🧵 In this thread, I have summarised some of Dr Bill Rogers’ top behaviour management techniques. Each tip is supported with an old-school video… 📼
“You establish what you establish”
POSITIVE LANGUAGE
Communicate calmness & focus. Instead, of making demands or requests, describe what you see: “A number of students are talking.” Give confident & respectful directions to cue in expected behaviour: “settling down everyone. Thanks.”
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FOCUS ON PRIMARY BEHAVIOUR
Walk the room & settle small groups before the lesson. Keep intrusiveness & confrontation low. Always focus on the primary issue & do not over service secondary behaviours (eye-rolling, muttering). Address rudeness briefly.
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TACTICAL IGNORING
Consciously ignore secondary — often non verbal — behaviours (sighing, eye rolling) that students exhibit on receipt of teacher correction. It helps to keep the focus on the flow of the lesson, or on acknowledging good behaviour.
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DIRECTED CHOICE
During on-task activities, students may be doing the wrong thing (phone, ear phones in). Make consequences clear & leave responsibility with them using directed choice: “I want you to put your phone in your bag or put it on my desk.”
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PARTIAL AGREEMENT
Partial agreement is a tactic that gets you back to the primary issue without being led into conflict. Partially agreeing with students diffuses potential arguments: “Maybe you weren’t taking but now I want you to finish the task.”
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TAKE UP TIME
It is important to give students time to respond to the teacher’s instruction. Take up time allows for face saving & building cooperation. The teacher might deliberately move or look away after saying, “Omar, come to my desk please.”
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FOLLOW UP CONVERSATIONS
Tune into students’ feelings & hear them out. Focus should only be their misbehaviour. Model the misbehaviour to them (with permission) & refer them back to the school’s student behaviour agreement. Always separate amicably.
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📥 For convenience, you can download the graphics and videos from this thread in a single PDF.
Thanks for the great response to this thread. I’ve recently re-listened to @ollie_lovell ERRR podcast episode with Dr. Bill Rogers… it’s an absolutely brilliant interview. Check it out! 👏
🧵 THREAD! Since introducing these one-pagers in my school in 2022, I’ve seen teachers’ engagement with evidence informed ideas sky-rocket. Teachers are time-poor, so distilling important ideas into an easily digestible format offers a practical solution. Here are 7 ways one-pagers support educators…
1/ WIDER READING: One-pagers spotlight the most important evidence-informed ideas and inspire wider reading. Our teachers have been able to focus on deeper exploration at a later date and learn at their own pace.
2/ BUILD KNOWLEDGE: One-pagers serve as a practical tool to introduce or refresh pedagogical knowledge. They have proved to be invaluable for teachers at all experience levels.
🧠 ‘Why Don’t Students Like School?’ by Daniel Willingham is one of the most influential books for teachers on cognitive science. It explores how students’ minds work and how to use this knowledge to be a better teacher.
🧵THREAD! Here are some of my main takeaways…
Thanks again to @olicav for the excellent learning and memory diagram! 🙌
🧠 WM has limited space and thinking becomes increasingly difficult as it gets crowded. ‘Unless the cognitive conditions are right, we avoid thinking.’ Teachers should promote challenging cognitive work by reviewing each lesson in terms of what students will THINK about.
🧠 ‘Background knowledge from our LTM helps us to make sense of new information’. Knowledge is best learned when it is conceptual and facts are interrelated. A practical way to do this is to get students to learn the unifying ideas of each discipline - the most common concepts.
🧵 FEEDBACK! Feedback should guide students toward improvement, be clear and specific, and encourage action. Here's a breakdown of key strategies to make the feedback process more impactful and move students forward!
🎯 **Make Feedback Specific**: Avoid generic comments like "good work" or "needs improvement." Be precise and clear. For example, “Your analysis is strong because you used…” This approach helps students understand exactly what they did well or need to improve.
🔍 **Make Feedback Understandable, Helpful, and Actionable**: @KateJones_teach explains that teacher must ensure students grasp the feedback and know how to improve.
1. Understandable: Do pupils understand the feedback? Do they understand what they need to do to improve?
2. Helpful: If the feedback isn't helping the learner move forwards and progress with their learning, then the feedback is not effective.
3. Actionable: Can pupils act on the feedback? Teachers should provide a task and time to respond and act on all feedback provided.
**🧵** Being evidence-informed involves blending insights from various educational research. Here’s a list of my favourite papers and reports that can help to refine and improve classroom instruction.
🪜 Principles of Instruction: Research Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know by Barak Rosenshine
In 2012, Rosenshine formulated ten key principles, which he argued underpin any effective approach to instructional teaching.
‘Why Don’t Students Like School?’ by Daniel Willingham is one of the most influential books for teachers on cognitive science. It explores how students’ minds work & how to use this knowledge to be a better teacher.
🪡 THREAD. Here are some ‘brain bites’ I took away from it…
🧠 WM has limited space & thinking becomes increasingly difficult as it gets crowded. ‘Unless the cognitive conditions are right, we avoid thinking.’ Teachers should promote challenging cognitive work by reviewing each lesson in terms of what students will THINK about.
🧠 ‘Background knowledge from our LTM helps us to make sense of new information’. Knowledge is best learned when it is conceptual & facts are interrelated. A practical way to do this is to get students to learn the unifying ideas of each discipline - the most common concepts.