“Because so many teachers struggle with this problem,” Linsin explains, “many after a while kind of throw up their hands and just decide they’re going to talk over students, they’re going to do their best to keep things as quiet as possible during independent work time, so the students come to you (from) classrooms where the teacher asked them to be quiet but doesn’t really follow up on it.” Reason 2: They don’t understand what “no talking” means. If they come to you with this behavior, it’s likely that it has just been part of their conditioning. So even if they hear you, even if they understand that you want quiet at a certain time, they don’t believe anything negative will happen if they ignore your request. If you’re able to teach to a quiet classroom in the beginning of the year and now you’re not able to, or if it happened right off the bat, then somehow at some point, the students’ respect for you and for the process, for the classroom, and your authority has faded.” “At some point,” he explains, “Your authority has faded. Reason 1: They don’t believe you mean it.ĭespite the fact that you specifically tell students not to talk, deep down they don’t believe you mean it. According to Linsin, excessive talking-talking that occurs during independent work time or direct instruction-happens for two reasons. Why It’s Happeningīefore you can solve this problem, you have to understand its cause. Without those two, these solutions might kind of work, but you’re still probably not going to love your job. So this post is based on the assumption that you’re planning engaging lessons and you have a decent relationship with your students. If you haven’t taken the time to get to know them as individuals, if you mispronounce their names, if you regularly use sarcasm or make them feel stupid for asking questions, then they aren’t going to want to behave well for you. Two: A big part of good classroom management is building good relationships with your students. So if you’re shooting for a classroom environment where students sit silently and do rote seat work all day long, where they never have an opportunity to talk to their peers, where they never get out of their seats, and where the work is not engaging, you are going to have problems. Michael Linsin of Smart Classroom Management Now he’s going to help us understand the causes of excessive talking, what you should be able to realistically expect from students, and how you can fix the problem. Last year, he taught us how to set up a clear, simple classroom management plan. To find solutions to this problem, I went to Michael Linsin, the creator of Smart Classroom Management and my go-to person for all classroom management needs. One of the things they don’t teach us in our education courses is just how freaking much students talk, and how hard it can be to quiet them down in order to get anything accomplished. If this sounds anything like you, you’re not alone. In a matter of seconds, the whole room had erupted, a huge hysterical bowl of popcorn, exploding all around me, and I couldn’t find my way out. Someone else decided to race them over to the sharpener. At this point, it had turned into a game. And with rascally smiles, they turned back to their journals to pretend to write some more. Another journal closed while a different hand went up. I squatted by her desk, and behind me, a conversation started between two others. The room needs to stay quiet so we can concentrate, I told them. The two who were stuck asked him what he wrote about. I signaled to them that I’d be over in a minute, but in the meantime, someone else was closing his journal, finished already. While we talked, two more raised their hands-two more pops-and said they were stuck, too. Then, like that first kernel of popcorn, one student said she didn’t know what to write, so I walked over to her desk to help her. I gave the class instructions for some kind of work let’s say journal writing. In my first few years of teaching, student talking was like popcorn. Listen to my interview with Michael Linsin ( transcript):
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