Positive Ways to Maintain Control in the Classroom

When students are getting out of control, try these Sunday school teaching skills to regain control. Ask for volunteers to help with different aspects of the lesson.  Helping your students engage in the activity reduces their interest in other things and helps all students focus, because they will also want the reward of helping with a certain project.

Sunday School Teaching Skills

Choose those students as helpers who have been quiet and respectful during the session, to set an example for other students. Call the student’s name and explain why they are being chosen. Show other students that if they too behave, they will receive similar privileges of helping with important daily projects.

For this to work, you must first build the idea that helping the teacher is a privilege that students should desire. Unless they want to help, students will not be motivated to participate and pay attention, so at the beginning of your sessions, tell your students that one of the biggest rewards you give out is the chance into this reward, even after you hype it up, but if you never present the idea as something desirable, none of your students will look forward to the opportunity.

Try rewarding your students for good behavior, or even marginal behavior. When everyone else is misbehaving, find the student or students willing to follow your directions and sit quietly, follow directions, or help you when needed.

Tell the class that the best behaved person in the class that day will receive a reward, such as food, extra tickets in your ticket system, or the privilege of being first in line. Other rewards can include helping the teacher or the religious leader in a special religious celebration or making an important decision about the day’s activities.

Students don’t always need to receive a tangible reward to feel special or to be a good example for other students. Sometimes, all that is necessary is to verbally point out
which students are doing well.

This works in reverse as well. Instead of punishing a student, they will suffer sufficient humiliation by just having their name called out in front of class. Interrupt your lesson, calling the student by name, and ask them directly to please stop doing their distracting behavior or to please pay attention. Tell them that they are distracting the rest
of the class and that they are being disrespectful to you. This is often enough to stop that student from acting up again, and enough to keep other students from acting up as well.

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