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Classroom Management Techniques: Jim Scrivener

This document provides a review of the book "Classroom Management Techniques" by Jim Scrivener. The reviewer summarizes that the book is an essential resource that provides practical classroom management techniques for teachers. It is organized into chapters addressing different classroom management issues. Each chapter contains subsections that describe techniques, include illustrations, and have reflection questions. The reviewer recommends the book highly for teacher training programs where quick acquisition of skills is needed. In conclusion, the reviewer states that while not resolving all problems, the book is a valuable guide for teachers to refer to for particular classroom situations.

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503 views

Classroom Management Techniques: Jim Scrivener

This document provides a review of the book "Classroom Management Techniques" by Jim Scrivener. The reviewer summarizes that the book is an essential resource that provides practical classroom management techniques for teachers. It is organized into chapters addressing different classroom management issues. Each chapter contains subsections that describe techniques, include illustrations, and have reflection questions. The reviewer recommends the book highly for teacher training programs where quick acquisition of skills is needed. In conclusion, the reviewer states that while not resolving all problems, the book is a valuable guide for teachers to refer to for particular classroom situations.

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Đan Phạm
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Classroom Management Techniques

Jim Scrivener

Cambridge University Press, 2012

Reviewed By Arizio Sweeting

Of the various roles a teacher can play in the classroom,


that of the classroom manager is by far the most important.
Developing classroom management skills is a complex
process which can be a positive challenge for an experienced
teacher, but a very daunting experience for those who are
new or learning to organise the classroom setting. Classroom
management requires a change of behaviour, an ability to take
risks and a constant process of making decisions about how
to organise, control or relinquish control in the classroom.
For this reason, a book such as Classroom Management
Techniques, another title in the extensive Cambridge
Handbook for Language Teachers series, is an essential resource for any language
practitioner interested in creating an optimal environment for their learners.
Classroom Management Techniques is organised into seven chapters packed with
useful and practical techniques for teachers in a broad range of contexts, and it offers
a plethora of strategies for dealing with different classroom management issues. Each
chapter, namely ‘The Classroom’, ‘The Teacher’, ‘The Learners’, ‘Key Interventions’,
‘Facilitating Interactions’, ‘Establishing and Maintaining Appropriate Behaviour’ and
‘The Lesson’, is divided into subsections, or units, and every unit starts with a question
about a classroom management problem. This is then followed by the unit’s aims, a
discussion about the unit’s topic and detailed and easy-to-follow instructions for related
classroom management techniques. For instance, one of my favourite units in the book
is ‘Gestures and Facial Expression’, which covers a range of different techniques to help
teachers reduce unnecessary teacher talk when giving instructions or explanations. As
Scrivener points out, ‘gestures and expressions add a crucial element to instructions
and explanations. They provide visual support that helps learners to understand what

Volume 28 No 1 English Australia Journal 99


is being said. They also allow the teacher to say less, which by itself may help to make
the instructions or explanations clearer’ (p. 56). In this unit, there are seven pages of
illustrations as well as guidelines for showing teachers the usefulness of gestures and
facial expressions. One of the techniques presented exploits the use of eye contact in
the classroom such as making an undramatic shift of focus by looking at one student
for a while and then moving on to another student when talking with them during pair
or group work. Like other units in the book, this unit ends with questions for reflection
encouraging the reader to use the material to evaluate their classroom practice by
analysing each of the issues presented more closely.
Generally speaking, I find it difficult to fault Classroom Management Techniques. The
book is a valuable teacher training tool and I would l highly recommend it for teachers-in-
training on pre-service programmes such as CELTA, where quick acquisition of classroom
management skills within a short period of time is required. For example, one chapter
of the book which is of great benefit to CELTA trainee teachers is ‘Key Interventions’. It
brings together 14 enormously helpful strategies to help teachers evaluate their classroom
behaviour in order to better cater for their learners, such as recognising elements of an
instruction. From my point of view as a trainer, simple things like being able to identify
when one activity finishes and a new one begins can often be ignored or taken for granted
by learner teachers. In Classroom Management Techniques, Scrivener offers a number
of ideas for teachers to become more aware of certain important instruction elements,
like giving learners a brief summary of the task and its purpose, clarifying task procedure,
being explicit with the mode (spoken or written) of task completion, the timing for the
activity, and much more.
In summary, Classroom Management Techniques is not a book which promises to resolve
all the classroom problems which teachers could encounter in all teaching contexts around
the world; rather, it is a guide which language teachers can refer to when they need
techniques, strategies and approaches for a particular classroom situation. The book is
very user-friendly and easy to read. At the end of the book, teachers will find an index for
helping them easily locate information in the book as well as a classroom management
booklist with references to reliable titles related to the topic. Having recently finished
teaching on a CELTA course where I was able to share some of the valuable techniques
this book provides with my trainees, I can confidently say that Classroom Management
Techniques is a resource that any teacher who truly cares for the smooth running of their
classroom must have in their library.

Arizio Sweeting is a teacher and teacher educator at the Institute of


Continuing and TESOL Education at the University of Queensland (ICTE-
UQ). He is the author of Language Through Film (Phoenix Education), a

100 English Australia Journal Volume 28 No 1


teacher’s resource book for using feature films in the language classroom,
by Phoenix Education Pty., and a guest blogger at the Oxford University
Press ELT Global Blog.

[email protected]

52
A year of subversive activity for the ELT classroom

L u k e M e d d i n g s & L i n d s ay C l a n d f i e l d

The Round, 2012

Reviewed by Michael Griffin

‘This book is not for everyone’ – this is what the authors of 52, Lindsay Clandfield and
Luke Meddings, write in the introduction of their new e-book, published by The Round.
52 aims to bridge the gap between what often happens in classrooms around the world
and what is actually going on in the world, and to give students and teachers a chance to
think and talk about real world issues in a critical way. In my view, the book was extremely
successful in meeting this goal.
Billed as ‘a year of subversive activity’, the book is divided into 52 different sections
with occasionally innocuous and vague titles like ‘same’, ‘poem’, ‘school’, ‘running’, and
‘space’ arranged alphabetically. This means that teachers will probably have to skim the
entries as they try to find something suitable for their class. While it is stand-alone book,

Volume 28 No 1 English Australia Journal 101

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