Classroom Behaviour: A Practical Guide To Effective Teaching, Behaviour Management And Colleague Support

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Podcasts where Bill explains his ideas and ethos in more detail as well as answering teachers' FAQs The balance between appropriate leadership, including behaviour management and also building a positive working relationship with students, is a balance that teachers work with all the time. It’s possible to be appropriately firm where we need to be with students, particularly when there’s distracting and disruptive behaviour, but also respectful and positive with students. That comes down very much to consciously thinking about our language. We’re not there as a teacher-leader simply to want to want to be liked by our students, we’re there in a professional role, but that role involves a relationship. Getting that balance between the teacher-leadership role and the necessities of leadership and management is not an easy one but it is one within which that creative tension can be balanced by positive, respectful language, avoiding unnecessary confrontation when you’re managing behaviour and also not easily buying into some of the behaviours that children exhibit – like sulking and pouting, argumentation and so on. Bill Rogers has a strong line on teachers being able to model the behaviour they expect. This includes not wanting the last word. Partial Agreement is an essential strategy for avoiding or resolving conflict. It means teachers not trying to have the last word, or asserting their power in a situation when a student disputes their judgement.

BR: The establishment phase is basically the first meeting with a new class. Even if you knew some of those students from the previous years, there’s still a psychological readiness and a kind of developmental readiness in the students for us to make clear to them what this time will be like for them. They know that teachers establish routines and rules so they’re expecting that and they’re also getting to know their teacher as we get to know them of course, so we’re establishing not just our leadership but an emerging relationship with the students as well and that beginning of trust that’s essential for teachers working with students. He has written a number of books on behaviour management, discipline, colleague support, and teacher stress.

His strategies centre on the use of language cues to influence behaviour and the need to take a measured, collaborative approach to working with challenging students. Hopefully, of course, beginning teachers won’t be given particularly difficult classes to start with, let’s hope there’s a reasonable balance there. It sometimes can happen that beginning teachers might be given the more difficult students, which is unfair. If they think that’s been happening to them, again it’s really important to make their case to their leadership team to ask for that support to help them to deal with that situation. School wide positive behaviour support (SW-PBS) is a systematic individualised strategy that is commonly implemented in schools to achieve social and emotional learning outcomes while avoiding negative behaviours (Kwang-Sun et al. 20ll). SW-PBS is split up into three separate categories, including primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary includes strategies that are designed for all student behaviours. Secondary extends deeper, focusing on strategies, which are designed for specific groups of students, classes and individuals at risk of negative behaviours. The tertiary level, are specific strategies, which are, implemented for specific individuals with severe behaviour issues. Sainato (1990) describes this strategy as a strategy that aims to increase positive behaviours and adaptive skills, whilst significantly decreasing negative behaviours that occur. When asking questions in discipline (and management) contexts it helps to use direct interrogative forms “What…?”, “When…?”, “How…?”, “Where…?” rather than “Why…?” or “Are you…?” This enables the student to focus on what they need to think about or do relative to the context of the question. The two most common questions asked in this regard - both in and out of class - are “What are you doing…?” or “What is our rule for…?”, followed by “What should you be doing?’ If a student whinges or argues we find it helpful to refocus to the main issue at that point, sometimes adding ‘partialagreement’, as in the playground incident. 5. Clarifying consequences These understandings come from a core base that’s non-negotiable. The right to feel safe and the right to respect and the right to learn are the basis on which teachers build this agreement. We wouldn’t really call it a ‘contract’ but we would use phrases like a ‘student behaviour agreement’ or ‘an understanding of rights and responsibilities’, depending on the age of the children. And most teachers publish that in a user-friendly form with say some large posters at the front of the room ‘We all have a right to respect. If we’re going to enjoy this respect we understand that we …’ and then list down the behaviours that we’ve discussed together. The same with the right to learn ‘To learn well here and enjoy that right we: get to class on time, we have relevant materials, during class discussion we put our hand up and wait our turn, if we disagree we disagree respectfully …’

A conscious reflection on our characteristic language of discipline will enable the aims noted earlier. It is my contention that we should give as much thought to a ‘discipline plan’ as we do to a lesson plan. A key feature of any such plan is how we use discipline language, and why. This avoids the horrific teacher domineering – “come here Boy!” nonsense. Simply, “Michael…(pause to gain attention)… come up here a sec please.” Then deliberately look away… talk to someone else. Michael will come. He just will. In his own time. It works – try it. It also works in the corridor. “John, come over here for sec please… then walk away to a private area, away from peers. John will follow – and not lose face.” You can then have a quiet word about the behaviour without the show-down. BR: We’ve got a four term year in Victoria, so that’s 10 weeks. Most teachers, if they plan for that establishment phase with positive core routines, thoughtful behaviour expectations published in a user-friendly and age appropriate way – and positively, you know not ‘don’t call out’ or ‘don’t talk while the teacher is talking’ but positively ‘hands up without calling out’ rather than ‘don’t call out’, ‘facing the front and listening’ rather than ‘don’t talk while the teacher’s trying to teach’. These 10 precepts at the heart of the Responsibility Theoryare used as the only constant in a theory that is not a set method - it can be applied to a manner of situations. Purje states that "the aim of Responsibility Theory is to always inform the student that the student is responsible for and has power over their thinking, their behaviour, what they say, their choices, and their learning" (Purje. R, 2014). Sounds like you know the fair rule fellas. Enjoy the rest of playtime.” They walked off muttering, eyes raised and frowning. We tactically ignored this natural frustration.

note the use of ‘Thank you' rather than ‘Please'. This signals compliance. I mentioned this in a previous post based on a behaviour management PD I attended run by Glen Pearsall) But, in terms of who sits with whom, it probably is not helpful unless you’ve got a very cooperative class and you know that beforehand to simply let the students sit where they want. If a teacher says on their first day ‘hi guys, sit where you want’, what can happen is that the kids who think they’re particularly cool, the more narcissistically-inclined kids, will probably want to sit with their best friends and that can often ease out or exclude the less confident students. So, you get a group of cool kids sitting together that may not be the best arrangement for the actual learning of those kids just because they’re sitting with their best friends. In this Third Edition of his bestselling book, Bill Rogers looks at the issues facing teachers working in today's classrooms. Describing real situations and dilemmas, he offers advice on dealing with the challenges of the job, and how building up a rapport with both students and colleagues can support good practice. From experienced school leadership to first-year-out and early career teachers, the day held invaluable insights, instruction and examples.