Help! I Have Such a Large Class, but I Want to Help my Students on a One-on-One Basis!

As a teacher, you want to create an intimate space for students in which they feel encouraged and enthused. When you're teaching a large class, however, fostering this type of relationship with each of your students can be a challenge. How can you make the most of your teaching time?

Create an Intimate Space and Lighten Your Work

As classroom sizes get larger, you may be struggling to meet the needs of upwards of 30 or 40 students. At the same time, you'll be expected to impart detailed skills and bases of knowledge to each individual through effective teaching. But how can you create such an intimate classroom environment when you're teaching a large class? Here are some helpful tips:

• Learn students' names and establish their trust: When you're teaching a large class of young or adolescent students, you may feel that they don't hear you, or that they aren't connecting with you. Copy down student names in a teacher's notebook until you master them, and take notes on their unique learning styles. The more quickly you identify their quirks, the better you can place students in appropriate groups and cater to their varying needs and strengths.

• Practice open communication: Are you comfortable with sharing your email address with your students and their parents? If so, consider offering your school address. Or if you'd prefer to limit communication to class time, end each scheduled block of discussion with a few minutes for students' open-ended questions. What you learn in these sessions will help you make the most out of your teaching time.

• Spend less time marking up assignments: You may spend much of your energy and teaching time on crowd control and grading assignments. Create projects that are easier for you to grade, striking a balance. If you're teaching a large class, multiple-choice tests will likely be easier to score than essays. You can use this extra time to better identify and address your students' needs, and tweak your effective teaching methods accordingly.

Use the Class Size to Your Advantage

To make the most out of your teaching time, use your group's innate energy to your advantage! Enhance your effective teaching by practicing:

• Control noise and chatter: If you're teaching a large class of 10-year-olds, whispers, shouts and chatter go along with the territory. Create a non-negotiable signal indicating that students must fall quiet. Make it clear that if they don't respond to this signal, consequences will follow. Use it judiciously to preserve its effectiveness. Once your students quiet down, get them riled up with a fun, engaging activity.

• Reward participation: When you're teaching a large class, you'll often find that students are truant because they don't think they'll be missed. Regardless of your class size, encourage, require--and reward--class participation. At higher grade levels, factor attendance scores into your final grades, and your students will be more likely to show up.

• Team students up: One advantage to having a large group of students is that you can strategically split them into groups for learning activities. Ask each group to complete a slightly different exercise designed to benefit the members' specific learning styles. This can be an extremely effective teaching method.