If you want to be a successful school coach, the most important thing above anything else is that you can control the behaviour of your class. If you cannot do this, the experience the children will get from chess club will be far from ideal. If you cannot control a class, this can be quite stressful for yourself and may lead to more serious issues with the class, the school and the parents. The class needs to be kept under control for the enjoyment of both the chess coach and the children. You cannot shout to keep control. If this is your method of coaching, you have already lost control.
There is another section on how to structure your class. So I won’t provide further detail in this section, apart from to add that if you divide your class into a specific structure, it will help control behaviour in the class. If you simply allow the children to play chess for the entire lesson, you will find that the children tend to be more disruptive in this situation. Having a set structure will help you maintain control.
Below are a number of tools for helping control behaviour and noise in a chess club. Note that there is a fine balance between acceptable noise and too much noise. The children will generally become louder if you allow them to. This is normally because they are enjoying themselves and getting excited, and is not bad behaviour
- Clapping technique. If you want the class to instantly be quiet or focus on something specific, the clapping technique is great for this. The clapping technique is simply clapping your hands in a rhythm until the whole class is quiet. Imagine you are on the Arsenal terraces and copying a football terrace clap. This works for me every time. Similar to if you are in a football stadium, when the teacher starts the clapping technique you will find the children will all start to copy. When all are clapping, you stop and say something like: “Please pay attention to what I am about to explain/show.”
- Put your hands in the air technique. This is another useful technique, again getting the children to copy you. You raise your voice slightly and say: “If you are listening to me, raise one hand in the air.” You do the same. Maybe 2 or 3 children will copy. Then say something like: “If you are listening to me, put one finger on your nose.” You do the same. More children will copy, and so forth. Once all children are copying you, then say the something like: “Please pay attention to what I am about to explain/show.”
- The quiet voice technique. I walked into a class of 27 Year 2 children being very loud due to excitement, and clearly getting louder as all the children raised their voices. I stood at the front of the class and said in a quiet voice to the two children near me: “I am ready to start. Please tell the children to all be quiet and listen.” These two children did 70 per cent of my work for me. Most of the class were facing forward and now listening. I started my lesson with a bit of noise at the back. My ‘teacher voice’, was a very quiet voice. I spoke in a tone just above a whisper: “If you are not all quiet, you will not hear the important things I am about to say.” You will find that the 70% of the children listening will shush the children who have not yet noticed, and thus your job is done for you.
- Invisible person. During a demonstration board lesson, you may often find children trying to call out the answers without putting their hands up. If you allow this to continue, your lesson will descend into chaos, with little learning. One useful tip if someone calls out is to say: “If you call out, you will be invisible to me.” Ignore that child and instead pick a child sitting patiently with their hands up. This generally stops this behaviour.
- Penalties. During free play, if a particular child continues to be very loud you can use a multitude of techniques, e.g.:
1) Say to the child that if they continue to be noisy, you will remove a piece from their game. As you can imagine, children do not like this at all and tend to quieten down.
2) Happy face / sad face. If you have a whiteboard in the room, draw a happy face and a sad face on the whiteboard with a line in the middle. If a child is behaving well and does something good on the chess board, then you write their name in the happy face column; vice versa for bad behaviour.
3) House points / golden time. Some schools will allow you to give or take house points or golden time in line with the school classroom behavioural policy. This is an effective way of controlling behaviour.
4) The quiet point. If a part of your session – e.g. a tournament – is to be played in silence, you can use the quiet point technique. This is simply that all children start with a quiet point. If they speak during this period they lose a point. This must be backed up weekly, when you bring your points chart into the classroom. - Classroom positioning It is of vital importance that you do not have your back to any children. Your classroom positioning should be that you can see every child. If Little Jonny is about to launch a paper bomb across the classroom, you can see and stop this before it is thrown. As time passes, you will find you become aware of such behaviour before it is going to happen. It is a teacher’s 6th sense. The worst case is if your back is turned to some pupils, little Jonny thumps Kate, and then Kate pinches little Jonny, making him cry. Apart from the fact you have not controlled your class, you will most likely have to explain what happened to the after-school coordinator and/or head teacher and parents. Not a pleasant situation to be in, caused simply by you not being in a place to view all the children.
- Talking to parents. If none of the above are working, the last resort is to talk or email the parents, listing the disruptive things that a child has done. Most parents take this well and then little Jonny will become the perfect student. Sometimes however, the behaviour will continue. At this point, you can issue ‘the three strikes and you are out of the class’ warning. This must be explained to the parents at each strike.
- Rewards. Positive reinforcement is a good technique for controlling behaviour. For children who are behaving well, you can offer little rewards such as stickers, bouncy balls and stretchy men. You will find that most children want to please and will behave well, so they have a chance of getting a reward. This must not go just to the best chess player, but to someone who has, for example, behaved well, helped others, helped pack away etc. – basically, all the things expected of a child in a classroom.
