PLE

1. Conservation Just like opera singers, teachers have to take great care of their voices.

2. Awareness In order to manage a class successfully, the teacher has to be aware of what students are doing and, where possible, how they are feeling. This means watching and listening just as carefully as teaching.

3. Using the voice Perhaps our most important instrument as teachers is our voice. How we speak and what our voice sounds like have a crucial impact on classes. When considering the use of the voice in the management of teaching, there are three issues to think about

4. Audibility Clearly, teachers need to be audible. They must be sure that the students at the back of the class can hear them just as well as those at the front. But audibility cannot be divorced from voice quality: a rasping shout is always unpleasant.

5. Audibility Clearly, teachers need to be audible.

6. Talking to students The way that teachers talk to students — the manner in which they interact with them — is one of the crucial teacher skills, but it does not demand technical expertise.

7. The teacher in the classroom Our physical presence can play a large part in our management of the classroom environment. And it’s not just appearance

8. Proximity Teachers need to consider how close they should be to the students they are working with. Some students are uncomfortable if their teacher stands or sits close to them.

9. Appropriacy Deciding how close to the students you should be when you work with them is a matter of appropriacy. So is the general way in which teachers sit or stand in classrooms.

10. Movement Some teachers tend to spend most of their class time in one place – at the front of the class, for example, or to the side, or in the middle.