One boy in CL03

Rakhi and i have a class where there's a boy who's acted like a CK kid. He has been studying in Shane since CK01. Now he's in CL03. in the class he still didn't sit properly and stood up for several times in the class after we reminded him for some times. Sometimes, he would speak Chinese loudly and looked round the classroom while the other students are drilling the target language. We made him sit on a little chair after three strikes. It didn't work so well on him. He didn't felt shamed or anything. Two weeks ago, we made him sit next to twin sister and talked to his sister to help hime. It worked well on the first week, however, it didn't work so well on the second week. I talked to his sister about his behavior in the school. She said their teacher had given him a warning in the school. Anyone got any ideas about how to deal with this kid?

I have the same problem in CK05 Class,the boy is really hard to stay in big chair.

Some advice I received a long time ago about classroom management is "don't let the students drive your car" Your car is your classroom, don't let them decide what happens...

We have all had a student or students like this. Personally, I've tried lots of things with varying degrees of success.

-1st, focus on feedback for the student. What kind of feedback is he/she getting? When I've had a student acting like this, I found most or all of my feedback was negative, the student didn't really care, he just wants attention. I was rarely encouraging the student because he was always doing what he or she shouldn't be doing.

- get more feedback, ask for an observation, another set of eyes in the classroom might be able to help out when/why the student is acting up.

- in some situations, try to "kill them with positive feedback" Highlight good things they do in class, make it public, "Wow! Jimmy did _____ really well..." then have the TA follow up right after encouraging the kid to repeat that behavior. I will try to ignore some poor behavior.

- sit down with the student alone might be helpful too. In higher level classes talking to the student face to face, keeping it simple about behavior might work? Ask him, what should a good student do? What does a poorly behaved student do? You could have them write it down for you, in Chinese. This puts it on them a bit more to find out whats acceptable and unacceptable.

-when I've had real problem kids like this, I tend to plan my activities according to them (not entirely, but keep them in mind). "What will Jimmy do if I try this freer activity with 3 hammers and a set of dice...?"

-have a talk with mom or dad without the student present. If it is very bad, I would even ask the parent to sit in on a class to see the behavior. If the kid is bad, the parent can see, or if the kid is good you can encourage the kid to keep up that good behavior.

Set clear goals and expectations; a clear list of what needs to be done.
-for the Teacher... TA.... Student.... Parents.....
Let the student and parents know what you are doing to help, let them know what you want them to do, or if they have ideas of what they can help with too. Something difficult that I've found is keeping this whole thing positive. When talking to parents sometimes it leads to only negative conversations/interactions with the student. This is why goals and expectations are important.

Hope this helps, what else have people done with students like this?

I devised a way a few months ago to get the other students to help motivate him to behave. If attention is what he wants, let's assume negative attention is not what he is looking for.

I have a few students in various classes that just couldn't be controlled. This created a very chaotic class and decimated my class pace and lesson flow. So I developed a behavior management system that pits students vs. teachers. Explain that it's students vs. teachers and that when they are speaking English well and doing the activities and games properly they score points. When they speak Chinese or scream or get out of their chairs (or whatever you decide is bad behavior) WE get points! If the students have more points than the teachers at the end of class, they win a reward of some sort (you decide, but I usually bring in some snack or fruit during break time the following week).

This has worked very well for me, because the students are so into it that when the misbehaving student acts up and scores points for the teachers, his fellow students rise up against him and give him a good cussing. He almost always starts to behave better when the other students start blaming him for them losing the game. It has really changed the dynamic in two or three of my classes. The money I shell out each week that they win is well worth it.

There is one bad side: your problem student may decide he doesn't mind the other students yelling at him and this may not have any effect at all on him. But it never hurts to try!

I think Keola basically went through everything I've had success with. A couple things I'll add:

1. Figure out what motivates the kids - If the kid is looking for attention, show them a lot of attention for behavior you want to see from them. Obviously you can't ignore a student who's writhing around on the floor screaming while everyone else is having class. But a simple disappointed, sad, look and a quick shake of your head is all the attention they should get.

Whatever else it may be, if you can figure it out what they want from class, you should be able to shape their behavior.

2. Keep your expectations reasonable - You can't expect a complete 180 in a week from a kid who's been terrible every week for a long time. Have a talk with the kid about what you want from them. Keep is simple and clear. And don't overwhelm them. And then every week see how the kid did.

For some students, you can ask them "How do you think you did today?" They know how they did in class. They'll be honest.

For Vicky's kid, if his attitude is good, I would probably count how many times he gets out of his seat every class. Keep a piece of paper with you and just mark down when he gets up. Show him the paper during class a few times and at the end. And just ask him to improve on the number every week.