How To-42: How to Create a Positive Classroom Atmosphere

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A positive atmosphere can make a classroom a more pleasant place to be and, in turn, a more effective, motivating place to learn. It's simple to do, and it can have positive results on the achievement of students.

Steps

1. Change the way you act, talk, teach, communicate with your students. From today, communicate positively with every single one of them in a way that tells them that you have total confidence in them and their abilities(even though you might not have). Your body language and tone of voice makes up the majority your overall communication, so include it in your changes.
   
2. Encourage the students with positive feedback whenever possible. Praise for successes is a far stronger motivation than criticism.
   
3. Cover the walls of your classroom with positive messages: posters with motivational pictures and words; inspirational quotations from great people; positive paintings, drawings, prose, poems, done by your students.
   
4. Create stereograms that have hidden positive words. For an example go to www.school-teacher-student-motivation-resources-courses.com/teaching methods and check out subliminal communication.
   
5. Embed more positive words in everything that you write and talk about.
   
6. Create a positive word for the day and start a discussion on it. Apply it to positive case studies, role models. For example - 'Winning' - Lance Armstrong won against cancer, won Tour de France Race 7 times, and won the hearts and minds of charities and young people with his coloured rubber wrist bands.
   
7. Create a class dictionary of positive words. Start with an A - Z template and get your students to add positive words to the template. Make it big and put it on the wall.
   
8. Use bright, warm colors in decorations. Most classrooms begin with standard-issue furnishings, all the same. Well-placed wall decorations can make a classroom more homey and occasionally even impart knowledge to those whose attention has drifted off.
   
9. Make wall displays educational.

Tips

• Give corrections in a positive tone. Say things like "Try again" or "Do you have another idea?" instead of "no". Prompt the student if he/she is on the right track: "And what is it called when that happens?"

Warnings

• Don't play favorites. If necessary, create a deck of index cards with each student's name to ensure that students get called upon an equal amount of the time. Mix them up, periodically.

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Sources and Citations

• http://www.school-teacher-student-motivation-resources-courses.com/teachingmethods/subliminalcommunication.html

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