So, you don’t know how to deal with difficult students. Or maybe the students are specifically creating more problems in your class. They stay more distracted, talk too often, create noise, don’t submit their homework on time and while the other teachers give a good impression of those students, you aren’t able to complain much about them because it will then put your teaching and class management skills in question.

Here are few smart teacher hacks that you can adopt without putting yourself or your teaching skills in a bad light.

1.      Create a pick-a-chit for the student who remained most disciplined or who answered to the maximum number of questions, or the first one to submit the assignment, or the for the one who performed best in the class test or surprise test. Write small rewards on those chits. Maybe more free time, no need to submit next assignment, extra grace points in class test next time, eligible to cheat from the book, or whatever. You can go as creative as you want here. Teenagers love such games. 

2.      Include 30-second or 1-minute breaks when the class is getting tired or bored during a lesson. It is okay to star feeling sleepy or bored during the class. The students might have got tired after so many back-to-back classes, or after eating a heavy lunch, or maybe right in the morning when they still have not woken up from the good night’s sleep. You can have small activities like dancing, stretching, jumping, clapping or whatever that gets their body into a movement to break the boring cycle of sitting, listening, and taking notes.

3.      Create bonus point system for internal assessment. Instead of making your internal assessment assignment or project specific, create a bonus point system where you can reward five students every time by the end of each class with points that will eventually get added or averaged out into their internal assessment marks. You can give them these points based on different criteria.

4.      Assign them small topics to teach to the class. If your students are unable to grasp the concepts being taught in the class, give them small topics to prepare and understand at home and teach the rest of the class. You can ask them to contact you for your help in understanding those topics. By the end of this exercise, every student in the class would have perfected themselves in at least one lesson or topic. And just before the exam, each of them would be contacting one another for their notes or a small crash course from each other. Plus, this can also give them a chance to understand and improve their presentation skills and help the introvert or shy kids to speak out.

5.      Create colour codes. Be it a blackboard, whiteboard, or the presentation you create for your lessons, use colour codes to demarcate between what you want your students to copy word by word in their notebooks, and what you want them to just listen and understand instead of getting distracted with writing.

Teaching is not only about how you are presenting a concept or a lesson, but how you are doing that. Getting your students to stay an active participant in your teaching techniques will help them understand better and learn quickly. If students are rather given an option, they would prefer to remain lazy and passive. Hence, don’t give them that option and keep them on their toes, if not literally then mentally.