classroom management--praise the good

whenever you've got a "bad apple" in your classroom, it's always tempting to spend a lot of time, yelling at them, correcting their behavior, sending them to the corner, etc. but a lot of times, these techniques don't seem to do much.
in my experience, a kid who is acting naughty is often doing it simply to get attention. and they don't care if it's good or bad attention. my advice is this. ignore the child who is acting bad, while praising all of the other kids who are doing good. sounds surprising but i find that it works 9 out of 10 times.
if one or two kids is standing up when they should be sitting down, i comment on how nicely some of the other kids are sitting. immediately the standers will sit down because they want to be praised on their nice sitting as well.
one time, riki wasn't cleaning up when everyone else was. it was really frustrating me and i kept yelling at him to clean up. suddenly i remembered the advice that i'm giving you, and i started to tell other kids what a good job they were doing. as soon as i praised the first kid, i saw riki's head snap in my direction. then he started cleaning up too.
try it. it works....
Tags: esl, classroom management

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