It’s the consistency of delivery, not the severity of consequences, that shows students that you care enough to give them boundaries.

So, here is my guide to achieving consistency:

1. Have reasonable expectations

What do you really want in your classroom? How quickly do you want it? Are your expectations reasonable? Get this wrong and you’ll find consistency is very difficult.

2. Use reasonable consequences

Are your consequences reasonable? Are you comfortable giving them? If you’re not, guess what? You won’t.

3. Be flexible in advance, consistent in the now

It’s fine to change when and what consequences are given in certain situations, but just don’t do it on the hoof. Be as flexible as you like but only in advance and tell everyone about the changes in advance too.

4. Fair rewards

This is a whole new blog post and is coming soon.

5. Ensure only the choice decides whether a consequence is delivered

This is a toughy but is essential. If you have given a specific and reasonable instruction, and students choose not to follow it, then you need to deliver your reasonable consequences and deliver them every time.

Other factors shouldn’t enter the equation. Factors like:

• The time of day – you think:  ”It’s only 9.10am- it’s too early”  or ”It’s nearly lunchtime- it’s too late.”
• The student involved – you think: “They’re usually good, so I’ll let them off.“
• The number of warnings they’ve already had – you think: “This is their 4th warning which means I have to ring home. I’ll leave it.”
• The reaction of the student – you think: “If I give them a warning, they’ll kick-off; it’s easier to ignore it.”

So there it is – how to achieve real consistency in behaviour management.

#5 is the biggy but what it shows is that you’re simply delivering the system and that it’s pupil’s choices (and not your whim) that leads to consequences. This is key to building better relationships.

This week, I’ve got some tips to get you to the next level. I’ve split them in to three areas.

Class-wide strategies:

• Visualising your behavioural expectations
• Establishing simple ground rules and explaining why we need them
• Teaching simple routines
• Use of class-wide rewards (See the 50 Minute Behaviour Course for more details)
• Being unemotional
• Behavioural narration – “Thanks for … “
• Using specific language for classroom routines
• Not wasting words
• Hierarchy of consequences
• Giving warnings and repeating the instruction

Individual pupil strategies

• Inserting name/pause
• Proximity praise
• Reminding about rules instead of investigating
• Contacting home with good news
• Contacting home to say you’ll be ringing home next week with an update
• Being consistent

Personal strategies

• Reflecting on your success
• Using a checklist – like this one!
• Having reasonable and accurate expectations of success. We often get put off an exercise routine or weight-loss plan because we don’t see the benefits quickly enough. Don’t fall in to this trap with behaviour management!

Improving behaviour takes time

Take just one or two of these points and try to focus on them for a day.

Small steps are better steps.

Where would you put yourself on this scale?

1. You don’t want to go to work. Lessons are chaotic and you feel like you have no control whatsoever. You feel relieved if nobody gets hurt or causes any damage. You are looking to leave the profession.

2. You dread the classroom but occasionally have moments when some of the class engage with their learning.  The pupils largely determine what goes on. You know your influence is very limited and even the “good” children behave badly.

3. There is major disruption and many pupils pay little attention to your presence.

4. Your control is very limited: it takes time and effort to get the class to listen. You try to get on to individual written work quickly in order to get their heads down. Pupils talk while you are talking, and minor transgressions go unchecked because too many occur. Your efforts are spent trying to work with those who show some interest in their learning although this proves difficult.

5. Your control is often limited, and there are times when you would be embarrassed if the head walked in. The atmosphere is rather chaotic at times, with several pupils obviously not listening to you. However, pupils who want to work can get on with it, if they can put up with some minor distractions.

6. You can usually maintain a cooperative working atmosphere and undertake most of the less risky forms of classroom activity, but this requires thought and effort.

7. You can maintain a relaxed and cooperative working atmosphere most of the time with a good range of classroom activities, but this usually requires thought and effort. Some forms of lesson activity may be under less control than others.

8. You can maintain a relaxed and cooperative working atmosphere nearly all the time, if you choose the right activities. Sometimes the risky, out of seat, active learning sessions can feel a little chaotic.

9. You feel completely in control and can undertake any sort of activity but you’re not always as relaxed as you’d like to be about it.

10. You feel extremely relaxed taking risks and feel completely in control undertaking any sort of activity. You don’t really deal with behaviour. Your focus is invariably on learning, and building and maintaining relationships.

The mistake we sometimes make is to try and move from 2 to 9 in a week and then feel disappointed when we fail.  (Same applies to exercise and losing weight too.) If we know where we are then we can set some realistic goals for moving forward with our behaviour strategies.

I read an excellent blog post this week by primary teacher Kevin McLaughlin. (@kvnmcl) He is trialling a new way to manage his classroom and describes it in great detail. He talks about learning zones and personal journeys for his students and he has even included a map of the arrangement of his tables.

This is classroom management defined. It’s the art of deciding in advance the best way for people and resources to be organised, and the flow of activities and learning that involve them. At its highest level, it also includes planning time for pupils to organise themselves, their own resources, their own activities and, therefore, their own learning.

