Classroom Management Strategies for Handling Extremely Difficult Group of Students

Here are a few classroom management strategies to help when working with a very challenging group of students. 

1. Divide and conquer. Split the group according to your seating plan. Tell them that if they want to sit with their friends they have to earn that privilege. Use a calendar to show the number of lessons there are left this year and tell them that as long as they work quietly and respectfully, you will change the seating plan after another ten lessons. That way, as long as they behave appropriately, they will be able to enjoy the majority of the year’s lessons sitting with their friends. 

2. Use LOTS of warranted, genuine praise. Be quick to thank and acknowledge students in this group when they do the right thing.  You may have to test the best way to do this.  Some students, who are lucky to part of a generally supportive class, may be grateful for public praise while in some groups receiving praise from the teacher can result in students being ridiculed for being ‘goody-two-shoes’.  Try private praise outside the room (after/before the lesson) and written praise – postcards/letters home. When negative behaviour has become entrenched (as it does with a very difficult group), focusing on what the students are doing RIGHT is the best way to turn the tide.

3. Insist on a short period of silent work in each lesson.  Offer a number of choices of work of varying difficulty and let the students choose what they want, but insist they do the work they have chosen in silence. Insisting on short periods (up to ten minutes) of silent work gives students (and you) a break from constant noise and  reminds them that YOU are in charge. 

4. Don't raise your voice to be heard. Any teacher who struggles to be heard over classroom noise will be perceived to be weak, and ignored by students.  Always wait until they are totally silent before speaking to them en masse, use a quiet speaking voice (if anything you should speak with fewer decibels than usual to make them try harder to hear you) and limit the number of times you stop them or interrupt them to give instructions. If you have a lot of directions to give, do so quietly by addressing small groups and individuals rather than the whole group. 

5. Be dramatic in voice and actions. Sometimes this is more effective with younger learners but acting is a large part of drawing the attention of your students.  Lower your voice to a near-whisper and say, “Anyone who can hear me, raise your hand”. Lower the volume more than usual to get attention; as the kids find it harder to hear you, you should find them shushing each other.  

If you have an assistant teacher, interact with them regularly too; this give-and-take between you helps to keep attention from the class.

6. Impose questions on the class. As a student, it’s awful when you’re picked on to answer a question when you haven’t been listening.  All eyes are suddenly on you and all you can do is sit there, red-faced, unable to come up with an answer.  So, tell the class, “In the next few minutes, I’m going to ask somebody a question.”  

Nobody wants to be caught out in that situation of having to answer a question when they’ve missed the learning point or even the question being asked.  Your kids should respond to this and quieten down.  Of course, you can’t use this tactic every 2 minutes, but it should help in those moments where the loud ones are acting out.

7. Whole-class behavioural discussion. In some classes, you have those kids that are really challenging and have explosive behaviour problems. What we sometimes tend to do as teachers is to pretend that they’re not as challenging as they are in front of the rest of the class because we want to keep that calm image, and that’s not a bad thing. The thing is, the rest of the kids aren’t stupid; they know who the real troublemakers are and the behavioural problems that they have. 

One year I had a kid that was just like this – although a ‘hulk’ would be more accurate than ‘kid’.  He’d throw whole desks and chairs around and generally disrupt the lessons in a major way. Things came to a head and I decided enough was enough; it was time to stop pretending these problems didn’t exist and involve the class in a discussion about it.  

Once he’d calmed down, I asked the class, “You all notice that he has a problem controlling his anger – have you ever felt the same way?  What did you do about it?”  This prompted a discussion about appropriate and inappropriate ways to control and respond to feelings of anger. And we related it to this boy’s behaviour, then wrote down strategies for managing those feelings in a healthier way. 

I’d already been using a lot of my strategies for building classroom community and a supportive learning environment, so the kids were used to problem solving in this kind of way.  This student wasn’t at all embarrassed about me addressing his behaviour in front of the class either, as he knew the conversation was going to be empathetic and supportive.  

Moving forward, having these whole-class discussions – even about less severe behaviour from other students – was really productive.  When he or any other student acted out, instead of the other students looking at me in a kind of “What are you going to do about it?” sort of way, they’d be looking at me and the other student sympathetically, trying to comfort him and get him to calm down. So, rather than it being me against a disruptive student all by myself, it was like having the whole class on my side. 

8. Stay positive. There is a tendency (understandable when faced with a disruptive class) to stop trying hard to engage them and instead allow yourself to be backed into punishing them with dull, uninspiring lesson tasks and negative classroom management strategies.  The occasional ‘copying from the board’ or ‘worksheet-based’ lesson is fine to remind them what they’re missing, or to give yourself a well-earned forty winks, but if these tedious activities become the norm, behaviour will undoubtedly deteriorate.  Believe in the value of good education and let the students see that you want them to succeed.  Ask them the type of activities they would like to do in the lesson and strive to include as many of their suggestions as is realistically possible. In time they will respect you for this.  

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