Dealing with dominant young students

In group classes how do you politely get the kid with a captivating personality, who isn’t scared to make mistakes in English, to be quiet?

It’s a problem in a couple of my classes right now. On one hand, I applaud these kids as they’re only doing what I wish the other kids were but on the other hand, I feel they’re being detrimental to the other students who should be contributing/expressing themselves in English too.

I’m sure all long-term teachers have had this problem. How did or do you deal with it?

Use praise to say “shut up.”

Basically ask the class if Student X is good at speaking, or speaks well. Make sure the whole class agrees that this student is doing well. Then say you want others to answer. Then whenever you want that student to pipe down a bit you can just say “Anyone… not Student X, we know you can answer it, but I want to hear someone else now…”

You have to be careful that you aren’t directly or indirectly labeling the kid a know-it-all or a show-off, make sure it is praise that the students understand and buy into. Make sure you paint the kid’s outspokeness in the most positive of lights and encourage the bright kid to speak up except in those cases when you are specifically asking the kid to let others speak.

This is a fairly direct approach and it’s worked for me most of the time when I’ve used it.

You might try this trick I learned from my Chinese teacher with my first class, nearly seven years ago. It’s so simple and obvious, perhaps this is why most foreign teachers I’ve suggested it to seem a little quick to disregard it. Anyways, I’ve been teaching for quite a while now, and it’s never failed for me.

Here’s what you do:

Take 3 or four strips of the standard clear, thin thin tape. About 3 inches long is best. Then simply stick them vertically over the offending student’s mouth so he can’t open it. Simple as that! This method is definitely a short term solution for a long term problem, but if you are consistent with it most children get the idea over a week or two.

Make sure you don’t use the wider tape like you would use to strengthen a cardboard box. It is a lot stickier than regular Scotch tape, and may leave red marks when you remove it. Some parents may ask questions, and this is never good.

I hope this helps. I’ve been teaching kindy for seven years, and it seems to be the best method I’ve found. We all know one talkative student can spoil the learning environment for the whole class, it’s really in everyone’s interest to correct this behavior ASAP.

Cheers!

(Just remember NOT to use the thick, stickier tape. Trust me.)

[quote=“Matchstick_man”]In group classes how do you politely get the kid with a captivating personality, who isn’t scared to make mistakes in English, to be quiet?

It’s a problem in a couple of my classes right now. On one hand, I applaud these kids as they’re only doing what I wish the other kids were but on the other hand, I feel they’re being detrimental to the other students who should be contributing/expressing themselves in English too.

I’m sure all long-term teachers have had this problem. How did or do you deal with it?[/quote]

I think taking a kid like this and making him into a great student could be easy. It seems the English part is going well, but he needs some manners training.

Write “Zip your lip” on the board and give smilies or stamps to kids who raise their hands before they speak. Walk them through it: “What did you say? Huh? What did you forget to do?” And hopefully he will shoot his hand right up in the air.

And be consistant. This is something I do not do enough in my classes. Sometimes I want answers from individual kids. Sometimes I let them do the Chinese answering technique (all at once, all together, all the same words. [How DO they do that???]) Try to use the same method all the time. They’ll get it in a few classes.

And, yes, praise, always praise good behavior…expecially the quiet girls who rarley speak up.

If you’re concerned about parents asking questions, then don’t do it.

If you did this twice in my school, I have to fire you btw.

Why not just have them stand with their finger over their lips as a reminder type punishment. My son is 5 and very outspoken. If a tacher literaly taped his lips shut, I’d be livid.

If you’re concerned about parents asking questions, then don’t do it.

If you did this [color=red]twice[/color] in my school, I have to fire you btw.

Why not just have them stand with their finger over their lips as a reminder type punishment. My son is 5 and very outspoken. If a tacher literaly taped his lips shut, I’d be livid.[/quote]

I am sure that redmenace was joking about the tape. Wouldn’t you fire them the first time? I’d probably call the police too.

