Classroom Discipline Tips

Here are a few Classroom Discipline Tips.

• Hard then Soft. Start by being strict and then get more relaxed once the term progresses. It's almost impossible to go the other way round.
  
• Be Fair. Treat all students equally so if your best students does something wrong they get punished just as anyone else would.
  
• Each Lesson is New. Never bring over grudges or problems from previous lessons. Wipe the slate clean for each lesson.
  
• Keep Confrontation Out. If there's a growing confrontation between you and a student don't let it erupt in class or you could lose face. Say something like "we'll talk about this after the lesson" and then deal with it later.
  
• One Student at a Time. Don't try to take on the whole class if there's a big problem. Deal with one student at a time rather than the whole class or a group.
  
• Don't Bluff/Be Consistent. Never go back on a threat if you're called; always follow through with a punishment otherwise you will be taken advantage of. In other words, if you say you are going to do something then do it.
  
• Use Humour. If you are that kind of teacher, use a little humour to close disruptions down (but be careful with sarcasm, some cultures don't understand it).
  
• Overplan. Make sure you have more than enough material for your lesson and everything is planned. Having to stop a lesson while you think of what to do next invites disruption and talking amongst students.
  
• Be Understandable when Giving Instructions. Make sure your instructions are clear, simple and to the point. A lot of classroom problems arise when students don't understand what they are supposed to be doing.

Inspirational Quotes for Students

• " Always do what you are afraid to do." - Ralph Waldo
• "Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young." - Henry Ford
• "A turtle makes progress when it sticks its neck out" - Anon
  
• "Believe in yourself, be strong, never give up no matter what the circumstances are. You are a champion and will overcome the dreaded obstacles. Champions take failure as a learning opportunity, so take in all you can, and run with it. Be your best and don't ever ever give up." - Brad Gerrard
  
• "Cherish your visions and your dreams, as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements" - Napoleon Hill
  
• "Did you know that the Chinese symbol for 'crisis' includes a symbol which means 'opportunity'? - Jane Revell & Susan Norman
  
• "Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world" - Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
  
• "Every artist was at first an amateur." - Ralph W. Emerson
  
• "I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand." - Chinese Proverb
  
• "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got" - NLP adage
  
• "If you find yourself saying 'But I can't speak English...', try adding the word '...yet' - Jane Revell & Susan Norman
  
• "If what you're doing isn't working, try something else!" - NLP adage
  
• "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." - Derek Bok
  
• "If you know what you want, you are more likely to get it" - NLP adage
  
• "It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and made things happen." - Elinor Smith
  
• "It's not just about looking and copying, it's about feeling too" - Paul Cezanne
  
• "It's ok to try things out, to ask questions, to feel unsure, to let your mind wander, to daydream, to ask for help, to experiment, to take time out, not to know, to practise, to ask for help again - and again, to make mistakes, to check your understanding" - Jane Revell & Susan Norman
  
• "Learning is never done without errors and defeat." - Vladimir Lenin
  
• "Nothing we ever imagined is beyond our powers, only beyond our present self-knowledge" - Theodore Roszak
  
• "One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he could not do." - Henry Ford
  
• "One must have strategies to execute dreams." - Azim Premji, CEO Wipro Ind
  
• "One must learn by doing the thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty, until you try." - Sophocles
  
• "People learn more quickly by doing something or seeing something done." - Gilbert Highet
  
• "Success comes in cans, failure in can'ts." - Unknown
  
• "The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle." - Pierre de Coubertin
  
• "Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself." - Chinese Proverb
  
• "Too much credit is given to the end result. The true lesson is in the struggle that takes place between the dream and reality. That struggle is a thing called life!" - Garth Brooks
  
• "The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work." - Aristotle
  
• "The only dreams impossible to reach are the ones you never pursue." - Michael Deckman
  
• " There two types of people; the can do and the can't. Which are you?" - George R. Cabrera
  
• "Whenever you feel like saying 'Yes, but....`, try saying instead 'Yes, and....'" - Jane Revell & Susan Norman
  
• "Whether you think you can, or think you can't...you're right!" - Henry Ford
  
• "Worry is misuse of the imagination" - Mary Crowley
  
• "You haven't failed, until you stop trying" - Unknown
  
• "You've got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch onto the affirmative, don't mess with Mr In-between" - Popular song

Inspirational Quotes for Teachers

• 
  "Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds, do not overload them. Put there just a spark." - Anatole France
  
• "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." - Henry Brooks Adams
  
• "A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary." - Thomas Carruthers
  
• " A teacher who is attempting to teach, without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn, is hammering on a cold iron." - Horace Mann (1796-1859)
  
• "Education costs money, but then so does ignorance." - Sir Claus Moser
  
• "Education...is a painful, continual and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning,... by praise, but above all -- by example." - John Ruskin
  
• "Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one." - Malcolm Forbes
  
• "Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well." - Alfred North Whitehead
  
• "Getting things done is not always what is most important. There is value in allowing others to learn, even if the task is not accomplished as quickly, efficiently or effectively." - R.D. Clyde
  
• "Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime." - Chinese Proverb
  
• "Good teachers are those who know how little they know. Bad teachers are those who think they know more than they don't know." - R. Verdi
  
• "Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers." - Josef Albers
  
• "I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think." - Socrates
  
• "If the child is not learning the way you are teaching, then you must teach in the way the child learns" - Rita Dunn
  
• "If what you're doing isn't working, try something else!" - NLP adage
  
• "I may have said the same thing before... but my explanation, I am sure, will always be different." - Oscar Wilde
  
• "I put the relation of a fine teacher to a student just below the relation of a mother to a son." - Thomas Wolfe
  
• "It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it." - J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man
  
• "It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." - Albert Einstein
  
• "Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know it just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers" - Richard Bach
  
• "Men learn while they teach." - Lucius A. Seneca
  
• "No matter how good teaching may be, each student must take the responsibility for his own education." - John Carolus S. J.
  
