Once upon a time, a fresh-faced, idealistic young teacher emerged blinking from teacher training camp. Armed only with a dream of putting the education world to rights, brand new elbow patches and a burning ambition to be the most popular teacher in school, he tackled the world head on. He challenged the establishment and won. He changed the face of education forever. The kids loved him, his results were outstanding and Benedict Cumberbatch won an Oscar for playing him in the film. And then I woke up.

I have to admit I found the real teaching world a bit of a shock and came down to earth with a bump. Dealing with teenagers who didn’t want to be in school wasn’t easy and I soon realised how ill-equipped I was in terms of practical classroom management strategies. I’ll be honest and tell you I really struggled with some students and I was pathetic at keeping the more challenging groups under control.

To be fair, it was the same story for most other members of staff. This was a tough school, but even so, there were still one or two exceptions who seemed to have the respect and adulation of even the hardest students. These were the teachers the kids adored. When they walked down a corridor the students would make a beeline for them to say hello and have a chat, the mood in their classroom was almost always upbeat and as soon as they began to teach a respectful hush would immediately descend. ‘That is the kind of teacher I want to be!’ I thought. Now to find out how they do it …

I found that the simplest way was to ask them – the students, that is, not the teachers. I wanted to hear them tell me what it was they wanted to see in a teacher. So, over the years and in several different settings, I compiled questionnaires for my classes, of all ages between 7 and 18, designed to root out the answer to that one big question: what makes the best teacher you’ve ever met?

I used the questionnaires to probe deeper than that, of course. I wanted to know what these teachers said, what they did, what teaching methods they used, what strategies they employed to help kids when they were down, how they used humour in the classroom, how they encouraged the students to work harder, how they got them to follow instructions, what they did that made them smile.

Call me obsessive (I’ve had worse) but there was a hidden agenda. I had watched these individuals in action for some time before it hit me: these teachers were enjoying their careers far more than their peers. The teaching day wasn’t a grind to them. It wasn’t the gruelling endurance test that some teachers would have me believe. Here were teachers who enjoyed coming to school to teach students who enjoyed being taught.

I wanted to be one of these teachers, not the jaded moaner grumbling into his coffee in the corner of the staffroom every breaktime. And that is why I spent so much time questioning my students. The results won’t surprise you, as they didn’t surprise me. All the expected criteria were there. The following list (in no particular order) represents the features that the students said they most wanted to see in their ‘best teacher’.

As I said, no surprises, yet it took me a long time to realise just how important this short list really is and why it embodies the key to both preventing and dealing with behaviour problems in the classroom. You see, after years of compiling my little questionnaires, it dawned on me that the reason these teachers were having such an easy time in the classroom wasn’t only because they provided interesting lessons and were firm and fair. There is an important reason why the essential attributes listed above, taken as a whole, are so effective in preventing problems and helping students feel content: they satisfy three crucial human needs.

You’ll no doubt be familiar with Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory. It suggests that all humans share basic needs and that once a group of needs is met or satisfied, we move up to the next level. The lowest level consists of our most basic needs – shelter, food, water and safety. Then we progress into the realms of a wide range of emotional and psychological needs – from the need to achieve through to the need to contribute, the need for love and a whole host of others in-between. These needs must be met in order for us to feel content and whole.

I like things to be simple so I’ve lumped into three groups what I feel to be the most important of the psychological needs in terms of classroom management. The first group falls under the heading of empowerment and includes things like recognition, freedom, autonomy, achievement, contribution, choice and competence. Second is the need for fun, which includes curiosity, interest, growth and learning, adventure, amusement, surprise and variety. Finally, there is the need to belong – to be accepted, valued, appreciated, needed, related to or connected with something beyond oneself.

If you think about this it makes perfect sense. We humans don’t function well without adequate control, choice, autonomy and freedom in our lives – we need to be empowered. We can’t live happy lives without at least some variety, humour, activity or fun. And we feel isolated and alone if we’re not valued or appreciated by others or connected to them in some way – we need to belong. When these three needs are not being met – when they are missing from our lives – we feel frustrated and discontented. And that’s when the problems start.

Consider the following scenario: imagine a thoroughly boring lesson. You know the type I mean – a teacher handing out worksheet after worksheet, standing at the front of the room, talking like a shop window dummy going through the motions. There is no engaging warm-up activity to grab the students’ attention, no variety or choice in terms of lesson tasks or level of challenge, no novelty or intrigue, no humour, no laughter, no sense of discovery, no interaction or movement around the room, no music, no curiosity, no energy, no recognition or praise for efforts made and no attention given to differing learning styles. It’s the kind of lesson that makes kids want to get up and walk out.

