Classroom management strategies and behaviour management strategies run hand in hand across every aspect of your classroom and teaching. Together they form the foundations of everything you do.
We have looked at the principals behind both classroom management and behaviour management and then extended this to build, apply and implement our own working systems.
All classes are different –
One size does not fit all – by that I mean that because you have successfully used a particular system with one class then it will follow that the same system will work for another.
However, the basic format and approach CAN be used – in other words YES you can start out by applying the same system you have used before but you should be prepared to modify and change this as the needs of your class require.
So why do I say this?
I was in a school recently and a member of staff came to me with a problem. She wasn’t having behavioural problems as such but had a class that were both chatty and very slow to settle when asked.
By combining her behaviour and classroom management strategies she had introduced a system that noted how long the class took to settle when asked and deducted this time from their playtimes or lunchtimes. It was a system she had used with a previous class and the stopwatch was displayed on the interactive board.
The problem that she was having was with this year group it didn’t seem to be as effective and the class was having to stay in quite a lot!
Looking at the problem
If you have read my article on Chatty classes then you will see that this method is one (among many ) that I recommend as a good approach and in fact it was one that this colleague had used well in the past. So why wasn’t it working so well this time and how could we modify things to make it effective?
On investigation the teacher began to realise that it seemed to be the same children who were not settling or becoming quiet when asked – this of course means that in starting the stopwatch the rest of the class was, in effect, having to miss time BECAUSE of these individuals.
It also came to light (it was a Y3 class) that the class had a disrupted year last year with 3 teachers across the academic year….meaning 3 different approaches to teaching, expectations and of course discipline!
Basically …they were a YOUNG CLASS!
So what did we change?
There were 2 things that we had to consider…
- The stopwatch approach wasn’t working so we needed different
- We wanted to avoid the whole class being caught in the attitude of the few who were dragging their feet.
This is what we did
Having recognised that the class had a disrupted Y2 we decided to move back to a practical and visual approach when the class were asked to settle or become quiet.
We used the simple technique of
- Asking for quiet
- Teacher putting their hands on their head – the children copy….5 seconds
- Teacher (without speaking) put their hands on their shoulders …5 seconds
- Teacher (without speaking) puts their hands down and the children either put their hands on their laps or on the desk.
- At this point…the whole class should be quiet (and the majority will be)
- However – This now allows the teacher to identify those children who are still talking or not settling down…in other words we have shifted the emphasis from a whole class to individuals.
- Any child not sitting quietly is now told to “stand up” – these can then be told that they have not listened or done what is expected and their names are then moved onto the behaviour management system or names / ticks etc on the board.
As you can now see the teacher has now moved to a visual and interactive stimulus for quieting the class. Even if some children do not hear the teacher ask for quiet they will see what is happening around them and know what it means. The approach also takes the stopwatch timing away from the whole class and lands on the individuals concerned who as we have said previously “take responsibility for their own actions”
Conclusion.This was our solution to the problem that this colleague was experiencing. The basics of her approach were right but just needed modifying to suit the needs of that particular class. Once this was introduced the problem soon went away and things settled down nicely.
[This illustrates a very basic routine of movements that many of the children will already know. The actions are, of course, simply a 3 part visual system that involves the children and you could alter or change these as you wish. ]
Hope this may be of help – as it surfaced recently I thought I would pass it on.
Charles