thank you for sharing! But I think lateness is a chronic problems that teacher have to figure out the way to improve this condition. This is an article of David, EFL teacher, on Twitter (@DavidHarbinson) that show me a long term solution.
Dealing with students who come late to class by David Harbinson
Keep a record
Keep a record of how often students come late, or how many minutes late they are to class. With the information, you can make a visual representation of students’ attendance. Then you can sit down with students and show them how often/much they are late visually. They might be surprised when looking at the whole picture. If it is a student who persistently comes late, perhaps they don’t see the individual impact that it’s having each time. 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there doesn’t seem like much at the time, but over the course of 6 months it will add up.
If you record how many minutes late a student comes to class, you can total up the amount, which might have a bigger impact. Let’s say a student has one class a week, and they are on average 5 minutes late for every class. If your classes are an hour long, that’s more than two whole classes your student has missed just from not turning up on time.
Personalization
Sometimes it is best to sit down with students on a 1-to-1 basis. If you really want to get to the bottom of the problem with a particular student, find out what’s causing the problem. They might have a genuine reason for being late that they don’t want to share with other members of the class. If you keep a record of students’ attendance, you can try to find a way to relate the problem to the individual student in a way that connects with them. If they’re paying for a course, for example, you can show them how much money they’ve wasted. Or perhaps they really are eager to learn, but don’t see the impact that their lateness is having on their development, so you can try to point out the learning opportunities that they have missed during their absence. Being late doesn’t necessarily mean that the student is a ‘bad learner’. People think differently, so find which angle to approach the problem from for the individual.
Personalizing discussions with students, either on a 1-to-1 basis, or as a group, shows that you care and take their learning seriously. It can help students feel that there is someone who cares about their learning process. Many of the teachers I have spoken to believe that it takes time though. You can’t expect a persistent latecomer to suddenly start coming to class on time after one meeting. So aim to check in regularly with students, and show that you are interested in their learning throughout a course.
One teacher told me how he handled the issue with his students in the US. While they didn’t all start to come on time, over the year, they began to turn up less and less late, and miss fewer classes, which he took away as a success considering the difficult circumstances he had to teach in.
Find opportunities
While it’s not ideal to have someone enter the class late, especially if the other students are mid-activity, it can provide an opportunity for other students. I usually like to ask the latecomer to join an existing group, typically one with stronger students. This gives those students who have come on time the chance to explain the activity. It also gives you, the teacher, a chance to listen in and see how well the students have understood your instructions. You might even be surprised to find that they can explain an activity in a way that you hadn’t thought of. On more than one occasion I’ve heard one student explain something to another and thought ‘wow’ that was great, only to find myself using it in my next lesson.
The issue of tardiness can also provide opportunities for students to practice apologising and making excuses. One of the only phrases that I can remember from my school French lessons is Désolé, je suis en retard. It was the first thing that my French teacher taught us, and she wouldn’t let a latecomer enter the class until they had said it. You could even devote a whole class (or at least part of one) to making excuses. One teacher suggested to me brainstorming a list of lame excuses for being late on the board and having the students discuss them, asking “How do they feel to you?” This, she believes, can help students to be more honest and avoid hiding problems.
Another idea for a class activity/discussion is to have students talk about being late in different situations, such as meeting a friend for coffee, going to the movies, attending a business meeting. For some people, being late might not be such a big problem in their lives, and they may not realise the impact it has on others.
Don’t give in
Some teachers I’ve spoken to in the past have told me that their students continually arrive late, and that they’ve resorted to spending the first 10-15 minutes of the class doing fillers or ‘meaningless’ activities until the majority of students have filtered in. While this may seem like a good idea at first, it might end up backfiring. If the students don’t see the start of the class as being beneficial to them, you may find that they continue to come late, or worse get even later. Instead, make sure that start of the class is useful, and something that the students don’t want to miss.
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