with a class discussion about the pupil personal eating experience either at home or at restaurants. The pupils were highly motivated for the lesson. They were eager to see how much of their personal eating experience had been recorded in the essay.

15.3.3 Poor participation During the first period, only the group representatives concentrated on the given work. Most of the pupils were not involved in the group discussion. They were sitting around the tables, but few contributed ideas about the given questions. As we

 21

. 184

analyzed earlier, the poor participation was largely due to the poor motivation and the stressful atmosphere in the classroom. Without being motivated for the topic, the pupils were not interested at all in the lesson. They were only forced to discuss what they did not know and did not want to know. With two pupils standing outside the classroom, the pupils in the classroom all felt stressed and nervous. Though they kept quiet, they were not listening. They are not in the mood to participate in the discussion. While the group representatives were working, they did not have to bother about the class presentation.

15.4 The remedial strategies to solve the problems The teacher had noticed that although the class discipline had been much enhanced, the stressful atmosphere and poor motivation hindered the pupils from participating in learning activities. In the second period of the lesson, she employed some remedial strategies. First, she asked the two pupils standing outside the classroom to come in. When the pupils came in, they had an embarrassed smile on their faces. The teacher did not say anything more about it. In order to break the tense atmosphere in class and motivate the pupils for the topic, the teacher did not go straight to the second part of the essay. Instead she asked the class a few questions about their own personal eating experience, such as Where do the Singaporeans go for meals? How many different styles of food can we eat in Singapore? Where did you have your Chinese New Year dinner? and What food did you have for the dinner?. These questions were very stimulating and immediately stirred up the class into a hot discussion. Some boys even stood up to offer their answers. A silent class now became very alive. When the pupils had been involved in the class discussion, the teacher turned the topic to the text. It was still group work, but each group member had to prepare for one of the given questions and present it to the group. After every group member presented it to the group, the group representative summed up their ideas and presented them to the class. This strategy involved every pupil in the learning activity. Each pupil had a clear

 15 Classroom Management: A Case Study

. 185

task to fulfil and a strong desire to communicate with other group members. In order to make a successful presentation, he had to read the text and prepare for the given question carefully, integrating reading (the text), writing (down the notes), listening (to the others) and speaking (to the group) all together. Effective learning started from the moment the pupils took active part in learning activities. Some pupils had a tendency to speak dialect, but once he had got a role to play as the representative to speak up to the group or the class, he had to communicate in English. Thus dialect was prevented in the class. Obviously, by employing the remedial strategies, the teacher had rather successfully conducted the second period of the lesson. Although the remedial strategies were used to deal with specific management problems in a specific lesson, they were of general significance and applicability. Setting up an easy class atmosphere certainly helps to diminish the tension and anxiety existing in the class. Associating the lesson with the pupils personal experience and interest always helps to motivate the pupils for the lesson. By giving pupils specific tasks, the teacher supplies them with desire for communication in English. All these strategies certainly involve pupils in learning activities.

15.5 Conclusion Many teachers tend to ignore the pupils response in class and follow exactly what has been planned for the lesson. Some presume that the pupils will be encouraged if the teacher stops to deal with discipline problems. Some teachers simply do not bother to cope with the misbehaviors of the pupils until the lesson can no longer be carried on. When a teacher loses his control over the class, he tends to go to the other extreme---either lose his temper or give an overdue punishment to the unfortunate pupil. But it is too late. A class order achieved by resorting to external discipline or punishment does no good to building up a positive learning climate in class, especially when the pupils are engaged in language learning. So the best way of dealing with discipline problems is to prevent them rather than to solve them after they actually appear. The three classroom management strategies discussed in this

 21

. 186

case study are effective in preventing the pupils from discipline problems. If a teacher plans his lesson with consideration of how to set up an easy class atmosphere, how to motivate the pupils for the topic, and, above all, how to involve the pupils in learning activities, he will certainly have less discipline problems to deal with and teach effectively and easily.

Bibliography
Fantana,D. Psychology for Teachers. London: The British Psychological Society and Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Krashen, S. 1981. The Input Hypothesis. Cambridge University Press. Littlewood, W.T. 1984. Foreign and Second Language Learning. Cambridge University Press. Widdowson, H.G. 1978. Teaching Language as Communication. Oxford University Press.