Abstract

The success and smoothness of education cannot be separated from a classroom management. In managing the classroom, a teacher usually places a physical environment, a psycho-social environment, manages and monitors classroom activities. The classroom management often makes the teacher feels frustrated, pessimistic, and gives up when s/he is teaching the students because s/he does not know how to apply good classroom management. There is an English teacher who is not graduated from an educational field but she is able to manage her class well. Her students come from various ethnic, socio-economic backgrounds and multi-level language skills. This study investigated how English teacher in Private Junior High School in Klaten Regency managed the classroom and how the students responded to the teacher’s strategies. Data collected through observation, field note and interview. An English teacher and eight students were involved. The data showed that the teacher had created a physical environment by providing classrooms that are clean, cool, and bright and arranged the students’ seats based on the classroom activities. In responding to the physical environment, most of students seemed comfortable. In creating a psycho-social environment, she made the rules of classroom, maintained good interactions, spoke clearly and sounds, guided and gave models the assignments, moved between students’ seats, made several attempts to motivate the students, and provided reinforcement and feedback as well. The teacher also organized the time and used the various techniques such as lecturing, questioning-answering, discussions, songs, games, individual and group work. In addition, she monitored the class activities well so that the students actively did the assignments. Meanwhile, the students enjoyed a variety of teaching techniques.

Key words: classroom management, physical, psycho environment, monitoring the activities