What usually happens in a lesson like this? You guessed it: students misbehave.

It might start with fairly innocent activities such as doodling or passing notes, but left unchecked these activities become increasingly disruptive: getting up and walking around, throwing things, shouting silly comments, dishing out abuse to the teacher, not doing work, tapping pencils, refusing to follow instructions, dictating their own terms, using mobile phones and so on. What results is the typical behaviour problems arising from frustration and dissatisfaction – from needs that have not been met.

Remember, our psychological needs are crucial to us and must be satisfied – they are a primeval, subconscious thirst which must be quenched and are as important to us as water and sunlight are to a plant. If the teacher doesn’t provide a means to meet these needs as part of regular day-to-day practice, then students will seek satisfaction in less appropriate ways of their own devising.

In other words, if you don’t give them fun, they will make their own. If you don’t give them a sense of empowerment, they will assert themselves in their own way. And if you don’t help them feel valued, they will opt out and form troublemaking splinter groups. (Have you ever wondered why gangs are so appealing to young people?)

Throughout this book I will present some ways of satisfying these three key needs in order to help you prevent and deal with a large proportion of problems in your classroom. I call the underlying framework the Needs Focused Approach™, for obvious reasons. I don’t claim that all your problems will be solved, but by adopting the strategies and ideas that follow you will definitely see a dramatic reduction in the number of incidents you are currently dealing with on a daily basis. And I guarantee that if you start to adopt some of the key principles, you will start to see big improvements in your ability to deal with any problems which do occur.

We are going to look at ways of helping students experience a sense of belonging by helping them feel part of the classroom community and by building positive, mutually respectful teacher–student bonds. It makes a huge difference to struggling, troubled (and troublesome) students to feel accepted, welcomed and valued in school.

We will look at ways of empowering students by providing them with realistic chances to achieve and experience success, by giving them a degree of autonomy and choice and by ensuring their efforts are recognised and acknowledged. Again, this comes down to helping students feel valued as well as giving them confidence in their abilities to attempt and complete lesson tasks.

And we will look at ways of improving lessons by making them more interactive and appealing, more stimulating, more relevant to students’ lives and more fun. Now and again you can be forgiven for having a lesson of book work or worksheets. Now and again you can be forgiven for a lacklustre performance and for not displaying your usual enthusiasm and love for your subject. No problem there, that’s life. The problems arise when the majority of lessons all follow the same format. If there is a continuing lack of challenge, variety and novelty, there will almost certainly be a continuing lack of interest from the students.

As well as all these preventive tools, strategies and ideas for maintaining a positive lesson environment, you are also going to learn a wide range of very practical, highly effective responses to use when things go wrong. You will get some ideas for consequences which actually work, together with a method for issuing them which doesn’t lead to confrontation. You will find new ways to help students follow your instructions and you will have a suite of proven strategies for addressing many of the specific behaviour issues you are likely to face in today’s tough classrooms. Finally, in Part 2, we will go through a complete, step-by-step sample lesson with the noisy class – from getting them into the room, settled and ready to work, to dismissing them with a smile.

What I’ve learned is that you really can succeed with the most challenging, noisy, rowdy and difficult groups of students. You really can gain the respect of antisocial, hard-to-reach teens and children. You can get them following your instructions without arguments and without fuss. You can have them arriving at your classroom with a smile and joining in lessons with enthusiasm – no matter how unresponsive or sullen they currently appear. And you really can enjoy stress-free, rewarding teaching – no matter how worn out and drained you feel right now and no matter how far-fetched that seems.

Best of all, these changes can happen quickly. I believe any teacher can succeed with practically any group of students if they employ certain key strategies with the right attitude and approach. Why? Because I’ve been exactly where you are now and I know how it feels to struggle in the classroom.

At the start of my teaching career I used to go home in the evenings in a rage, so angry that my students could get away with the things they did, furious that there seemed to be no way of reaching and dealing with them. They didn’t respond to staff who were pleasant to them and they laughed in the faces of staff who tried to discipline them. Nothing seemed to work.

I couldn’t sleep, I had a constant headache and I was on edge all the time. I worried what my colleagues thought of me and I dreaded teaching certain groups because I knew they would walk all over me. How embarrassing. How humiliating. I became bad tempered at home and all my conversations with friends centred around the horrors I was facing at work on a daily basis. Eventually, I began to look for other jobs. I became resigned to the fact that I didn’t have what it took to work in tough schools with tough kids. My dream was over.

