British Council. Teacher Development Summer School. 

What is classroom management and why it is important.
August 16th-21st.2015.
Project work. Syzko V.S.
Pavlograd. Ukraine.
One of the sessions at Summer Teacher Training Programme was Classroom Management and Dynamics. Here I try to render  the meaning of the session content accurately, learn about  the subject more.

The  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia describes Classroom management as a term used by teachers to describe the process of ensuring that classroom lessons run smoothly despite disruptive behavior by students. The term also implies the prevention of disruptive behavior.Classroom management and management of student conduct are skills that teachers should acquire and develop all the time. Effective teaching requires considerable skills in managing  a lot of tasks and situations that occur in the classroom each day and require "common sense," consistency,  teacher behavior, a sense of fairness to all students.These skills also require that teachers understand in more than one way the psychological and developmental levels of their students.To learn more about the subject you can just find the information in the net.

Here is some specific information on Classroom Dynamics I learnt during the session at  Teacher Development Summer School. First of all it was information on group dynamis which refers to the relationship between learners in a group and  the impact that these relations have on the way students work. We had to take into account and discussed the ideas of purpose, climate, participation, conflict, roles communication which make an effective group and work of students.We shared our findings and they happened to be very similar.Then we investigated Patterns of interaction and discussed classroom activities.We dedecided what the most appropriate "grouping" (Individual work, Pair work, Group work)  for each activity would be.We were proposed to discuss such classroom activities: Doing grammar/ vocabulary exercises from the coursebook; Discussing topics of personal interest; Reading a passage from the coursebook and answering comprehention guestions; Doing project work; Doing ice-breaking activity; Writing a progress test; Describing a picture; Role playing a situation; Problem-solving task; Writing a book review; Doing a true/ false exercise, ets.

After that we worked in small groups and disscussed different  Seating arrangement of students in the classroom, its advantages and disadvantages.We understood that each one was perfect for this or that activity.Here are the names of seating arrangement to organize the work of students in the classroom:1.Traditional arragement; 2.Cafe style; 3.Boardroom style; 4.U-shape; 5.V-shape/Herring bone; 6.E-shape.

A very useful information was Stages of group development (Forming, Storming, Norming, Perfoming). We were shown a model of group development which is very important, neccessary and inevitable  for the team to grow, to face challenges, to tacle problems, to find solutions, to plan work and to deliver results.

For many teachers it would be useful to use in the classroom different Types of activities we were busy at the session: 1.People, rooms, lives-Look at the picture the teache has given you  and try to answer the guestions to it; 2.Department XYZ- work in group. Develop a new name for the team using the letters given to you; 3.Hot seat frenzy- describe the word, using synonyms, antonyms, definitions,ets.to your teammate who can't see the word.The person in the "hot seat" listen to the team and tries to gess the word; 4.Senses-take turns telling your partner what you could smell, hear, taste or feel if you were "in the picture"; 5.The for walls- choose one of the four photographs that you find the most appealing and stand in front of it. Share reasons for your choice; 6. Funny dialogue- memorise and role play the dialogue given to you by the teacher.These are only some of types of activities the teacher can use in the classroom.

A very important and useful knowledge was different roles the students play in a group and how the teacher has to deal with challengers to help a group work well.The roles may be: the adviser/opinion giver, the agressor, the latecomer, the joker, the whisperer, blocker, help seeker, the know-it-all, the sillent type, the teacher's pet, the playboy. So if teacher can manage  good classroom arrangement, know how to deal with each type of student role in a group it may  guarantee of good behavior of learnes in the classroom.

To guarantee good behavior of students, their perfect work and good results, the teacher should make a very good planning in this area and can create favorable conditions to avoid problems and gain success in teaching and learning.

So, to make a conclusion I would rather say the learning at British Council Teacher Development Summer School was very useful for me.I found a lot of new information and solutions to many problems we usually face in the classroom management.

References:
Teaching English Certificate in Secondary English Language Teaching (CiSELT). Module5: ClassroomProcesses Classroom Dynamics. British Council 2011