It can be intimidating facing an audience, even if you're used to it. Working with school groups, and to some extent families and adult audiences (especially at an evening event in a bar!), presents the potential for bad behaviour, which can distract those misbehaving and those around them. Here are some tips to help keep a handle on things.

1. Manage the environment: establish the rules early on, make it clear what you can see, and set up a respectful relationship with the audience. A solid handover or introduction from the teacher is useful if it’s a school group.
2. Generally, an engaging, well-prepared session will keep the students’ attention, and behaviour won’t be a big issue. Designing a session well makes a huge difference to engagement levels.
3. You’re not there to be a disciplinarian, and you shouldn’t be taking a session alone – teachers will be present to step in if behaviour becomes problematic.
4. Think about focus – if you want to keep people’s attention, don’t distract them away from what you’re saying. If unexpected distractions occur, acknowledge them, then give people time to re-focus on you.
5. If you ask a question, this can be a prompt for the audience to start discussing it with each other. If you don’t mean for them to start talking amongst themselves, don’t ask a question. Rather than saying ‘What number do we get here?’, say ‘We’ll get a number here’ or otherwise rephrase it so it’s not worded as a question.
6. If you’re dividing students into groups, telling them ‘We’ll be working in groups of 4’ will immediately mean they start working out who they’re in a group with. Tell them they’ll be working in groups, but make the group size be the last piece of information you give – then you’ll keep their attention until you don’t need it anymore.
7. Avoid telling anyone they’re wrong. If you ask a question and someone gives a different answer to the one you were expecting, shutting them down will make others less likely to volunteer answers. Ask how they got the answer and find some aspect of their thinking that was right to focus on. Try to ask open questions that allow people to explore, but make sure it’s clear what you’re asking.
8. Don’t apologise unnecessarily. If you can’t get a thing working in your setup, unless it’s obvious to the audience, don’t tell them that you were going to do a thing but couldn’t – just leave it out of the session, or replace it with something else. They don’t need to share your disappointment!
9. If you use volunteers: make sure it’s necessary; treat them well (even if they’re just giving an answer); give clear instructions, and don’t ask too much of them. Try to pick a diverse range of volunteers (the ones who put themselves forward might not represent the full range!) Using an obvious joker as a volunteer can stop them being disruptive later (or, this can backfire horribly).
10. Reduce distractions: think about what will draw people’s attention. Don’t try to talk while playing a video with sound; if you’re asking people to use something new, give them a chance to play with it or a simple task first, so they aren’t focusing on functionality. Some distractions will be out of your control, but do what you can.