Practical Strategies

In this section you will find practical strategies for dealing with the most common behaviour issues that teachers face in their classrooms. The behaviour issues, and the strategies for handling them, are all ones identified by classroom teachers who have attended my training courses.

Low Level Disruption:

• Focus on the children who are on task and praise them.
• Ensure the pace and structure of lessons are okay.
• Check their understanding – is the lesson accessible to all?
• Check whether the lesson is engaging enough. Are you using different styles and strategies?
• Proximity to student - move in lose.
• Move the student to sit in a different seat.
• Use the 'deadly stare'.
• Give the child a task – ask them to hand something out.
• Praise someone who is displaying the behaviour you want.
• Carpet wriggler – sit on chair, so as not to distract others.
• Give the child some blue tac to fiddle with.
• Switch to a discussion task if several students are losing focus.
• Always have things for the children to do, i.e. times tables when lining up, thunk when on carpet, activity on tables.
• Use a clothes peg behaviour chart.
• Have everything organised (resources) before the lesson.
• Use a traffic lights system.
• Give a class reward that acknowledges children making good choices.
• Have high expectations constantly repeated – i.e. pens down, bodies turned towards adult, stopping at signal.
• Give responsibility to the children to stop each other – not going to lunch until …
• Have carpet places and line spaces.
• Reward good behaviour – use gems rewards.
• Have a noise chart.
• Have a 'blurt chart' - give each child 3 'blurt tokens', every time a child calls out, they lose one token.
• Play teacher versus pupils – who behaves best? 
• Use Class Dojo.
• Give the children options – one of them good, one boring, dependent on their behaviour.
• Ignore low level disruption to start with, or use non verbal strategies.

Pacing lessons, so that the students maintain focus:

• Not all children have to be involved in all of the main input – the more able could start a task while you are giving the input to the others.
• Visualise how lesson will run beforehand to pre-empt difficulties.
• Watch your key players to judge their attention span.
• Use work breaks (i.e. times tables with a ball, 1 word stories) to give children a ‘reset’.
• Create a carousel of activities.
• Give advance warning when questioning children – they can ‘phone a friend’ to stop the endless "ummm".
• Get children to listen to the main bit of teaching for their age in minutes, maximum. (A useful rule of thumb is ‘their age plus two’).
• Change the way you start the lesson, or the order in which you do activities. Give them a surprise – keep them on their toes.
• Listen for a change in volume or type of noise to indicate that the children are losing focus.
• Use timers on the board.
• Move on when three children have completed something.
• Use mini plenaries – give ideas from each child to all.
• Throw in something random, not related to the lesson.
• Give a time target.
• Use an internet timer.
• If enjoyment is shown, leave them for longer.
• First three to finish are given a reward.
• Limit teacher talk to the amount of time the students can focus - learn how to 'read' the signs that this is happening.
• Incorporate varied tasks.
• Use a rotation activity.
• Split the lesson up into small activities – mini plenaries, address any misconceptions.
• Change lessons around – not one size fits all.

 
Motivating boys to write:
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• Role play.
• Oral rehearsal.
• Make it relevant to them.
• Books – read to them, get them to choose texts.
• Use boy-friendly topics.
• Find male role model readers/writers.
• Use a stimulus, e.g. minecraft, dinosaurs, etc.
• Lots of scaffolding – sentence openers, facts, connectives.
• Use visual resources.
• Give lots of praise and incorporate rewards.
• Housepoints for including key words.
• Target lines in books - write down to this line.
• Give them options to write about – don’t always tell them what they 'must' do.
• Use iPads.
• Give clear success criteria.
• Create competitions.
• Use scaffolds with pictures as prompts.
• Ask them to write about what they like – follow their interests.
• Do a shared write with reluctant children as editors.

 
Tapping/wandering while you are talking:

• Take the object away (replace with blue tac).
• Ask a direct question.
• Stop and wait.
• Jazz hands to show that they have no stuff in their hands.
• Look, move closer.
• Stop and wait.
• Ask for “Eyes on me.”
• Give them something to fidget with.
• Move to stand beside them.
• “If you can’t stop fidgeting, sit on your hands.”
• Ignore – address later.
• Clapping.
• “30 seconds” to do it and get it out of their systems.
• Take a dojo off them (Class Dojo).
• Hand in the air until ready to write. Ready, steady, go!
• Keep talking, walk up to the child and look or touch table.
• Expectation – we don’t hold pen/pencil when listening.

