Use Time Management In The Classroom To Optimise The Learning Opportunities For Students.

Even experienced teachers sometimes have difficulty with the reality of time management in the classroom; what looks sound and effective on paper at the planning stage often becomes unworkable as the unpredicability of a lesson gradually takes over and hijacks the 'best laid plans'.

Of course no one can guarantee with absolute certainty that any lesson will always go as planned. However, with practice and the appropriate classroom time management strategies, teachers can learn to plan with confidence well executed lessons. The first step in achieving control over time management in the classroom is to set in place a series of strategies to guide lesson planning.

Time management in the classroom: Strategy #1 - Resources and Routines

It sounds obvious but every teacher at one time or another takes it for granted that all necessary resources for a particular lesson will be at hand and in working order. Most of us learn from experience that the only way to be certain of this is to build it into our planning and then to physically check things out ourselves. It's frustrating to be all ready to launch into a great sequence of learning activities only to find that the data projector isn't working, or the board pens are no longer in the drawer where you're sure you left them at the end of last lesson.

Not only is it frustrating for the teacher but also for students, the 'moment' is lost, and even though the teacher can usually rescue the situation, it's better if we can avoid these situations. So good practice in planning for time management in the classroom suggests you make a checklist that you can use every day, even every session; in my experience resources you used in the morning can let you down in the afternoon .

A checklist might include:

• check supplies of paper, work books, textbooks, other resources needed for the lesson
• check that board pens are working - make sure there are 2 or 3 pens in reserve - check there are pens of more than one colour if appropriate
• switch on projector before lesson starts - make sure you can contact a technician immediately to get assistance if needed
• ditto for the interactive whiteboard if you're planning to use one
• switch on the laptop and fire up the appropriate software, if using a laptop [ NB check your bag before you leave home to make doubly sure you've put in your memory stick containing all the wonderful resources it took you hours to create at the weekend and without which you have no lesson material today]

This list is not exhaustive, but it is a good start. Add your own observations over time.

Good time management in the classroom also depends on establishing and using simple routines that become second nature to you and your students, so that as little time as possible is spent on the 'maintenace' of the lesson. It does take time to establish these routines and to embed them, because, especially early on in your relationship with a class, you will need to model these for students and remind them regularly about them. This is not time wasted, because this type of classroom time management will pay off in the longer run. It's also worth explaining to students why it's important to have these routines, and why you're doing them in this way. It might be worth explaining the importance of time management in the classroom to your students and involving them early on in the process by asking for suggestions about the quickest and best ways to carry out these routine tasks.

Your checklist might include:

• seating arrangement is as you want it
• settling activity written up on the board or displayed on the projector so students have something to get on with immediately - make it clear this settling time will last 2 to 3 minutes which will include taking equipment out of their bags and organizing themselves for the start of the lesson [I once worked in a school in which every classroom displayed a poster saying simply 'Pen,Pencil, Ruler On The Desk'. We modelled this with students every lesson until it became an automatic routine, and the result was very quick and orderly starts to lessons]
• countdown to give advance warning when an activity is about to end
• involve students in 'maintenance routines' - eg giving out resources, writing down names of students not present, writing the date on the board [ I do this with French classes and there's usually keen competition so I have to rotate this particular task frequently]
• designate students to collect in resources at the end of the lesson
• make sure students have everything cleared away and ready to leave promptly

Again, this is a starter list to suggest ideas - your list will indicate what's important to you in your particular circumstances when planning your time management in the classroom.

Time management in the classroom: Strategy #2 - Engaging Students in Learning

The teacher's main aim is to engage students in effective learning, and good classroom time management can help us achieve this aim. One of the key features that distinguishes good learning is the pace that teachers and students can inject into learning activities. It's easy to confuse the concept of pace with speed, but the two are not necessarliy the same in the context of learning.

Some recent research on time management in the classroom looked at how effectively some trainee teachers used pace in lessons. The main conclusion from the research was that we may usefully define pace as the progression through a range of learning activities that engage students effectively in learning, at a speed appropriate to the class and the nature of the learning topic studied. Sometimes the learning can be slow, but at the right pace to enable students to engage successfully without becoming bored or overwhelmed.

So progression might be a better word to use than pace, although, interestingly, the same research also suggests that, if all other things are equal, when the pace is brisk the level of student behaviour is raised, students become caught up in the activity and there is less time for 'off task' behaviour.

