Behaviour Management – a taster

Having taught in a culture for many years, which has respect built into its system, Behaviour Management was a term I was completely ignorant about until recently.

Its only since my return to the United Kingdom, that Behaviour Management has become very important in my effectiveness as a teacher. In some ways I’ve always practiced Behaviour Management, without really knowing it as such.

Effective Behaviour Management begins with good planning and preparation.

Good planning means splitting your lesson up into smaller manageable portions. In mathematics, you might aim to teach three different topics/ sub topics in a one hour lesson.

Good preparation means having a starter activity, differentiated worksheets, and perhaps another activity to keep things interesting.

The starter activity should be about 10 minutes long, and if possible relate to the previous lesson. If students arrive at different times to a lesson, some a few minutes late, they will quickly conform to the class atmosphere of purposeful work, if they see the rest of the students already concentrating on this activity. It is a very effective strategy, as its far better than waiting a few minutes for everyone to arrive, and then trying to get them settled into receptive mode, so you can begin teaching.

After the starter activity, there is guided teacher instructions with examples, followed by independent student study. There should be short extension exercises for the quicker students and examples worksheet with model answers for the slower students.

Keep the lesson moving along at a fairly brisk pace, giving time limits, such as ‘You’ve got 5 minutes to finish this exercise’. If all the class are still working at the end of 5 minutes, you can easily make this time extensible.

If possible marking can be done in the class, either asking students to come out to your desk, or if convenient, going around to them. This helps the students ‘stay on task’ i.e. continue working through an exercise, as they each know that they need to produce something for you to see and mark.

Activities break up the monotony of doing written exercises, and are especially useful if they illustrate concepts that would be difficult to formally teach.

If any student is not ‘staying on task’ then its always better to start your verbal correction with the ‘I’ word, as it puts you in charge. So instead of saying, ‘Can you continue working.’, you would say, ‘I need you to finish your work.’

Don’t forget the plenary, which quickly sums up the main points of the lesson.

If the class has been working hard throughout the lesson, then don’t forget to say ‘thank you’ to them at the very end, as praise is a great motivator.