In the second part of our Come Alive! storytelling and drama activities video series, teacher trainer Rachel Jeffries shows us a fun way of getting the class to slow down and pay attention to her. The techniques she introduces help the children to understand and learn when it’s time to stop and focus on instructions or another person speaking.
Keep calm and focus
How do you get your students to stop and listen?
It’s the start of the lesson and I’ve just arrived in the classroom. There are students out of their seats, some frantically digging out their English books from under the desk, others in the middle of their (work of art) doodle in their notebook. It’s a usual sight for a teacher arriving to the class, and with anything up to thirty students! I’m ready to start the lesson and I want them to stop what they’re doing and listen to me, and all without losing my voice!
One of the techniques I often use in the primary classroom is a super simple activity that I call ‘focus’. The idea is that it will hopefully achieve just that; a class full of students who are focusing on me and ready to start the activity, and all without even saying one word. I start a basic hand movement, raising it upwards like a mime artist, introducing a second hand, hands on head and so on. The idea is that one by one, the students will begin to notice and to copy my movements. Keeping the movements slow and precise encourages them to slow down and also to calm down. It can sometimes take a minute or so to have the whole class synchronised, a minute which can feel like a lifetime to a teacher trying to take control, but one at a time the students jump on board and you´ll find that nobody likes to be the last to notice.
Watch Rachel using the ‘focus’ activity within the classroom:
What are your top tips for calming a class and focusing your students? Let us know in the comments below.
For more creative drama activities for the classroom, download the Come Alive! book for free. It accompanies Storyfun, our popular and engaging story-based course for the revised young learner exams (Pre A1 Starters, A1 Movers & A2 Flyers) from Cambridge. Watch Rachel’s last video on energising activities for students.