A great trick for ESL classroom control

I have been an English language elementary school teacher in Thailand for a couple of years now and just like anyone, it was a bit of a rough start for me because I had never been a teacher before and I foolishly assumed that Asian kids were going to be better behaved than American ones. This was based purely on stereotypes and is not at all true. If anything, I would say that because of the language barrier that Thai children take more liberties with foreign teachers than they would ever be able to get away with if they had a Thai teacher in front of them.

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I'm not saying that Thai kids are bad or anything, they're just kids and the same as me when I was a child their ultimate objective is to go absolutely ape-s**t crazy whenever they have a chance. Therefore, classroom control is probably a lot more important than your actual lesson plan is because if you can't get the jacked up on sugar students under control, they aren't going to pay attention to what you are teaching anyway.

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This is not my image and I can't get one of it right now because our schools have been closed again due to Covid. but I have used multiple systems similar to this one and the good thing about it is that the students make the punishment board themselves and it gives them an art project that can chew up at least one of your classes.

I build a series of carboard pockets that I stapled next to the chalkboard and next to that we created a little folder for the students to make a card and pocket that was all their own. This helped me on a number of levels because I also had a difficult time remembering all the students' names because well, they have Thai names.

Every student had their own card with their name on it. If they were acting up in class I would put their namecard into the "Warning" section, if the continued to act up in class I would move their card to the "Danger Zone" if they still continued to act up their name would be moved to the last section, which was the "Dead Zone"

The various tiers had different levels of punishment associated with them

• Warning: Nothing happens, it's just a sign to let them know they are on thin ice
• Danger Zone: The student now has to do some punishment homework that no one else in the class has to do
• Dead Zone: Student is made to sit in the "dummy chair" at the front of the classroom and also every student in the class now has extra homework except for the student who got in the Dead Zone

This worked really well because of social pressures that exist between the students. No one wanted to get into the Dead Zone because it would piss off all of their fellow students. In the few years that I have had this system implemented, I have noticed a dramatic reduction in kids acting loud and obnoxious during my lessons. If the offending student ended up in the Danger Zone and then starts behaving well for the rest of the lesson, they will be released from their punishment. The Dead Zone is a one way street.

The total cost of making these folders was next to nothing, just the cost a few large pieces of paperboard. The decoration is done by the students themselves involving their own crayons, pencils, or markers.

If you are an ESL teacher I highly recommend giving this system a try because for me, it has worked very well.