Then, by chance, things changed. I became a supply teacher while I looked for a way out and took a job for one afternoon at a pupil referral unit (PRU). The unit had recently been placed in special measures and it was easy to see why. I was shocked to see kids literally running wild through the corridors, slamming doors, ripping books, screaming and shouting abuse, running into the car park and throwing stones at the building. And all of this was happening during lesson time. Most of the staff had no control whatsoever and some were in tears.

But I was hooked. The children here fascinated me as much as their backgrounds horrified me. I started to see that there were reasons for the way they behaved. It was no wonder that nothing seemed to work – most of the strategies I had been using took no account of the issues and problems they faced. I decided there and then that I wanted to really connect with these young people. I wanted to help them succeed and I wanted to learn the skills that would enable me to manage their behaviour. I ended up staying for more than five years and enjoyed some of the most thorough and in-depth professional training any teacher could hope for in the field of behaviour management. It was tough, but I consider myself so fortunate for that experience.

Many of the ideas in this book come from my time spent in PRUs and behaviour units where the behaviour of students is incredibly demanding and needs the kind of management which would be deemed disproportionate or unnecessary in other settings. You may therefore feel that some of the strategies would be impractical for your classes. It all depends on your particular circumstances, of course – the institution, the age group, your subject and the type of students in your care. What works in some classrooms will not necessarily work in others. My intention is to provide you with a wide range of ideas which you can dip into and use as you see fit – it is not necessary to follow every single step in a prescriptive manner in order to benefit.

It is also my aim to help you begin to enjoy teaching again by eliminating some of the stress associated with tough students and by giving you the confidence and skills to calmly succeed with any group you teach. These strategies have the potential to create swift improvements in your ability to manage student behaviour and big improvements in the way uncooperative and obstinate students respond to you.

Throughout the book you’ll notice this little symbol popping up from time to time. It’s there to let you know that there are additional resources available on a web page I’ve set up for you at www.noisyclass.com/bookresources. There’s no charge for this – the resources come free with the book.

So, with the introduction out of the way, let’s try out a quick strategy before we really get into the nitty-gritty …

How to get the noisy class quiet in 15 seconds

Not only can this technique get a group of students quiet in as little as a few seconds, it also strengthens teacher–student relationships, injects some humour into the session and gives challenging students the attention they crave. It also works equally well with 8-year-olds, 18-year-olds and even 63-year-olds (I haven’t gone higher than that!). Indeed, I tried this at a recent teacher training seminar in Dubai and overheard one of the participants remarking, ‘He just got a room of 150 rowdy people quiet in 15 seconds!’

It relies on two key principles: responsibilities and routines. Some of your students will respond very well to being given a responsibility. In fact, it’s probably your most challenging students – the ringleaders – who will respond best to responsibility because they crave attention. A great way to give them this attention (in a very positive way) is to give them a job, and for this classroom strategy we are going to award three or four students with the job of getting the rest of the class quiet. These students are going to be our ‘shushers’ and it is their responsibility to ‘shush’ the rest of the class members (in a special way) when asked to do so.

To give them every chance of success we are going to train them. Each nominated shusher is asked to give their best and loudest shush – complete with an angry scowl and finger-on-lip gesture. After a few practices, the shushers are then told that whenever the teacher shouts out ‘Shushers!’ they are to give their best and loudest shush in unison. The rest of the class are told that when they hear the shushers shush they must stop talking and sit in silence. After two or three practices they all get the idea and we now have the makings of a very effective routine in place.

To give the shushing routine the best chance of success there are three additions which I have found to be useful. First, your shushers need regular feedback. They should be told when they are doing a good job and given hints and pointers when they are slacking or messing around. Remember that the students you use as shushers are likely to be natural livewires so they will need careful management to make sure they continue to perform well. Ideally, any constructive feedback or corrective instructions should be given quietly and out of earshot of other students.

Second, I like to give each of my shushers a uniform to wear so they can be easily identified. The ‘uniform’ is actually just a silly hat or joke school cap, but they love wearing it, although I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it helps them feel special, maybe it just makes the whole affair less serious, but whatever the reason, it seems to work.

Finally, I have found that shushers sometimes need a little extra help to get a particularly rowdy class to settle. I give them this by using another routine prior to calling on them – the countdown. This is simply the process of counting down slowly from 10 to 1 out loud, while giving encouragement along the way.