 
How do I know when to deal with/ignore behaviour; what behaviour is ‘too much’?:

• When it gets in the way of learning.
• If they are harming themselves or others – deal with it.
• Swearing – consider what the home background is, and the impact on the other children.
• Ignore deliberate low level misbehaviour and attention seeking.
• Check that the task is ability appropriate.
• Deal with it if it is affecting the other children’s ability to learn or concentrate.
• Throwing stuff – this is dangerous – deal with it.
• Know the child! With some children ignoring makes it better, with others the opposite.

 
Getting the class back to you:

• Clap and repeat.
• “Hocus, pocus, everbody focus!”
• Clapping – repeated clap.
• Teacher: “Macaroni cheese.” Class: “Everybody freeze!”
• Shock factor – big noise.
• “Clap once if you can hear me, clap twice if you can hear me ...”.
• Search in google – countdown timer.
• Tell a joke.
• “Wake up, shake up.”
• Short physical exercises.
• Hold the silence.
• Touching parts of body in turn – visual.
• Praise.
• You sit down and look at the clock.
• Write or draw on board.
• Teacher: “1, 2, 3, eyes on me.” Class: “1, 2, eyes on you.”
• Teacher: “To infinity.” Class: “And beyond!”
• Sand timer.
• Go outside.
• Visual timer/countdown clock.
• Stand up and play a game or shake out.
• Shake bell for attention.
• Separate off individual children who are looking and listening. Bring them to you and give them a simple task. Gradually work through the class. Save the consequence for later!
• Divide and conquer – can TA take the 5 children who are listening outside to work?
• Eyes on me. Countdown 5, 4, 3 … then praise those who do.
• Bell or chime.

 
Arrogant/don’t care/poor attitude:

• Don’t be too quick to label them – don’t take their behaviour at face value.
• Give them roles.
• Reward others around them.
• Focus on those who are displaying a good attitude.
• Competition between teacher and students. Every time they demonstrate focus they get a point, if not the teacher gets the point.
• Find something they like that you can use as a carrot (reward).
• Address them away from their peers – not drawing attention to the behaviour.
• Check what is going on at home.
• Build a community approach – group reward – other children encourage child to behave.

 
Arguing back:

• Don’t let yourself get drawn in – walk away/pause.
• Give the student choices.
• Ask another teacher/TA to take over so you can discuss the situation with the child.
• “I’m not going to talk about this now, we’re going to talk about it later/at lunch.” Walk away immediately and praise another child.
• You started with “Yeah, but” so I win.
• "I am the teacher. Thank you."
• “Concentrate on your own actions, not others.”
• "It is not a debate."
• "Come at lunch and we can talk then."
• “I am not having this conversation.”
• Say thank you so there is no argument.
• “I’ll talk to you at the end.”
• Avoid escalating the problem – discuss away from the class.
• “You’re wasting your learning time.”
• Completely ignore and restate what you asked for.

 
Calling out/shouting across the room:

• Strike/warning as per school policy.
• Reminder.
• Stare.
• Hand up – wait – move on.
• Pot of fairness (one voice).
• Tell them you have a hearing problem – you can only hear children who have their hands up.
• Calling out tokens – 3 in lesson.
• Blurt Chart – each child has 3 strikes. Each time they shout out or speak when they aren’t supposed to they lose 1 point.
• Praise those with their hands up.
• “That would have been a really good answer, it’s a shame your hand wasn’t up.”
• Ask them to write their comment/question on a whiteboard to show teacher.
• Gems/stickers for hands up.
• Don't use hands up to get answers.

 
How to control noise levels during group work:

• Tell them the answer/work is secret and the other groups can’t know what they are saying.
• Tell them that the group that works the quietest gets a prize. Have a competition between the tables.
• Use a silent debate.
• Quiet critters (visual reminders on tables).
• Through your own use of voice.
• Loud musical interjection.
• Threaten to end group work if the noise gets too high.
• Establish a voice ‘level’ before it starts.
• Chart of clear noise levels, e.g. ‘indoor voices’.
• Voice level app.
• Ring a bell and draw the noise levels down.
• Set a chart – discuss – what does each noise level look/sound like?
• Check – have they finished their work/do they understand it? Mini plenaries.
• Play music – they have to be able to hear it.
• Practise the appropriate noise level.

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