Classroom Management in Online Lessons
When it comes to class management in online lessons vs in person lessons, they are mostly the same with some small differences. If you are doing worksheets or specific book work, you will not be able to directly look at your students doing the work to make sure that they are doing things correctly. This means that it is imperative that you are very clear with your students while giving instructions and that you are checking in to make sure that they have understood your instructions as well. Using the chat box or screen share in your online lesson is a good method for making your instructions clear, because students can refer back to them if they have any problems or get lost. It’s also important to make sure to go over examples with your students so you can show them the example directly through screen share or the chat box.
Alternatively, if you are doing speaking activities, you always want to start out by doing an example directly with one of your students so everyone can see it done properly before participating. Also, if you are planning on doing group work for speaking activities, you should think about who works well together, what your students' levels are and about each student's personality in general. Putting students in groups together is very important and once you get to know your students and how they work in class, you should very carefully make plans for which students work together well and which ones do not work well together during classes. Knowing who works well together is also huge for classroom management and can save you a lot of trouble when it comes to having the lessons play out properly according to your plan.
Also remember that having a system for turns or a way for students to talk during the class is very important. For instance, putting the talking order in the chat box or having them raise their hands or using an emoticon in order to signal their turns or that they have a question is very important to make sure that students are not talking over each other or going in a random order which could disrupt the lesson and other students.
Finally, behavior is one of the most important things when it comes to online lessons. When it comes to younger kids you need to set ground rules and expectations for how they act, such as having specific rules and making sure that you are always consistent in enforcing them whenever a student acts out or breaks the rules. It will show the other students that they need to follow the rules or be taken to a side room with you for discussion on their behavior. Just remember that for younger learners they need to be talked to directly and if the behavior persists try to engage with them a bit more and if that does not work, have a talk directly with their parents if their behavior is constantly disrupting the class. There is also the mute feature on most programs, so if you have a student who is consistently disrupting other students or you during class sessions, you can mute their microphone.
When it comes to teenagers to adults and their behavior in the lesson, you can be a bit more direct with them. You can pull them to the side for a chat or you can send them a direct message to check up on them and see if everything is alright. Try to always be private when you are having issues with older learners, because it can be very embarrassing and demoralizing to older learners if they are told something in an open chat room of their peers. With much older learners, you won’t find yourself having many problems, but always try to be cautious and direct whenever you do have any difficulties that you feel must be brought up. However, try not to bring up any small issues that you don’t believe are warranted to be discussed unless it is absolutely a problem.
Let’s recap on classroom management:
If learners are having technical difficulties, have them exit and rejoin the group, this is usually the main problem learners have when using programs.
Students don’t listen to the rules or are disruptive, mute learners who are loud or disruptive in situations where they talk randomly or do not follow the rules. Make sure to unmute the learner when asking them a question or when having open discussion again to give another chance to the learner.
Students don’t want to answer questions, make sure to always encourage answering the questions you ask during the lessons and tell your students what your expectations are when it comes to participation.
Students are too shy to participate in the class, make sure that you give them another avenue to participate through such as the chat box or through direct messages with you.
Group work is difficult because higher-level learners do not work well with the lower-level learners, make rules so that everyone in the group has to speak and tell your learners your expectations before starting group work.