Interestingly, Kevin doesn’t even mention behaviour. Does that mean that he never manages it?

Kevin is as close to a classroom management ninja as I’ve ever seen but the question is, how did he get there?

Some guesses:

1. Amazing classroom management skills – which are the product of the fact that he has very clear vision of the way he wants his classroom to look.

2. Great relationships – which are a product, to a large extent, of #1.

3. He’s got lots of experience.

4. He’s tried lots of stuff and, through private and public reflection, has decided what works best.

What is behaviour management?

Behaviour management is a bit different. For me,  it’s the art of deciding in advance the best way for people to build great relationships. It’s about effective and fair ways to encourage everyone to make positive choices and some structure of consequence and support for when they don’t.

At this point, it’s probably a good idea to mention that I don’t think we should call this behaviour management at all, but relationship management. These are the key elements of good relationship management:

1. A clear vision.

2. Consistency.

3. Fairness.

4. Great relationships, which come from consistency and fairness combined with great teaching.

5. Great classroom management.

When behaviour is good, it often just looks like the teacher isn’t doing anything in order to achieve it. Sometimes we assume it’s simply a good class.

So these are the differences. What about the similarities?

Classroom management and behaviour management both demand a clear vision

You need to decide how you want it to look. Having the vision is essential – people don’t just find themselves at the top of Mount Everest or with a brand new kitchen.

So how do you get your vision?

When I replaced my kitchen recently, I needed a vision. So, I looked in all the magazines and went to the showrooms and I chatted with designers in posh shops and then went to Ikea with my mostly-stolen, mashed up vision of a new kitchen. I recommend you do this for managing your classroom. Ask your colleagues, follow some blogs and steal some ideas. With a stronger vision for behaviour and for your classroom, you’ll be doing more than just “managing” in no time.

So, what strategies have the teaching profession used to manage behaviour in schools since then?

Popular strategies that don’t work:

1. Shouting

Still massively popular with some teachers, is giving the children a good old-fashioned shouting at. Everyone feels better after a good, raised-voice rant (apart from the children of course and sometimes not even the teacher.)

2. Having a chat with them

This particular approach goes a bit like this: A pupil does something wrong – the teacher has a chat with them. The pupil does something a bit more serious – the teacher has a longer chat with them. Then if the pupil does something really serious, instead of an even longer chat, they get sent to the highest-paid person in the building, who’ll (guess what?) have a chat with them. This is repeated until the child leaves the school.

3. Sticking with incredibly dull, usually exercise-book based work that simply minimises the chance of poor behaviour

Just like arranging your classroom tables in rows, this is great for teachers but terrible for learners.

4. Ignoring poor behaviour

More prevalent than you’d imagine. This is where teachers simply pretend that everything is OK with behaviour.

Popular strategies that do work but need to be massively updated based on the research we now have:

1. Warning systems

The problem with warning systems is that they work even when they are done really badly. However, it doesn’t take much of a change to make warning systems much more effective and much more consistent.

EASY WIN: The first thing we have to do is make sure our pupils know what is expected. When they know this, then we can be much fairer when moving them through our chosen system. I cover this in more detail in the 50 Minute Behaviour Course.

2. Rewards

Rewards are the bluntest instrument for behaviour management we use in schools today.  The policy of rewards, stickers and stamps is so endemic that it is now beyond question. However we really need to question it. I will be in 2012. I hope you’ll join me.

That was the history. Teachers, just like you, will shape the future.

However, there are few things we can do to make sure that we really are as positive as we can be.

1. Avoid punitive consequences

Consequences designed to make the teacher feel better and get their own back, cannot be described as positive behaviour management. Our consequences need to be fair and delivered for the right reason. That reason is to help get students back on track. A detention used to catch up with work missed in class or missing playtime because of dangerous behaviour are examples of fair consequences. We have a duty to ensure children complete an appropriate amount of work and that the majority of children are safe at breaktime.

2. Explain the reasons for rules and instructions

None of us would say “because I said so”. The thing is, we sometimes don’t explain enough about why we’ve asked children to do something. (There are only two reasons actually – we want to keep them safe and we want to help them learn.)

3. Move away from rewards towards recognition

Recognising effort is so much more positive than giving a child a sticker, a stamp or a merit. They’ll take the sticker gladly but what they really want is for significant others to recognise their efforts.

4. When you do use rewards, use class-wide rewards, not individual ones

Giving Johnny a Mars Bar for not throwing chairs, just isn’t fair. Nor is it positive for Johnny or his onlooking classmates.

Find out more about class-wide rewards in The 50 Minute Behaviour Course.

5. Tell children what you want, not what you don’t want

Thanking children for following instructions should be the first way to direct children towards your expectations. Use “Thanks for…” – lots.

6. Use your emotions positively

Put your positive emotions into your teaching and into building relationships. Forget anger, disappointment, exasperation and the rest. In my experience, they just get in the way.

You’ll be glad to hear, I’m positive these work.