[quote]
I am sure that redmenace was joking about the tape. Wouldn’t you fire them the first time? I’d probably call the police too.[/quote]

Not the first time, because we all make dumb mistakes. I warned a teacher once about having a kid kneel down and then having another kid jump over him (she was teaching TPR “jump”) the second kid landed squarely on the first’s back. I said, in no uncertain terms, Do not do that again in this school. I think the point was well understood.

As for RM joking…dunno. It’s just that some people actually do not see anything wrong with a punishment like this.

I just make eye contact with the kid before he/she speaks, and do the finder on the lip thing. If you’re smiling and shushing one kid, and saying “I want someone else to talk” then they get the message without feeling put down. Just keep it jokey.

They’re usually so eager to get the answer out there that they start prompting the people around them, so if you sit them with quiet studens then you’ve got an ally in making them speak more. Easy.

Sometimes I have to do it with adults too.

What kind of games you playing there Willis? :laughing:

I’ve got the same problem with a very outspoken young man. He wants to run the class, if he doesn’t get all the attention he goes off in a sulk. The easy way, which I don’t like to use, is to piss him off at the beginning of class either by ignoring or patronizing him; this is only easy for me because it gets him to shut up. However, he is then unwilling to learn. So, I often praise and say “Great Allan, somebody else this time!” or to pair him off doing paper scissors stone with a quiet kid (or one physically smaller than him) during games, if the little kid wins, Allan is just a little bit embarrassed and quietens down.

For the first time ever on Saturday, my boss raised his voice and shouted at Allan for being out of order. I don’t know the details but I was shocked that this kid just doesn’t realise the world doesn’t revolve around him. It will be interesting to see Allan’s behaviour next class, after being taken down a peg or two.To see my boss lose it made me :astonished: I like Allan, he’s intelligent, funny and enjoys studying, but every student needs a chance to practise without the class monkey shouting “Teacher, me me me me me me me me” all the time.

L :smiley:

Yes, actually I was joking about using this “method”.

Unfortunately I wasn’t joking about the Chinese teacher doing this in my class. She also made them wear dunce caps and threatened to “cut them”. At this time she was the head teacher at the school, but a few months later she was sweeping the floors. I think she had some kind of breakdown, but she was a close friend of the owners so they did not fire her. This was my first job and I was clueless and insecure of my teaching ability. There is no way I would put up with this now.

I ignore the ones who try to dominate and simply say, “I see that ___ has her hand raised and is waiting quietly for her turn to speak. Yes, ____?” When they see that the ones who are waiting quietly for their turns are the only ones I am listening to, they quickly catch on. Telling them your expectations and praising the children who are following the rule helps reinforce what you want for them to do.

We all should write a book. There is some excellent thinking going on here. And this post is one of them.

:bravo:

I put all my students names on poker chips and then draw them out of a bag. The children answer when their name is called. It makes everyone pay attention because they never know when their name is going to be called. I use it for answering questions, picking students to be little teachers during reading and other activities. It also stops me from playing favourities or ignoring the kid who gets on my nerves.

Another version of this: If you’re using a team scoring system, let the talkative kid give their answer without raising their hands, then call on someone who raises their hand on the other team who then copies the first kid’s answer. Award points to the copier, with a verbal remark that you can only get points when you raise your hands.

Another version of this: If you’re using a team scoring system, let the talkative kid give their answer without raising their hands, then call on someone who raises their hand on the other team who then copies the first kid’s answer. Award points to the copier, with a verbal remark that you can only get points when you raise your hands.[/quote]

Also, take away points if they persist.

For Kindy I have a “TEACHER” score column too. Everytime a student does the wrong thing the ‘teacher’ gets a point. If I win at the end of class, I get a special treat. i.e. everyone except me tidies the room, i can make 30 seconds noise while the rest sit in silence, i choose a toy they cant play with etc. Its fun, and teaches them more than ‘them against us’ mentality which often causes more disputes in the class than anything else. This way the students are responsible for their own behaviour as well as everyone elses in the group.
When I am very harsh, with ‘steven’ for example, i write down just how many points the other team gained because of ‘steven.’ Then we have a chat about ‘being a team.’
This won’t work at junior high, they will think you are a dumbass!

