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Introduction
Why Effective Communication Skills?
Teachers benefit from good communication skills in
three different
areas: when communicating with
students, with parents, and with colleagues.
Communicating with Students
Communication skills are most vital for interactions
with students,
because the act of teaching itself
requires them.
In your role, you are
responsible for comprehending
and breaking down complex information,
conveying
this information clearly to your students (both verbally
and
in written resources), presenting in a manner
that sustains their
attention, and listening to and
resolving their questions or problems.
You are also required to adapt content for different
learning styles, motivate students to learn, build
supportive relationships using
encouragement and
empathy, manage the classroom, and give feedback
–making your classroom a safe and supportive
learning environment. All of
these things require
good communication skills.
The better your communication skills, the more
effectively you can
perform these tasks. In turn, your
students will make more academic
progress. Studies
have found that the success of students is directly
related to interactive, engaging teaching
environments formed by able
teachers .
Additionally, the way that you
communicate with your
students can positively affect their perceptions
of
school, their role in the classroom, themselves and
their abilities, and their motivation to succeed .
However, this works both ways: poor communication
skills –and thus
poor methods of teaching – causes
students’ comprehension levels to
drop, and may
affect their academic progress negatively. It could
also
lead to students lacking motivation, disliking
school, and believing
themselves to be unable to
achieve. This could have consequences for the
rest of their lives.
Therefore, effective communication between teachers
and students is extremely important. It allows you to
perform your job well, with
positive results for your
pupils. An added benefit is that your class
can use
you as a model for improving their own
communication skills,
which are critical for their
development and future learning.
Effective coaching and mentoring can help boost your
communication
with students as you focus on three
key areas: foundations, principles
and practice.
Learn how to coach or mentor with consistency here.
Strategies for Effective Communication
in the Classroom
What we classify as ‘good’ or ‘effective’
communication depends on
the context. When you
are presenting in front of the class, you will use
different strategies than when you are facilitating a
group discussion, or speaking to a student one-to-
one.
Here, we will suggest eight strategies that are
applicable to each of the contexts that you may
encounter.
1. Create a safe learning environment with
supportive relationships
It has been proven that supportive relationships
between students and
teachers have a positive
impact on class engagement, participation, and the
students’ achievements.
It has even been suggested that these
supportive
relationships may negate the tendency for low-
income students
to have poorer school outcomes.
This is because, when students feel supported, they
are more
comfortable expressing their own thoughts
and ideas in class
discussions, attempting
challenges, and asking when they need help.
Higher levels of engagement and participation then
lead to better developed knowledge and greater
achievement.
A supportive learning environment is built using
communication: you
should get to know your
students well, and show them that they are safe
from judgement or humiliation in your classroom.
It is a good idea to
learn students’ names early in
the year, and use them often.
Have an open-door policy for students to come and
talk to you about any issues,
and be empathic and
caring when you interact with them at all times:
don’t tell them off for not understanding and don’t
ridicule their
thoughts and ideas.
Additionally, you should recognize that some
students don’t feel comfortable talking in front of the
class. If you do ask them to
participate, you could
use scaffolding (such as sentence starters) to make
them feel safer doing so.
However, forced participation is usually
unnecessary:
it is likely that quieter students have excellent
listening skills, and are learning just as much,
despite not sharing their own thoughts.
2. More teamwork
Teamwork and group discussions contribute to
making the classroom a
more comfortable
environment. By working in small groups, students
are
able to share their ideas more easily, and
improve their own
communication skills.
These activities also give them a good opportunity
to ask you questions and get feedback on their
work, leading to effective communication between
you, better understanding of the lesson,
and
academic benefits.
You could also try to improve your communication
skills through
teamwork with your colleagues.
Planning more lessons together, sharing
ideas, and
problem-solving together will develop the way that
you interact.
3. Body language
Communication is not only verbal, but also non-
verbal: you should
ensure that the signals you are
giving out through your body language
are positive,
confident, and engaging.
For example, making eye contact with students when
you are talking to
them shows that you are being
supportive and attentive. Making eye
contact is also
important when you are presenting to the whole class
– it motivates everyone to pay attention, which helps
them to learn, as well as making them feel involved.