Cast your mind back to your own school days. Who were the teachers you really liked? If you’re like me, the two main characteristics were:

1. Really nice

and

2. Really strict

For me, this is the secret to behaviour management in schools. In fact, if schools and individual teachers display these characteristics they are capable of much more than just “managing” behaviour. They promote independence, autonomy and increased emotional intelligence;  plus, they create the best environment for great learning.

Let’s take these two qualities one at a time.

Really nice

Has anyone ever told you “not to smile until Christmas”? If anyone does, just smile and don’t speak to them until after Christmas. Children like teachers who are nice to them. I learnt this while studying at the University of the Bloomin’ Obvious. However, sometimes it’s hard to be nice. If we’re stressed because of challenging behaviour, it’s sometimes hard to put on our front-of-house smile. However by neglecting our niceness we neglect our relationships – and relationships are built one smile at a time.

Really strict

When I say “strict”, I don’t mean Victorian schoolmaster “strict”. What I really mean is consistent. They’re the teachers who mean what they say. They care enough about their children to give them limits. The reasons for these limits are explained and consequences for going outside these very reasonable limits are small and in no way punitive. Getting children back on track is the aim for the best teachers; retribution doesn’t enter their thinking. The big thing is: children know where they stand. They like to know where they stand with people who they know genuinely care for them.

The secret is combining these two features

Really nice teachers who don’t put down proper boundaries don’t give children the proper security they need to thrive. Really strict/consistent teachers who do not genuinely enjoy their job and are simply not nice enough, can’t really build relationships. Great teachers create an effective structure within which to nurture children. (By the way, for parents the secret is similar – it’s a combination of love and logic.)

Getting the balance right is hard. However it’s not as hard as you’d think. My tip is to slowly increase your consistency and your niceness at the same time. You’ll know when one is overtaking the other. Either way, you’ll be well on the way to better behaviour.

When we are concerned about the behaviour of a class, there is one thing that more or less always happens – we play safe.

There are lots of options when we plan a lesson and one of the choices applies to risk.

Safe or risky?

1. In seats or out of seats?

2. Writing or talking?

3. Explanations or experiments?

4. You talk or they talk?

5. Writing or making stuff with scissors and paints and glue and toilet rolls and plasticine and loads of other messy stuff?

6. In the classroom or out of the classroom?

It’s obvious that one of the best ways to build relationships (alongside a fair and robust system to manage good and not so good choices) is to deliver good lessons – the kind of lessons that kids want to join in with. However, what happens when we are faced with challenging behaviour day in, day out? Our energy levels are drained and we’re often not able (and sometimes let’s be honest, willing) to pore over the planning for an exciting lesson that we fear may go disastrously wrong anyway.

We can all accept that great classroom management and sensible planning are just as important as great behaviour management strategies. However, the myth that good lessons solve all behaviour problems is just that – a myth. What we can do though, is turn up the dial on some of the above choices, slowly moving from safe choices to less safe ones. We don’t have to do it for the whole lesson and in all areas but when we move from safe to a little riskier we build relationships just a bit too. Good relationships are built on trust and there will never be any trust without a little risk.

Is it possible to be consistent and flexible?

I have a little advice on this topic. I’ll give an example that most parents will recognise and that’s getting children to go to sleep at a consistent time. When children are very young, we don’t have much control over when they go to sleep or when/how many times they wake up. The only thing we do have control over is the time we put them down to try to go to sleep. Here, we are simply starting to establish a routine.

As our children get older we can then do our best to set some expectations for bedtime. A bath, a story and sleep. Repeat.

So, what if friends that you don’t see very often are coming over or it’s a birthday or any other reason that might be an excuse for the kids to stay up late? Is it acceptable to break the bath, book, bed routine. I think it is, as long as there is a routine to break in the first place.

Some parents try to be flexible with the routine before the routine is established. You can’t do this unless you choose flexibility over consistency.

In the classroom, it makes so much sense to establish routines and the best way to do this is by having reasonable and consistent expectations. When you’ve got these in place, that’s the time to be flexible.

Earlier in my teaching career, you couldn’t shut me up. I equated lots of talking to lots of teaching. I wasn’t really concerned with my main role – facilitating learning.

As my career has progressed, I do much less talking. When speaking to the whole class, I use as few words as possible in any given lesson because I don’t want to use them up. There really is a limit to the amount of information students glean from these lectures. (By the way, I don’t limit the amount of conversations I have with individuals or groups – that’s different.)

“If you don’t ration your intervention, what you say evaporates.”                 Alex Ferguson

I also make sure I save my words for VITPs or Very Important Teaching Points. It’s so easy to waste them on housekeeping and homework instructions etc.

The other thing I’ve started doing is letting my classes know how long I’m going to speak for. If I tell my classes that I’m only gong to talk for two minutes, they are much more likely to hold their attention for that long. I also manage to avoid one of the classic bahaviour management pitfalls – I don’t expect pupils to listen to me for too long.

Thanks for your three minutes.