Managing behaviour in your classroom

Good classroom and behaviour management is essential for your lesson to run smoothly. Knowing how to anticipate and manage problems will allow you to ensure that students spend maximum time on task.

Starting and ending the lesson

Minimise disruption at the start of the lesson (when students may be arriving from the playground, or lunch) by using set procedures, for example:

• Writing instructions on the board so pupils can start tasks straight away
  
• Training pupils to take the roll and read instructions
  
• Allocating set activities, such as chanting times tables

To avoid problems at the end of the lesson, ensure that you plan and pace it to leave enough time for final activities. Give homework out early to avoid instructions being lost in the rush as pupils collect their belongings.

Other useful strategies include cueing (so pupils know how much time is left), and setting up rules for leaving the classroom (for example, letting pupils go out one by one after answering a final question).

Flow and momentum

For your lesson to run smoothly you need to establish and reinforce clear rules and procedures from the start. Stick to a small number of clearly understood and consistently enforced rules rather than a large number of regulations which will be harder to enforce. Make sure pupils understand why the rules exist, and involve them as much as possible in setting rules up.

Maintain the momentum of the lesson. Pupils will become bored and restless if you keep on explaining instructions after they have grasped what they need to do, or if you break down activities into too many different steps. Avoid stopping an activity already begun, or switching between activities without finishing them. This can cause confusion, and may trigger misbehaviour. You can easily prevent this through good lesson planning.

Seating arrangements

Seating will depend on the type of lesson you have planned. Placing groups around tables for ease of interaction is suitable for cooperative small-group work, but not for individual work. For whole-class discussion, pupils are best seated around a big table, or in a circle or semicircle, rather than in rows.

Misbehaviour: dos and don'ts

Do encourage desired behaviour. Praise should be specific, referring to a particular piece of work or behaviour, and should not be overused. Rewards, incentives and privileges like the following are also useful:

• House points resulting in a letter of praise to parents or entry into a prize draw
  
• Badges or symbols such as happy faces which children can wear
  
• Honour rolls
  
• Sweets
  
• Special responsibilities
  
• Being excused from some forms of work

When correcting misbehaviour do not overreact. Dealing with misbehaviour should not disrupt lesson flow more than the actual misbehaviour itself. The best way is to nip it in the bud in an unobtrusive way, for example, by invading a students physical space, or by scanning the classroom, moving backwards and forwards on the lookout for any emerging problems.

It may be preferable to ignore minor misbehaviour, but you need to maintain consistency in deciding what you do and don't correct. Don't let your interventions seem either overly authoritarian, or arbitrary.

Follow this sequence when dealing with misbehaviour:

1. Try to divert misbehaviour, e.g. by distracting the student with a question, picking up the pace, boosting interest by starting a new activity, or removing certain tempting materials with which students can fiddle.
   
2. If this doesn't help, then more explicit correction may be needed, by moving close to the disruptive student, making eye-contact, using verbal cues such as naming the student, pointing out in general that the class should be engaged with the lesson, or praising a particularly well-behaved student.
   
3. If this still does not succeed, you should go on to more severe warnings, or if necessary, punishment.

Rewards help reinforce desired behaviour, while punishment is used to deter undesired behaviour. Punishment is less effective than praise, but can become necessary. Start off with a verbal warning for minor misbehaviour, before going on to increasingly serious punishments:

• Deducting house points
  
• Making students stay in after school or during play
  
• Removing privileges
  
• Expulsion from class or in the worst instances, from school

Originally published on Teachernet