I had a little boy like that once. He came to my class when he was seven. Super sharp and very engaging to the point of disrupting the teaching and learning process for the rest of the class. He wasn’t rude nor obnoxious. He was just too fast and exhuberant for the rest of the class. I suggeted to his mother that she might consider placing him in a more advanced class for a few months. She declined and so there I was with little Daniel. I took him aside and told him that if he knew the answer to any question I asked, to just wink at me and smile (after all, he would know that he was on the same level as his teacher). That way I would be able to give the other kids a chance. He agreed, and six months later we were all on the same page. He wasn’t that much of a “genius” after all. Just a kid who really liked English. He’s about 12-13 now and at the top of his class both in the buxiban and at public school. Something about “Captain of his class”…

My suggestion is to take it easy, use yer noggin and take that student (obnoxious ones accepted here, too) under your wing and be the reason why he or she wants to study English. Your students are the stones of a cathedral, and you are the mason with the mortar, the level, and the square.

I subbed a junior high school class one day and found a disciplinary note on the teacher’s desk for a girl who had been punished for being disruptive by being made to stand at the back facing the wall. Then she had gone on to start pulling the display off the wall. Oh great, I thought.

When the students filed in for class she wasn’t amongst them. She turned up five minutes late and sauntered in with a very bad attitude.

But she looked as intrigued as she did surprised to see that there was a new face at the front of the room, and I didn’t see any point of making an issue of her lateness for the one class that I was going to teach. I just waved her in, she sat down quickly, got her books out and regarded me very attentively.

Snap! Hand up almost before the question was asked, and the answer was right. And again with the next one. The third time I did the mock overwhelmed thing and got an answer from someone else instead. She realised immediately that I needed to get the whole class involved, and took it on herself to help and encourage all the students around her.

I didn’t really do anything except give her the chance to be a model student. But I guess if I had been more ‘uptight’ and focused on controlling the class then she would have quickly got bored and started disrupting things. I always try to remind myself of this experience when dealing with troublesome students. If you don’t give them an outlet then they can go bad.

A whole “changes in latitude, changes in attitude” mentality. If you have a trouble kid and start praising them for all the good things they do rather than scolding them for all the bad, then they start to see themselves as a more positive person.

I really like the “wink and a smile” approach. Very cute idea!

My first grade class, my first year in Taiwan had quite a few kids who found the materials rather easy and so they would give the other children a hard time, usually saying, “It’s sooo easy!” and waving their hands. I had been telling them, “Something that might be easy for you is not always easy for everyone.” Didn’t really work. Finally, after having enough of students feeling bad because they didn’t know the answers as fast as others, I came up with something to put them in their place. One child began chiming, “It’s sooo easy!” when a girl was struggling with an answer. I looked at him and said, “Spell ‘facility’.” He looked at me and finally said that he didn’t know how. I told him, “But it’s sooo easy! F-A-C-I-L-I-T-Y. Does it make you feel good because it’s easy for me to do it but not for you?”
I rarely heard the phrase after that, but when I did, the kids would say to the offender, “Spell ‘facility’”. They are now getting ready to go into the fifth grade and they all still remember how to spell “facility” and to be less judgmental of other students’ abilities, usually.

True.

I had a problem kid in one class I inherited that I couldn’t get a handle on. I tried giving leeway, tried positive reinforcement, but had to use negative reinforcement to maintain class order a few times. The kid had a serious problem with my authority as a teacher on occassion and I basically used some of the less effective means of classroom management at my disposal simply to maintain control of the class.

Turns out the problem was that the kid was put in way too low of a level. He had been taught English about 8 levels above where the class was. I did an assessment of him and I was blown away at how well he could communicate. He was bored out of his mind, and he only performed poorly because he had so much more advanced stuff going around in his head than everyone else and he was so bored that he didn’t want to pay attention.

He had trouble adjusting to an advanced class, but his behavior problem went away when he got challenged. And the kid came to me later and buddied up with me once he knew I respected him.