In order to make more eye contact, you may have to
learn your lesson content more thoroughly in
advance, so that you don’t have to look away to
read your notes.
As you teach, you should use gestures to emphasize
your words. This
increases the interactivity of the
lesson, making it more visually interesting and
hence, more memorable.
Keep your arms open – do not fold
them – and use
smiles, nods, and thumbs up to encourage students
when
they participate. Moving around the classroom
while you teach can help
to remove the barrier
between you and your students, and gives them less
opportunity to zone out or get distracted.
Body language is also important when dealing with
negative behavior.
To avoid being confrontational,
ensure that you don’t stand directly
above or in front
of a student, point, or invade their personal space.
It may be effective to get down to their level and talk
quietly about
their behavior, or speak to them
outside the classroom, to avoid
drawing too much
attention.
Remember that students’ behavior is also a
form of
communication, and think about what it is telling you.
You can find out more about dealing with challenging
behavior from our dedicated article
4. Active listening
The ‘listening’ component of communication should
not be overlooked – over 60% of all misunderstandings
result from poor listening.
Practicing good listening in the classroom can benefit
you in two
ways. Firstly, you will be a model for your
students, who will improve their own listening skills, and
thus retain lessons better. Secondly, by
using active
listening, you can correct misunderstandings and
extend learning, resulting in a better education for your
students.
Active listening involves listening carefully to what your
students
say, checking that you have understood them
correctly (for example, repeating back to them what you
think they have said), building on their
ideas, and
challenging or questioning them.
It is the best approach to use to foster understanding
in the classroom, and is an excellent
example of
effective communication.
5. Feedback
Feedback is also an important component of
communication in the
classroom. There have
been many studies focusing on feedback in recent
years. It has been shown that positive feedback
(i.e.
praise) builds students’ confidence – making
them more likely to believe
that they can succeed –
and helps to create a supportive environment
and
increase academic success.
You can also use positive feedback to modify students’
behavior: for
example, praising a student for having
their hand up is likely to cause
the students around
them to stop ‘shouting out’ and copy this behavior, in
order to be praised themselves
However, positive feedback can be detrimental to
learning if it is
used without being deserved, or too
frequently .
Phrases
such as ‘good job’ or ‘beautiful’ may not
motivate students, because
they do not understand
what they are specifically being praised for, while over-
praising can cause children to lack interest in situations
where they are not being praised.
As a
result, you should give specific, deserved positive
feedback – use the student’s name, explicitly state what
they are doing right, and thank them enthusiastically.
Negative feedback is used more often in the classroom
than positive feedback, and many researchers have
argued that
this should not be the case. While negative
feedback can help students to improve – for example,
by changing their behavior, or trying harder
at a task
(Conroy et al., 2014) – it does also contribute to
conflictual relationships with students (e.g. Allen et al.,
2013). It has also been
suggested that it can cause
lower levels of academic success (e.g. Wu
et al., 2010).
These disadvantages are compounded by the fact that
the negative
feedback is not always successful –
students tend to continue the behavior despite negative
feedback around 20% of the time – and it
tends to
decrease students’ motivation and interest in a task
(e.g. Spilt et al., 2016). Other consequences include
decreased self-worth,
which impacts children’s
academic success .
As such, you should ensure that you use negative
feedback only
sparingly; for general classroom
management, using positive feedback to
illustrate
the behavior that you want to see is much more
effective. In
situations where you do have to use
negative feedback.
You should
explicitly address the behavior you want to
stop, give an explanation
why (e.g. ‘don’t do that.
I don’t think it is safe’), allow the student to think about
morality (e.g. ‘are you doing the right thing?’), or use a
simple form of ‘no’ (e.g. ‘no’, ‘mm mm’). These
techniques increase the effectiveness of negative
feedback, and decrease any detrimental impact
that it
might have.
Finally, you should give students the opportunity to
give you feedback
on your lessons or teaching styles.
This shows that you value their
opinion, increases
communication between you, and helps you to improve
your teaching and their learning.
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