9 Top Tips For Behaviour Management in the Classroom

“How do you make a class behave?”  Over the years this is a question that I have been asked time and time again.  The honest answer that I usually give is “I don’t know; they just do”.  So for the first time this year I have tried to get down a few tips and tricks down on paper to help my new PGCE student.  Below I have tried to outline my top ten tips, looking at the advantages & pitfalls of each.

The carrot is better than the stick

Most experienced teachers will have been in the position where at some point in their career they have had to shout at students.  However, a much more effective long term solution getting students on side.  One key things that every teacher needs to consider in terms of behaviour management is what your ratio of punishment to praise is.  With experience, you’ll find that one of the main tricks to get students to make progress within your lesson is the effective use of praise.  If students are doing well, let them know.  In the classroom praise can take many forms.  If a student answers something well, acknowledge it.  You can do it verbally or in written marking, it’s up to you.  Some other ways I’ve seen to praise students is to send postcards home, give out star of the lesson or if it fits into your school, give out house points.  The main takeaway from this tip however, is to remember to always give out more praise than punishment.

The quiet word

Students who get shouted at in one lesson, probably get shouted at in other lessons.  In fact, they probably go through the day being shouted at in every lesson.  Then to compound this, they possibly go home and get shouted at.  Students that are shouted at constantly become desensitised to it!  This basically amounts to shouting at students who get shouted at a lot is a waste of time as they simply stop taking any notice of it.  One trick that I have used to great effect (especially when dealing with poorly behaved students from other classes) is to talk to them quietly.  As this often is not what the student is expecting you almost immediately get their attention.  Talking quietly to them also acts to diffuse the situation, as they will often be ready to argue back when they are shouted at which they don’t seem to do when being talked quietly to.  I have found that this method works very well with the individual, however, I wouldn’t necessarily use this technique to deal with a whole class.

Non-verbal instructions

Over the years, possibly to my horror or amusement, what most students seen to remember about me after they’ve left is the fact that they all drop silent when I click my fingers, and that they all respond hand gestures.  I’m not sure where this started, but over the years the fact that students respond subliminally to these non-verbal instructions has made life a lot easier.  It’s almost like being a Jedi at times.  If you want to give this method a go you have to either start from the beginning of the year, or from the start of Year 7.  The way that I do it, is to let the students how you expect them to respond to the non-verbal instruction you choose to use.  The main trick with this method is persistence at the start.  If you embrace it, your students will too.

Planning for behaviour

Everyone’s heard the phrase “failure to prepare, is to prepare to fail”.  When it comes to planning for behaviour there was never a truer phase.  When planning your lesson’s, you need to consider the effects your activities will have on student behaviour.  I’m not going to linger on this point too long as there have been lots already written on this topic, but in my opinion the most important things to think about are:

• Don’t make any one activity too long as students may become board
• Try and ensure that there is a variety of activities as different students will prefer different things
• Don’t make students write things down just to fill time
• Get students up out of their seats as it will help them engage with the lesson
• If you’re doing a group activity, bear in mind which students are working with who

Where to sit students

This one probably applies to newer teachers than more experienced ones, but it is a useful method to have tucked up your sleeve.  I think at the start of every year, even if you don’t get it down on paper, a class should be put into some sort of seating plan.  This serves a few different purposes.  The first and most important one is that you can ensure that students who are going to distract each other are not sat near each other.  The second important reason is to let students know that you are in charge of your room.  The way that I like to sort out wear students sit is to get them stood around the side of the room and then tell them where to sit from there.

Don’t teach from the front

Traditionally teachers teach from the front of the room.  Maybe it because we feel more comfortable with a desk to hide behind?  Don’t fall into this trap!  One epiphany I had within my own teaching practice is that if you wander around students as they are learning or as you are speaking to them, they tend to behave.  You can now purchase cheaply a remote control that fits into a USB port of your computer at the front of the room, so that you can change your power point slides as you move around the class.  One of the more novel techniques I use is to push some desks together in the middle of the room, build some sort of large teaching model, and then gather students around it while you use it to teach.  This makes sure that all your students are relatively close to you which will ensure that you can see everything that’s going off.  Once they realise this they tend to behave.

