Preventing Punishment

Image courtesy of Bankrupcy Litigation Blog.

Often it’s not what you do to stop unwanted behavior when it occurs, but what you do to prevent it that really counts in creating a classroom environment productive to learning.

There are 3 main things I look at to prevent problems occuring in the classroom:  clear guidelines & expectations, classroom awareness, and engaging activities.

Guidelines and expectations are something that need to be set right from the beginning.  For many young learners, school is a new environment and it’s often not clear to them what they are doing there or what is expected of them while they are there. 

This is especially true if your school’s program has a different environment from other schools they are going to.  In Asia, schools are very disciplined and structured, so when students come to classes at my school, they are very unsure of how to behave.  The play-type atmosphere and more open environment makes many young learners feel like they can do anything in our classrooms.  In fact, they don’t know what to do with themselves because they’ve never been in such a free environment before and this often has them bouncing off the walls the first few classes .

Not only should expectations be set early, but they should also be discussed with the students.  As teachers, we should be careful not just to set rules and expect students to follow them.  We should reach a level of mutual understanding with the students and explain the reasons for rules.  Explaining to students that it’s important to respect each other, so we should listen when others are speaking is better than simply saying “Be quiet and listen.”  Even learners as young as 3 years old can participate in a discussion about the reasons behind most rules.

This goes equally for activities as well as the general class.  Whenever a new activity is being introduced, the rules and expectations for that activity should be explained clearly beforehand.

Being aware of your classes’ needs is another easy fix for preventing students from acting out.  If two students are always picking on each other, move them to different seats. If students can’t sit in a circle without fidgeting, give them chairs. 

It’s also about reading your class.  If students are getting bored with an activity, change to a new one.  If students have a lot of energy, get them up and moving.  If they can’t focus as a group any more, move to an individual craft.  

Out of all these preventative measures, I think the most important and effective is engaging your students.  As Simon mentioned in a comment on my last post, the primary reasons most children act up are because they are bored or the task is too difficult.   This is something I commonly see in classrooms and remember from my own schooling.  When students are bored, they lose interest and start to behave in ways that are unproductive for learning. 

Making engaging lessons comes down to asking and answering the right questions.  What is the age and developmental level of the students?  What are their interests?  How long are their attention spans?  If you can answer these questions, it’s pretty easy to create activities that are the right level and length that match your students interests.  Engaged learners are active learners and don’t have time to get distracted.

Also, one thing I’ve notice is the number of students an activity involves has a huge impact on how interesting it is.  Designing activities that have all the learners participating are much better than ones where only one or two at a time participate.   

What other ways do you use to create a positive learning environment and prevent disruptive behavior in your classrooms?

Related Posts:

Discipline & Punish:  The Birth of the School

4 Comments

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  By Cameron, March 30, 2011 @ 4:28 am

  Perhaps an interesting activity might allow students to work together on something. Not only do they learn from the experience, but they are able to form friendships as well. Once they realize that they have their friend in class, they are more willing to help the teacher keep their friend or friends in check. Of course this has to be balanced with each student getting something to take home and show their parents (which the parents absolutely love). Maintaining this balance is what makes an experienced teacher!

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  By turklis1, March 31, 2011 @ 2:55 am

  I agree in part Cameron. I’ve noticed that more friends they make, the more they want to talk with each other than pay attention The co-constructed activities are a very good idea. Do you have any examples that you use in class?

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  By kylie, April 6, 2011 @ 7:57 pm

  Very interesting article. I teach at a Prep School in Turkey, and I’m finding that it is almost impossible for me to effectively ban computers and cell phones in the class. So, recently I’ve been haunting twitter and ESL blogs looking for activities to incorporate the technology all of my students have into the lessons. It makes it less of a distraction when we are actually using it constructively . . . however – I must say this technique still needs a lot of work!
  Will be trying consequence contracts with the students this coming term . . .

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  By turklis1, April 7, 2011 @ 4:11 pm

  Haha, the cell phone battle is a losing one. My favorite line was always “it’s my mom. I have to talk to her.” Apparently people’s moms call hourly with news of the utmost importance . Incorporating them into the class is a much better idea these days I think.

  My favorite was to take a photo of something outside the class. I then dictated directions to it to the students and told them to take a picture of what they saw with their camera phones. They would then come back to class and compare their pick to mine. After that they would go out and take their own picture as a group and then write directions to it. Groups exchange and find each other’s mystery photo object. Always a wonderful lesson.

  I think consequence contracts work if agreed on by all parties. Let me know how it goes.

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