Keeping Students' Attention (My Students are Bored)

2008-07-18T00:50:00.000-07:00

For my first topic I want to do a kind of open question related to a situation that I have faced before on my experience as a teacher; so here it comes.
Regular day of class, as usual you have everything ready and double checked, your lesson plan, materials, etc; and you are 110% confident on your lecture. You enter the classroom and start the topic, you give the whole explanation and examples then you assign activities and you follow and check their progress, at that moment you have total control of your class; your students are working in pairs or groups and they are doing a good job some questions come up, and so on…. Some minutes later they start talking and doing different things apart from the class or they are just getting bored because of the activity or the lesson, and the class becomes a mess then you start thinking and analyzing; why is this happening? Maybe the activity was too short or too long for them. You, as a teacher, worry about it because you cannot handle the situation at that moment; it was not what you planned, you only think on what was wrong and no more.
So my questions are: what was the problem here? Was it the teacher’s fault or it was the student’s? The activity was not the most appropriate or the planning was not the best. Was it a classroom management problem?
I think that it was a classroom management problem for sure, the plan was good but the activities should be more fun for them but it’s not possible to have the student’s attention all the time and happy with the activity to all of them. Those things happen and it’s still kind of difficult to handle them at least you keep your class quiet……..=)
Check this link and leave me your comments and opinions please.
http://www.esl-lesson-plan.com/archives/2006/06/esl_tips_and_tricks_keeping_your_students_still.php

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Keeping Students' Attention (My Students are Bored)