Be sincere

The worse thing that I see time and time again when I observe other members of staff, is when they go over the top with praise.  If you are not sincere when giving praise to students it can possibly do the exact opposite to what you are trying to achieve.  If you are not being sincere, students will see straight through it and it can put them off answering questions.

Use set routines

Once students have entered the room one of the main keys to maintaining good behaviour is routine & being organised.  If you spend the start of the lesson running around trying to sort out what you are doing, students will pick up and exploit it.  As far as routine goes it’s pretty much down to personal preference.  Some of the things that I have either used or have seen other members of staff use are:

• Making sure that students know that they need to have their equipment and planers out at the start of the lesson.  
• Never assume that students will automatically get these things out without being prompted.
• Make sure that your lesson title and key words are up on the board for students to get down as soon as they enter the room.
• You might want to put up a prompt or enquiry question that they need to think about and discuss after

Remember every lesson should be a fresh start  

My last and most important tip is to treat every lesson as a fresh start.  If a student has had a bad lesson the last time you saw them, don’t go out of your way to remind them.  Talking to a student about a previously bad lesson as soon as they enter your room, is basically setting them up to fail before they start.  If, however a student has a much better lesson it is worth commenting on it at the end.

As you move through your career I hope that some of these methods help, and believe me when I say that you’ll find and use many others.

Thanks for reading

Chalky

How to plan an effective start to the lesson

As we move into a new year, I have just started my 8th year of mentoring PGCE students as well as NQTs.  It occurs to me every year I try and impart pearls of wisdom, however, I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I may overload them with information.  So for the first time, I am going to try and get down some of my ideas about how to get the most out of your classroom. 

The starter is the part of the lesson when you can establish how the rest of the lesson is going to proceed.  During your starter you can establish:

•        Your expectations of students during the lesson
•        How you expect the students to behave during the lesson
•        What the lesson is about

Your expectations

The most important part of any lesson is setting your expectations high and ensuring that students are aware of them from the start of the lesson.  If your expectations of the students are low, then their expectations of themselves will also be low, which in turn will have a negative effect on their progress & attainment.  Having high expectations will see you through most problems during the lesson not just the start, as students 9 times out of 10 will rise to the challenge of meeting them.  You can establish high expectations in a few ways.  The easiest way of doing this is to relate student’s attitudes in lessons to progress and to keep reminding them that if they have high expectations of themselves their progress will be greater.

The second easiest way to demonstrate your high expectations is to be overly zealous about your expectations of their uniform and how they look.  If students come into your room looking scruffy then they won’t be in the correct mindset to engage with the lesson content.  Either as students are lining up or as they come into the room remind them about their uniform.  It may be an uphill battle at the start, but it’s worth it in the long run.  One phrase that I’ve heard a lot over the years is ‘break them with the uniform’ and it’s true.  Set your expectations of their uniform high and it will help you avoid a range of problems further into the lesson.

Student behaviour at the start of the lesson

Student behaviour needs to be established from the start of the lesson.  Remember, it’s much easier establishing your expectations of behaviour than reacting to it if something goes wrong.  Behaviour needs to start outside of the room.  If students are messing around and being loud when they are lining up, it’s likely that this behaviour will continue when they come into your room.  The key to getting students to come into the room quietly, in the right frame of mind to work is to address the behaviour when they are lining up.  It might feel like an uphill battle at first, but getting students lining up quietly and entering in the right frame of mind will pay dividends in the long run.

