What is one of the worst teacher enemies? 

Student Downtime.

As you know, to have effective classroom management skills, a teacher must keep students actively involved in the lessons. When students are not engaged in learning the potential for discipline problems increases dramatically.

However, regardless of how effective a teacher’s lesson may be there will always be times when certain students finish an assignment before other students.  And, there will even be times when a lesson simply took less time than anticipated.

This student down time, can create a host of classroom management problems for any teacher.

Therefore, the best classroom management teachers have **pre-planned** activities to address this very problem.

Teachers should have a variety of activities that require little or no preparation materials.  However, these activities should not be viewed as simply fillers.  They deserve a definite academic purpose…either as review of previously taught material or as a preview of upcoming topics to be studied.

It is critical though that these activities be easy enough for the student to accomplish without teacher assistance.

*************************
What do you do when you are faced with student downtime?
Come discuss this at the Teaching Tips Machine Forum @ www.TeachingTipsMachine.com/forum
*************************

Share