	10 …		Okay everyone, by the time I get down to 1 you should all be sitting on your own seats with your bags away and your hands on the table … Excellent Carly and Sophie, you got it straight away.
	9 …		Brilliant over here on this table – let’s have the rest of you doing the same.
	8 …		You need to finish chatting, get that mess away and be sitting facing me.
	7 …		All done over there at the back, well done. Just waiting for a few others.
	6 …		Come on, still some bags out at the back and people talking.
	5 …		Good.
	4 …
	3 …		We’re just waiting for one group now. Ah, you’ve got it now and you’re sitting perfectly, thank you.
	2 …		Well done everyone, nearly there …
	1 …		Brilliant.
	(Pause)
	Shushers!

By the time you reach 1, most of your students will be settled and responsive, leaving the shushers to deal with the small minority who are still talking. Obviously, you can shorten the countdown, or even disregard it completely, if a group is relatively settled. At these times, the shushers alone can bring silence to your room.

So there you have it. A great way to get rowdy groups of students settled in record time. Now we can begin …

The first big benefit is saving time – and a lot of it. A great deal of time is lost in the classroom by having to repeat instructions again and again to students who aren’t listening. However, once you’ve taken the time to establish routines the job of getting students to follow your instructions is largely done for you. You no longer have to continually tell them what to do because the routine reminds them exactly what to do and how to do it.

Routines give your students a map to follow and because this map doesn’t change, it creates 100% consistency. We all know how important consistency is in terms of teaching and managing behaviour, and routines are really consistency in practice. You simply cannot be inconsistent in the instructions you give to students once you have turned them into a routine.

Routines also give students a greater chance of experiencing success in your lesson – and for our tough, most challenging students, this is something they rarely get to enjoy. By giving them very clear steps to follow in order to complete a given task, the likelihood of them doing the right thing is increased dramatically. And the more opportunities you have to praise students and thank them for behaving appropriately, the more quickly their attitudes and behaviour will change for the better.

Another great thing about routines is that they can be created for almost every transition or behaviour ‘hot spot’ throughout the school day. For example:

How much easier would your teaching day be if you had routines in place for all those difficult times? And how much smoother would the lesson be if students knew exactly what to do in each of those circumstances?

Much of this comes down to remembering that as much as 75% of communication is non-verbal. It’s not so much about the words we use but the way in which those words are interpreted. So it’s about body language, facial expressions, hand gestures and our proximity – how close we are to students when we talk to them. All of these have a huge part to play in whether or not other people will really understand what we’re saying. Very often students will jump to conclusions or misinterpret what we’re saying, and sometimes this happens before we even open our mouths. It’s the silent messages we unconsciously give that are often at the root of students’ decisions to listen to us, ignore us, shout at us or leave the room in tears.

The way we use our voice also has a large effect on the way our message is interpreted – and in that respect at least, children are very like dogs. (Some are like dogs in many other ways but let’s stick with this for now!) If you were to shout aggressively and forcefully at my dog, saying the words: ‘I love you, you’re such a gorgeous little dog!’ he would cower and shrink away fearing he was being berated yet again for nicking one of my shoes. On the other hand, if you were to gently tell him, ‘You’re a nasty, foul-smelling little hound’, in a warm, soothing voice he would lick you enthusiastically and clamber all over you thinking you were his new best friend. He’s very fickle. Seriously, though, a dog doesn’t understand the actual words used but it does tune into the tone of voice, the pace and the volume. Basically, dogs react to the way we are speaking – as do people.

So, what message are we giving our students through our facial expressions, tone of voice and body language? That we are tired, worn out and close to breaking point? If we do, there is a good chance they will either ignore us or push a little harder to tip us over the edge when we tell them to do something they would rather not do. Or are we giving them the message that we’re angry with them, or that we dislike them? If so, they might well turn against us completely. Tougher students might retaliate there and then, while the more timid ones might hold a grudge and seek retribution at a later date.

We can give the impression that we are a pushover, a threat or a leader depending on the silent messages we communicate, so the way we give instructions will have a massive impact on how students respond to them.

I once read the story of a teacher who returned to teaching after a career break and found himself struggling to manage the behaviour of his students. He was laughed at and ignored by the students and many of his lessons were completely out of control. This same teacher happened to have co-authored a highly respected book on classroom management, he was a qualified psychologist, a senior teacher with more than 15 years’ classroom experience and later became a university lecturer in teacher training. This presents something of a conundrum. Here we have a very experienced and intelligent teacher who finds himself totally unable to control his students, despite having written a comprehensive textbook on dealing with classroom behaviour problems. He knows all the theories, he’s got all the skills and strategies and yet he can’t get the kids to behave. What’s going on? How can this be?

Well, the answer is that he had no relationship with his new cohort of students – he didn’t know them and they didn’t know him. And because they didn’t know him, they could neither trust him nor respect him. How can you really trust someone you don’t know?