• "People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives." - Thomas Mann
  
• "Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its values only to its scarcity." - Samuel Johnson
  
• "Spoonfeeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon" - E. M. Forster
  
• "Teachers should guide without dictating, and participate without dominating." - C.B. Neblette
  
• "Teach your children by what you are, not just by what you say" - Jane Revell & Susan Norman
  
• "The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn." - Cicero
  
• "The basic idea behind teaching is to teach people what they need to know." - Carl Rogers
  
• "The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton
  
• "The job of an educator is to teach students to see the vitality in themselves." - Joseph Campbell
  
• "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited." - Plutarch
  
• "There are no difficult students - just students who don't want to do it your way" - Jane Revell & Susan Norman
  
• " The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind." - Kahlil Gibran
  
• "To define is to destroy, to suggest is to create." - Stephane Mallarme
  
• "To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching." - George Bernard Shaw
  
• "To teach is to learn twice." - Joseph Joubert
  
• "Try to present at least three options. One is no choice at all. Two creates a dilemma. With three you begin to have real choice and flexibility" - Jane Revell & Susan Norman
  
• "We think too much about effective methods of teaching and not enough about effective methods of learning." - John Carolus S. J.
  
• "What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child." - George Bernard Shaw
  
• "Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." - John Cotton Dana
  
• "You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself." - Galielo Galilei
  
• "You can't direct the wind but you can adjust the sails." - Anonymous

Teaching Prepositions Activity

This is a simple but fun activity to teach prepositions.
All you need is a tie and a set of instructions.
First, demonstrate how to tie a tie in front of the class. To arouse the students' curiosity at this stage you might just stand in front of the class and without further explanation just take a tie from your pocket and put it on.
You might then pre-teach a few useful words:

- tie
- knot
- wide/narrow
- neck

At this point you can go through prepositions and make sure they're understood. Then maybe remove and tie up the tie again, giving the instructions as you do so:
- Put the tie around your neck; the wide end on the left and the wide end about 40 centimeters longer than the narrow end.
- Cross the ends near the top, the wide end over the narrow end.
- Hold the tie where the two ends meet with your left hand.
- Wrap the wide end under then over the narrow end above your left hand and pull the knot together.
- Fold the wide end under and through the loop around your neck and pull the knot together.
- Tuck the wide end through the loop at the front from the top.
- Tighten the knot then pull it up to your neck.
Next, of course, you give ties to your students and have them practice with the instructions.

Variations
There are plenty of variations here you can make:
one student reads whilst another ties the tie
introduce different kinds of tie knots with slightly different instructions
have a quick competition to see who has tied the best knot

Teaching the Past Continuous

This is a simple way of practicing the Past Continuous. I've used it several times with my (small) classes and it provides a method of practice where students can see the use of the tense.

1. Prepare a large sheet of paper; in the middle draw (or photocopy/paste) a picture of a row of houses. Around the edge of the paper paste pictures of different people involved in different household activities, e.g. washing, brushing teeth, watching tv, etc.

2. Explain to the students that the time frame is yesterday evening and this is what was happening in the street. Begin yourself by pointing to the first and second characters and saying,

"While Jane was playing the piano, her mother was cleaning the house."

The next student must then say,

"While her mother was cleaning the house, next door Mr Jones was watching television."

And round it goes.

A further exercise can be used to contrast the use of the past continuous with the past simple. Point to the first picture and show a possible interruption:

"While Jane was playing the piano, her friend knocked at the door."

Songs in the Classroom

Songs are great tools to use in the classroom. Everyone likes listening to music and the right song can not only be fun for the students (and teacher) but also be used in an effective way to teach.
Popular song lyrics are often very simple and mostly in the first person. They use rhyme which can help in remembering and the language is often conversational.

Choosing a Song
A couple of things to bear in mind here. Songs are very generational and music which you as a teacher may think is classic and cool is likely to induce groans from your students, especially if they are teenagers. There are ways round this though: select music which is either "classic" (which isn't always so easy) or get your students to give you the names of artists they like. It's easy enough to get hold of music which your students like and which is suitable for the class. You can get a list of popular songs in one lesson and use one or two several weeks later and surprise the class.

Song Activities
Here are a few ideas on how you can use songs in the class.

Missing Words
Essentially this is a gap fill exercise. Print out the lyric sheet of a song but with gaps where some words should go. Hand out the sheet to the students and have them (in groups) try to work out what words would fit in well in that space. Sometimes it's obvious:

When we moved apart
You broke my .....

But sometimes it's not:

When we ...... apart
You broke my heart.

Once this has been done you can compare what different groups have put together. Which words work (i.e. they have the right number of syllables and scan well) and which words don't.
Then you give the students a new copy of the lyric sheet with the missing words. This time they listen to the song (a couple of times if that's enough) and complete the missing words.
Afterwards it's good to compare the students' version with the artist's version. It's often the case that the lyrics the students have chosen can make the song sound better and there's plenty of scope for discussion on the way in which the meaning has changed.

Lyric Strips
Print out the lyrics with wide gaps between each line then cut the lyrics into strips with one line per strip. Jumble up the strips. With the students in groups, hand out bundles of lyric strips and have the students reassemble the song and tape them together.
Go through the different versions in the class and then compare it to the original.

Song Writing
Present the students with the first verse and chorus of the song. Work with them to establish the number of syllables and the structure of the verse and then have them (in groups) write two or three more verses.

Depending on the level of the class you can give them a few phrases to help them along.

There are no lousy students,

only ineffective teaching strategies.