Do secondary students really need routine reminders? We have all heard colleagues say “they have been in school for blank number of years, they should know how to behave”. Yet, students still do not meet our expectations and fail to follow classroom and campus expectations. So why is it that students have been in school for half of their lives and they constantly break the rules intentionally or not.
Picture yourself as a student, traveling to seven different classrooms each day, with seven different teachers, and seven different sets of expectations. The academic and social behavioral expectations change for each teacher and you are expected to remember the classroom rules that were presented on the first few days of school. Would you be able to follow all of those expectations? Chances are if you were a “good” student in school you can answer yes, but if you were one who liked to push the limits or could not remember then you found yourself in trouble.
It was not until my second year of teaching that I had a conversation with a colleague, a science teacher who shared students with me, that I learned that setting expectations and frequently reminding students of them, had a drastic impact on decreasing behavior issues. I always thought that by high school students should know how to behave academically and socially in my classroom and I did not need to explicitly teach them. I was wrong. And that is when I changed my thoughts on behavior and found increased success with classroom management.
I set expectations at the beginning of the year for each possibility in my classroom. I let students know their expectation academically(taking notes, talking math) and socially(restroom breaks, listening to music) for each portion of the class period from warm up to lesson to group work or individual work. I explained my reasoning behind these expectations to the class so they understood it was for their benefit. I would remind students each part of class what the expectation was for about two to three weeks of the school year. For example, warm up expectations were independent work, no music, use your notebook, no passes. As the year progressed I would occasionally remind my students of the expectations set forth, especially when new students joined the class. After a break, such as thanksgiving, they needed reminders of expectations again, but I was happy to do so. What would take a minute out of my class period to remind them, saved me so much time and energy correcting misbehaviors later. I would even take the time on testing days to remind them which part of expectations should be met.
Reminding students of the expectations was half the battle. Positive behavior rewards was what encouraged the correct behavior expectations to continue. I would buy a giant bag of lifesavers mints to hand out to students. As they were following the expectations I would quietly hand them a mint, or place it on their desk, and say thank you for following the routine. Other students would notice and correct their behavior in hopes to earn a mint as well. Some days I would point out to the class that I handed the out to students who were following the expectations(never mentioned names) and other days I would keep it between me and those students. It had a ripple effect on the students in the class and instead of constantly redirecting misbehaviors, students self-corrected. I would choose different parts of the lesson to hand these out in, such as the warm up one day, an exit ticket another day etc. If your campus does not allow candy or mints, you can try stickers or even raffle tickets for a prize give out at a later time.
Ultimately being consistent in the expectations I had set helped the most with classroom management and student expectations. If I felt an expectation needed to be adjusted then I would do so, but I would keep consistent with my classroom expectations for myself and my students for the greatest effect.
Teacher tip: It is never too late to start a routine like this. You do not need to wait until the beginning of the year to set your classroom management this way, it just may be a little more work to get all students on board.
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