This teacher had returned to the classroom thinking that all the wonderful theories, strategies and case studies he had carefully explained in his book would help him swiftly brush aside any of the classroom problems he was likely to encounter. But he had forgotten one of the most important principles of successful teaching: students will always respond more positively to a teacher they know, like and trust; they will always work harder and behave better for a teacher they get on with. (I should add that this teacher was quick to realise his error and promptly set about resolving his predicament. He began focusing heavily on his relationship with the students and saw an almost immediate improvement in their attitudes and behaviour.)

It can be easy to blame the system – the school, the setting, the building, the students, the parents, the lack of support from senior staff, the policies – for disorder in the classroom, but these factors have no real relevance for the teacher who has a good relationship with his or her students. Teachers with relationships at the core of their practice are able to go into virtually any classroom, in any school, and succeed with even the most difficult of students.

In this chapter I’m going to show you some of the best, fast acting ideas and strategies I know of for building positive relationships with hard to reach students and becoming the teacher they respect and value. You really can get them to respond more constructively to your instructions and you really can see miraculous transformations in terms of their attitudes towards you when you make positive relationships a priority.

Why bother with all this relationship building stuff?

Some teachers tell me they haven’t got the time for this – their job is to teach students, not like them. They teach 300 students a week and could never get to know them all anyway. They have too much paperwork to do and so on. I sympathise – I’ve been there too. I know how much pressure teachers are under. So my best answer to the ‘Why bother?’ question is that doing this is actually going to save you time in the long run, and it will make your job much easier and far more enjoyable.

A few years ago I was talking with a friend of mine after delivering training at his school. He (let’s call him John) told me a story about one of the teachers at the school (she can be called Janet for the purpose of this story and for the benefit of any Terry Wogan fans) who was struggling badly with one particular group of students. She just couldn’t get them quiet.

John was Janet’s head of department and he often had to pass through her room when she was teaching in order to get resources from the main store cupboard. He told me that on one particular day he happened to be passing through when Janet was teaching her most challenging group.

The students were literally out of control – screaming, shouting and totally ignoring Janet’s cries to settle down. John didn’t normally intervene unless asked to do so but he felt this situation was only going to get worse, so he walked around the room speaking quietly to some of the students for a few minutes. Without the need to raise his voice, a hush gradually descended on the room and the students returned to their seats facing Janet – happy faces, ready to work.

John quietly left the room and went about the rest of his day without giving the incident a second thought. At the end of the school day, when the students had left the premises, Janet caught up with John in the staffroom. ‘John, how do you do that? How the hell do you manage to get that group so quiet so easily?’ she asked. ‘They won’t do anything I say and yet they settle straight away for you. I spend the whole lesson fighting with them. What do you do? What is it? What’s the secret?’

I’m sure she didn’t expect the reply he gave her. She wanted a magic bullet, a surefire strategy, a new way of giving instructions, a secret hand signal or a never-fail script to follow. But I hope she understood the power of what he said and I hope you do too – it’s priceless. It is the single, most important tool any teacher can develop and it leads to an enviable level of respect from your most challenging students.

‘There’s no magic to it,’ he said. ‘It just boils down to this: I know these kids. I’ve spent time with them. I go to support them playing football for the school at weekends, I chat with them in the corridor, I regularly speak to their parents on the telephone, I visit their homes, I’ve taken them on trips and I sit with them at lunchtime. The door to my room is always open to them – they know they can come and chat when something’s wrong – and I make a point of catching up with them whenever I can.’

I maintain, as my friend does, that there is no ‘magic’ to successful classroom management other than making positive relationships the foundation of your overall approach. With that said, here are some strategies to help.

The two essential factors for building positive relationships fast

We know how important positive teacher–student relationships are and that they are at the heart of good teaching. But the big question is this: how do we go about building them? I mean, specifically, what are the exact steps that we should take in order to develop those positive, trusting bonds? It’s one thing to know that we should do something; it’s another thing entirely actually doing it – especially when you don’t really know how.

As a senior teacher in a small student referral unit, I was well aware of this and spent a great deal of time trying to subtly encourage and advise other members of staff on how they could best get on with our more challenging students. Eventually I found that the simplest way of thinking about a relationship is as a kind of account – a relationship account, a bit like a bank account. When we want to grow the money in our bank account we make deposits and we get money back in the form of interest. So, the more money we put in, the more we get back out. In other words, we have to give in order to receive.

