Giving Instructions and Dealing with Behaviour Infringements
As teachers, we all know at times how hard it gets to make students listen and follow instructions. Try the following and see what a big difference it brings to your class.
Giving Instructions:
- Get a student’s full attention before giving instructions.
- Make sure everyone is looking at you and not fiddling with a pencil, turning around, looking at a book, etc.
- Only give instructions once; repeating can unwittingly train a student to not bother to listen properly the first time.
- Smile as you give instructions.
- Be very clear in all your instructions and expectations. Have a student repeat them back to you.
Behaviour infringements:
- Deal with low-level behaviours before they get big.
- Low level, or minor, behaviour infringements will escalate if they are not dealt with quickly and consistently. A student’s behaviour is reinforced when he gets attention for it, but do not be tempted to ignore it.
- Find a calm and quiet way to let the child know that you see exactly what he is doing and that there is a consequence, without making a fuss, getting upset or sounding annoyed.
- Give your instructions once only. If the student continues to misbehave, instead of repeating your original instruction, try one or more of these actions:
- point to a place (e.g. on the board, on a post-it in the student’s book, a note on your desk) where you wrote down the original instruction at the time you first gave it
- stop everything and look at the student pointedly and wait for them to figure out why
- descriptively praise those who are behaving appropriately, praise the target student as soon as he complies
- Always follow through, even on minor infractions, so that students know there is no point in testing. They should know what would happen.
- Only give second chances after a period of good behaviour.
Non-compliance:
Do not tolerate non-compliance in your class, as it will lead to disruptive behaviour among the students. Make sure the students are aware of consequences of non-compliance.
How to deal with non-compliance:
- Help the student to do whatever you have asked him to do. If he has thrown pencils on the floor, help him to pick them up.
- If a student does not obey instructions straight away, do not give up. Keep waiting. Praise every little step in the right direction, even the absence of the wrong thing. For example, if you have just asked a student to stand up and he’s not doing it, you could say, ‘You’re not swearing now, thank you.’
- Do not protect the student from the consequences of his action or lack of action. The student is making a choice and you will have told him this, and given a clear warning of the consequence.
- A consequence should be uncomfortable and not upsetting enough to breed more resentment. The purpose of the consequence is to prompt the student to think, ‘I wish I hadn’t done that.’
- Have a ready repertoire of easy to implement and monitor consequences. These might include
- loss of choices (e.g. where to sit)
- loss of break time
- loss of a privilege
- sitting in silence for a set amount of time