So how can teachers ensure pace and progression in learning activities?

The process starts by planning carefully before the lesson, not just making sure that the routines and resources are in place, but by thinking through the lesson itself. It's very easy for teachers to think in terms of what they must do during the lesson, but it's smarter classroom time management to plan what the students must do. A rule of thumb that took me quite a long time to appreciate is that the students should work far harder than the teacher in lessons.

The lesson plan should contain estimates of roughly how long each learning activity is intended to last. There is a problem here because teachers have become used to being judged on how well they use time in the rigid time confines of the lesson, which may be any time from 40 minutes to an hour, or even longer if lessons are doubled up on the timetable.

In practice, learning may not fit easily into 40 or 60 minute blocks, and so it may be smarter to see lesson planning as covering a series of lessons, whatever is needed to cover the learning in question in a coherent way. Even so, although we can split up learning into chunks across a series of lessons, it's good practice for time management in the classroom and very helpful to try to shape the lesson so that progression and pace happen in every 40/60 minute block.

I have found these ideas helpful when planning pace and progression.

• explain to the students exactly what the intended learning outcomes of the lesson are; display these for students to see at the start, with approximate timings, and refer to these outcomes at intervals throughout the lesson
• explain clearly but briskly any instructions students need to be able to complete the activity - as your class becomes more familiar with different activities explanations will take up much less time, and this will add to the pace you want to achieve - it helps if students can both see and hear the instructions you give
• tell students you won't take any questions at this stage [assuming that you've explained everything carefully] because you want to get the activitiy under way - say there'll be a chance for review of the activitiy later when you'll take take questions from students
• it's important at this point the you are 'centre stage' in front of the students, giving them a clear signal you're ready to start, and you expect them to be ready
• make it clear exactly what type of activitiy it is: eg teacher presentation during which students are silent, discussion in groups or with partners , individual silent work, practical task etc - make sure students know exactly how much time they have to do the activity
• use countdown reminders eg 'You have 3 minutes left', 'You now have 1 minute left'
• make sure students can see the clock in your classroom
• encourage students that you want to see / hear what they've done in the time limit, even if the task is not fully completed; this often provides a discussion point for talking later in the lesson about learning strategies - and it is a good idea to get your students used to 'sharing the information' around the class, so everyone benefits from everyone's contributions
• sometimes making the activity competitive helps to keep the pace brisk - this is especially true with boys - but we need to be careful that the activity does not simply became a race to see who can finish first
• consider livening things up with a bit of music - some research suggests that music with 60 to 70 beats to the minute enhances learning activites - some movie themes might work well with some classes: a word of caution - be careful with music, sometimes the auditory learners in your class may start to pay more attenion to the music, especially if it's music with lyrics, than to the learning task
• it's better to finish an activity early, even if not complete, and allow some time for review or a plenary session before the lesson ends

Time management in the classroom: Strategy #3 - Promoting Meta Learning

It's tempting to fill every available minute with learning activities that deliver direct learning - in other words activities that allow students to'show what they know'. Of course that's important, but it's equally important to get students to reflect on 'how they know', in other words what strategies they have used to find out what they needed to know.

This kind of meta learning review is at least as important as a review of direct learning. It's important to build in time for a meta learning review every lesson, and your plan for time management in the classroom should reflect this. You can make this clear at the start when you display the learning outcomes. Give it a time limit like all the other activities - even 2 or 3 minutes of focused debriefing can produce useful feedback to you and the students.

Classroom time management is one of the keys to engaging students in successful learning and teachers need to plan it carefully. However, you should use your instinct and personal knowledge of your students. The aim is to engage students, and some classes may need training in how to use their time effectively in class.

What's the final point to make about good time management in the classroom?

Your time management in the classroom plan is just that- a plan.You are in control, not your plan, and there will be times when your plan won't work, for whatever reason, in which case you move on, using your judgement or perhaps by asking the students what could be done differently next time.

Sometimes a particular class dynamic takes over and you find things buzzing along, not to plan, but buzzing along anyway. Moments like that are to be seized - run with them, see what happens, and squeeze as much learning out of the expereince as possible.

Make your time management in the classroom plan work for what you want to achieve and keep it brisk as long as your students are with you. Like everything else, test things out and be guided by your own experience.




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