The principle is much the same with a relationship account – the more we put into the relationship account, the more we get back out. But we don’t put in money (unless, of course, we’re talking about the relationship with our own children). We make our deposits with something very different and much more valuable – we give ourselves. And we do it in two ways: by showing the other person we care about them and by communicating frequently with them.

If you think about the important relationships in your life – those with your spouse, your friends, your family – you will see that this is true. You simply cannot have a positive, flourishing relationship unless communication of some sort is taking place regularly. We are almost constantly connecting through speech (face to face, mobile, Skype, etc.) and the written word (text, letters, Facebook, email, etc.). We show we care by showing interest in each other’s problems, helping each other, doing favours, saying nice things, giving gifts, going to the in-laws for lunch and so on.

By concentrating solely on these two essential factors – frequent communication and showing we care – I believe we have the simplest possible formula for building relationships with our students. We’re going to be exploring multiple ways of doing this in this chapter.

If you doubt the efficacy of this, let me tell you another story about someone who used these two factors as the main tool for building positive relationships in his sales career – with dramatic results. Joe Girard used to be a car salesman and earned the title ‘world’s greatest salesman’. As you can imagine, you have to sell a lot of cars to reach the title of the greatest salesman in the world. Joe managed to do it a staggering 12 years in a row. He attributes his success largely to the relationships he had with his customers, and the way he went about building relationships with those customers is utterly fascinating yet remarkably simple.

Basically, all he did was this: whenever he met someone – in the street, in a shop, at a party, wherever – he would ask their name and address and enter them into his database. From that moment on, every month, these people would get a handwritten greetings card from Joe. Inside the card would be a brief but warm message along the lines of, ‘Hey I was just thinking about you, Best wishes, Joe Girard’ or ‘Hey! I hope everything’s going great for you, All the best, Joe Girard’.

At his peak, Joe was sending out more than 14,000 handwritten greetings cards every month – about 500 handwritten cards a day – and at that point he was employing three staff just to help him write them! Now, you might be wondering why a salesman would bother sending out all those cards, particularly when there was no mention of selling anything in them. All he was doing was keeping in touch and sending a warm greeting to people he barely knew. But think about this: most people change their car every few years. Who do you think was first in the minds of each of those 14,000 people when they next thought about replacing their vehicle?

You can see that Joe’s formula for building relationships – communicating frequently with each person and then showing that he cared about them – matches ours perfectly. So let’s find out how to apply these two essential factors to the classroom setting.

Frequent communication

As we’ve discussed, all relationships have frequent communication at their heart. You can’t have a relationship of any kind unless communication is involved in some form, so it’s not surprising we have poor relationships with our most challenging students. We’re usually among the last people they would choose to sit down with for a nice friendly chat.

And besides, talking with them is actually very difficult – getting them to open up and start communicating is almost impossible in some cases, especially when you don’t know them very well.

It’s a vicious circle: you can’t get to know them until you have something to talk about and you have little to talk about with them until you get to know them better. Clearly we need a subject they actually want to talk about so our first step is to find out their likes, hobbies and passions. We have more chance of getting them to talk with us if we talk about something which actually interests them.

Clearly, once you know their passions you can easily strike up conversation with them – you have a subject to chat about which will engage them. For example, if their favourite subject turns out to be mountain biking you could:

• Ask their advice about new bikes or related equipment. (We all like to be able to show how knowledgeable we are about a subject, particularly if it’s our favourite one. Don’t get me started about quinoa …)

• Share stories you’ve seen on television about mountain biking.

• Compile a list of websites on mountain biking and say, ‘Here Jonny, you said you were into mountain biking – I found these websites you might like to look at …’

• Find relevant old books/magazines or newspaper clippings and offer them to look at in their spare time.

• Ask them about their bike or their riding adventures – perhaps they ride in competitions.

• Ask their advice on local tracks or courses.

• Take your own bike into school and ask them to show you how to fix it (young people love being given opportunity to show off their expertise).

• Sell them that old mountain bike you never got around to putting on eBay.

Now, we could just ask them what they enjoy doing in their spare time, and some of the friendlier students will be more than happy to tell us. But this method won’t work with very angry, antisocial students – particularly those in their teens: ‘So tell me, Jonny, what do you do at weekends?’ ‘Eh? It’s nowt to do with you!’

We need to be a little less forward with these students and use methods that fly under their radar. I’ve found the following ideas to be very useful for discovering students’ interests without getting their hackles up.

