12 RULES FOR EFFECTIVE CLASSROOM COMMUNICATION

1. Mutual respect should exist between you and your students. They will respect you if you teach well, but you must also respect them. Most of our RTC students are adults and should not be treated or punished as children. We must listen to and respect their experiences. They can also teach us a lot.

2. Treat all students equally. Do not allow any feelings you have about particular groups of people – wantoks or women, for instance – to affect your teaching. Do not develop any ‘favourites’ in the class, or students you particularly dislike.

3. Judge people on their abilities as you find them, not on their background Do not say: “This person is a standard 6 leaver, or this person cannot read or write, so they must be a poor student”. “This student is a form 3 leaver, so must be a good student”.

4. Try to be confident in your teaching and the students will have confidence in you. This partly depends on good preparation.

5. Introduce yourself and your background and ask students to do the same.

6. Learn the names of your students, so you treat them as individuals. A ‘map’ of the class with names is useful, as long as you ask them to sit in the same position each time.

7. Be sensitive to students’ feelings. Remember that most Solomon Islands cultures do not encourage speaking out or disagreeing in public, especially with elders.

8. Do not be critical of students in public. A student may feel shamed, by being told that an answer is wrong. Some may not be willing to answer again. Others may only answer if they are absolutely sure they are correct. You must respect this, but gradually try to change it, as will be suggested later.

9. Think how you present yourself in classroom. If you appear to be lazy and uninterested, your students will be lazy and uninterested. Most teaching should be done standing up, not sitting behind a desk, but moving around too much is also disturbing.

10. Use your voice well: Loud enough to be heard at the back, and varied enough to maintain interest. Speaking too fast may also affect communication.

11. Create the right environment. Sessions in a clean, bright, tidy classroom with pictures on the wall, will be more effective than those in a dirty, untidy room. Seating must also reflect the way we want to teach: rows facing the front for a lecture; a circle or semi-circle for discussion; small circles with students facing each other for group work.

12. Be flexible and vary your sessions according to the response of the students. Do not stick rigidly to a lesson plan that is not working.