Once students have entered the room one of the main keys to maintaining good behaviour is routine & being organised.  If you spend the start of the lesson running around trying to sort out what you are doing, students will pick up and exploit it.  As far as routine goes it’s pretty much down to personal preference.  Some of the things that I have either used or have seen other members of staff use are:

1. Making sure that students know that they need to have their equipment and planers out at the start of the lesson.  Never assume that students will automatically get these things out without being prompted
2. Make sure that your lesson title and key words are up on the board for students to get down as soon as they enter the room.
3. You might want to put up a prompt or enquiry question that they need to think about and discuss after

What the lesson is about

The start of your lesson should establish what your lesson is about.  Traditionally at some point during the start of the lesson you share the lesson objectives or outcomes with your students.  As with all aspects of lesson planning, there are a few ways of doing this.  You can

• Wait until you have finished whatever your starter activity and simply tell the students
• You can with some guidance get students to come up with their own objectives
• If you are using an inquiry question, you could discuss it with students or get students to discuss it between themselves
• You can design a starter activity that will enable students to work out the lesson objectives

Once you have considered the points above it’s time to start thinking about what you are going to do and include within your starter activity.  Some important things to think about when planning a starter activity are

• Does your activity relate to your objectives?  If the answer is no, start again
• Will your starter activity be accessible to all students?  If the answer is no, start again
• Is your activity going to excite the students about what they will be doing during the lesson?  If the answer is no, start again

Remember, if students are bored during your starter activity then there’s not much chance of improving their opinion later in the lesson.  One phrase that is often banded about when talking about starters is ‘you have to hook the students’.  Whilst I am not a great lover of his phrase you do need to do something in your starter that will make students sit up and notice what they are going to be doing.   Below I have outlined some ideas of things to do during your starter

Information Hunt

The information hunt requires students going around the room collecting information on some sort of lesson content.  The main problem with this method is, how to stop students just going around copying the information.  Remember, students can copy information without actually taking it in.  One of the ways that you can use to get past this problem is to stop students taking their books or whatever they are writing on around with them.  If students have to find the information ten go back to their seats to write it down, they will have to remember it, and will be more likely to summarise.  Once students have gathered the information they need to do something with it.  You can get students explaining the information to each other, answer a long answer question using the information or simply direct questions to certain students to assess what they have taken in.

Literacy Question Board Games

The basis of every literacy game is finding the right lesson content for students to read to enable them to access the rest of the lesson.  The trick is to give students something relevant to read whilst not being too long as this runs the risk of turning students off at the start of the lesson.  With all literacy board games, you need to set out a board game but include a range of questions based on what they have just read.  After your students have competed the game, ask them at random questions from the game to ensure that they have worked through it.

Youtube

Sometimes you might be able to find an appropriate video to grab students interest.  If you are using this as a starter you need to ensure that the video is not too long and relevant to the lesson objectives

Exam Question WABOLLs

One way to get students looking at how to answer exam questions, especially longer answer questions, is to give them an answer with a mark scheme and get them to mark it.  One key things to bear in mind is that students at first, won’t have a clue how to do this, so at first you will need to lead students through how to mark an exam question using a mark scheme.  When carrying this type of starter out either write one or a series of answers to an exam question, ensuring that they have some obvious or mistakes that students often make in them.  Once you have your activity set up you need to follow the following few steps

• Make sure students have read the question
• Make sure they read the mark scheme next 
• Get students to highlight or underline parts of the answer that they would give marks for
• Ask students to look out for SPAG
• Get students to total up how many marks they would give is 
• Discuss with students why they have given the question the amount of marks they have

Key Word Starter Games

Every year when the examiner’s report comes out, one of the main reasons that student’s lose marks is lack of or incorrect use of key words.  There are a few ways that you can use key words at the start of the lesson.

• Putting the key words up on the board at the start of the lesson and either asking the students to get them down so they build up a list of key words over the year, or discussing what these key words mean can be useful
• Making some sort of board game based on key words including questions on their use & meanings
• Key word scrabble
• Key word card sorts

Using Role Play

Using role play is one of the more novel ways to start a lesson.  It can be very effective however, it does come with a bit of a health and safety warning. Although this can be  a very engaging way to start a lesson, don't try it until you've nailed the behaviour management.  Some of the things I've done with role play are:

• Getting students to make a large digestive system where different groups of students represent different organs
• Getting students to represent different types of plant cells and building them up into the structure of the leaf
• Having students pretending to be atoms and using them to represent different states of matter

With this method there are loads of different things you can do, just give it a go.

I hope that some of my musings have helped.  Any feedback or stories of things you have given a go would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading

Chalky