The record card questionnaire

I got this idea from my dear, late father. He was a wise man and his advice was always reliable so you can use it with confidence. Record cards are used by a salesman to record a client’s personal information so he can be more familiar with his customer on his next visit. Each time he returns to the same client and has a conversation, the client reveals a little more about his interests and life in general, and this information can be added to the card. These titbits gradually build up and form a library of useful information which can be drawn on during the next meeting, and gradually the relationship deepens and develops as the client and salesman have more to talk about. It just speeds up the natural process of trust building and information sharing which would otherwise take much longer. It’s obvious to see that the salesman who does this will get on better with his client and probably sell more widgets into the bargain.

Salesman A (who has spent time recording his client’s personal details on his record card): Hey John, how are you this week? How’s Lillian? You haven’t forgotten her birthday on Friday have you? I brought you this booklet on carpet cleaning after your little accident last week. Now then, shall I show you this new line?

Salesman B (who has taken no interest in his client): Hello Mr Smith. Would you like to buy our new product? No? Oh okay. Bye then.

You can see from this that the record card is a great way of reducing the time normally spent getting to know someone. I have adapted this for classroom use by making it into a fun questionnaire for students to fill in – the record card questionnaire. They can complete this in registration periods, free periods, breaktimes, getting to know you sessions, social skills lessons or as an early finisher exercise. I used to give the questionnaire to new students at the start of term and let them fill it in as a first lesson exercise, a registration fill-in or as a wet break activity. The thing to remember is to give it them when they are in a reasonably good mood and when they have enough time to think about their answers.

Once you’ve got their completed questionnaires, go through the answers and pick out the main themes – the three or four key things they seem to be most passionate about – and record these in the teacher’s notes box on the first page.

You can download a copy of the record card questionnaire from: www.noisyclass.com/bookresources.

The downloadable questionnaire is only a starting point – you may need to edit questions for your own use depending on the age group you’re working with. I have used it successfully with students up to Year 10 (age 15) by phrasing the questions to suit.

So what do you do with the results? Here are a few ways you can use the information from the completed questionnaires:

• Increase the effectiveness of spontaneous rewards by tailoring them to appeal to students’ interests. For example, if you have a student who is nuts about a certain breed of dog, there is no point in giving her a sticker with a picture of a tractor on it! (You’ll find out more about spontaneous rewards in Chapter 6.)

• Provide appealing reading material for breaktimes, quiet reading sessions and registration – choose magazines, journals and books that relate to their specific areas of interest.

• Plan really interesting lessons. You might choose to prepare a series of lessons for the whole class around a topic that several students are interested in, or cover a skill such as narrative writing and encourage them to write a story about their subject of interest.

• Use them as a relationship building tool. They enable you to strike up conversations on a topic you know they are interested in and this is crucial with ‘hard to reach’ kids – it shows you care about them and are interested in them.

Suggestion box

Place a cardboard box on your desk and invite students to give you some information about their interests at the end of a session: ‘On your way out, please write your favourite hobby/team/band/sport etc. on a piece of paper with your name on and leave it in the box on my desk.’

The way in

Okay, we’ve covered a couple of ways to find out about your students’ interests, but as well as knowing their interests you need up your sleeve a way of starting the conversation with them too. Getting adolescents to open up and chat with you can be very uncomfortable – it often seems they would much rather do anything else but talk to you. For that reason we need a way in – and that’s exactly what we’re going to look at now.

Three ways to start conversations with students when they would rather not talk to you

1. Ask them for advice

When we give young people the chance to express their opinions it shows that we value them and what they have to say. So, when you’re stuck for something to talk about simply ask your students questions that allow them to describe their interests and ideas – subjects they know about.

Some students love to give advice on music, fashion, hairstyles, make-up and jewellery, while others are keen on computer games, sports and pretty much anything practical or technical. You might ask one student for their opinion on what you should wear for an upcoming party or suggest a suitable CD for your own child’s birthday. You might ask another for a run-down of the latest happenings on the current hot TV soap. Another student might be able to recommend a decent shop to buy a new bag for you or your spouse. If you’re trying to strike up a conversation with a more outdoorsy type, try getting him or her to help you with something of a practical nature.

I once took my mountain bike into school with me and asked three of my new students to help me fit some parts to it at lunchtime. Prior to this I had really struggled to break the ice with these particular boys, but we never looked back after our ‘cycle workshop’ session. It was a great way to start a conversation and begin building a great relationship with them.

When it comes to talking about personal matters make sure it’s their advice you’re asking for, not their opinion. Asking a student what they think of your new hairstyle may set you up for ridicule, while asking them to suggest a decent hairdresser probably won’t.

2. Ask a favour – the Franklin effect

When we think about ways to build bonds with people we intuitively think along the lines of doing something nice for them or caring about them – as per our second essential strategy for positive relationships. The 18th century politician, scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin found an alternative, counter-intuitive approach which can be equally, if not more, effective in certain situations: asking favours of them.

To cut a long story very short, Franklin had apparently been trying to connect with a fellow politician but hadn’t been able to – the other man wanted nothing at all to do with him. Franklin knew that this man happened to have a certain rare book in his personal library and he asked if he could borrow it from him. Surprisingly, the man’s attitude towards Franklin changed completely from that moment on. In his autobiography, Franklin notes: ‘When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions.’

Franklin attributed this to a simple principle: if you want to increase the likelihood of someone liking you, get them to do you a favour. I first came across this idea in Professor Richard Wiseman’s fascinating book, 59 Seconds,1 and if you think about it, it makes perfect sense – when you do someone a favour it draws you towards them. Helping people gives us a sense of being needed or wanted which feels good.

So, the next time you’re trying to make a connection and find a way in with a student, remember the Franklin effect. You could ask them to help you sort out a problem with your laptop, carry some heavy equipment, choose an outfit for a wedding, pick a CD for a teenage relative, help design a wall display, decorate your house, wash your car, do your ironing …

3. Give them a compliment

Apparently, when a person gives a compliment to a stranger, the person who has been complimented later describes that person as taller, slimmer and younger than they really are. That is great news – not only are compliments a great way to start conversations (as you’ll soon see) but giving them has the added bonus of making you seem more attractive!

The problem with compliments is that they are often dismissed by the recipient because of self-esteem issues or perhaps because the compliment seems insincere or even manipulative. In that sense you might be forgiven for thinking they are a fairly useless way to start a conversation: ‘Hi, I like your shoes.’ ‘Oh, thanks. Bye.’

To get over this hurdle, and take advantage of the opportunity compliments offer us in terms of starting conversations with our students, we just need to learn how to make them more believable. We can do this by adding just three pieces of information: (1) use the person’s name to make it more personal, (2) add credibility by telling them why you’re giving the compliment and (3) finish with an open-ended question.

Hey Jonny, I like your shoes. My son would love a pair like that for his interview next week. Did you buy them around here?

Hey Jonny, I hear you played very well in the match on Saturday. Mr Smith said you were very good in defence. What were the other team like?

And now you know the secret to giving great compliments you can use them in your private life too!

Showing that you care

The second of our key relationship building factors is showing students that you value them and care about them. The following collection of ideas will help.

Take time to learn their names

You must learn your students’ names as soon as possible – not only does it make classroom time much easier to manage, but their name is the most important word they hear. I’m saddened when I think back to the students whose names I hadn’t managed, or made the effort, to learn in my classes. As the year drew to a close there were still students I was referring to as ‘you’ with a pointed finger. What message does that give? You’re not important enough for me to bother learning your name? It’s quite shocking and disheartening when you look at it like that. Here’s a quick way to make sure you never make the same mistake.

How to learn 40+ students’ names fast

You can easily learn a class of 40 names in one lesson with this method. It’s all just a matter of concentrating for a few minutes at a time on this single task and you’ll be amazed how powerful it is.

Start by drawing a seating plan – a quick sketch of the layout in the room with enough space to write each student’s name in the picture of their seat. Next, you need to get them all engaged in a settling activity. Give them each a simple and enjoyable ten minute task – any ‘settling starter’ will do (I’ll explain what these are in Chapter 9). Each student needs to be sitting fairly quietly for around ten minutes without needing your assistance or attention – they should be able to just get on without your help while you add their names to the seating plan.

Get a responsible student to add his/her classmates’ names to your seating plan (i.e. write each student’s name on the plan in the place they are currently sitting). This eliminates the chance of some students giving you false names which can happen when you’re confronted by a ‘streetwise’ group.

Once that’s done the fun starts. While the students are working, take a name from the seating plan and find the individual in the sea of nameless heads. All you do now is link a crazy image with their Christian name in your head. The weirder, bigger, more colourful, strange and humorous you can make this image the better. It should take no more than 30 seconds per person.

We remember pictures more easily than we remember names, and we remember odd, weird and funny pictures far more easily than ordinary ones. For example, if James is sitting at the front desk, an image that springs immediately to my mind is the Roald Dahl link – a giant peach. I would therefore spend a few seconds looking at James’ face, imagining his head as a huge peach – complete with a few large insects eating their way out! Obviously, James wouldn’t be aware that I’m doing this – although he might wonder why I keep smiling at him! Heather could be identified by the very messy heather bush on her head in place of her hair, with a swarm of bumble bees buzzing around her head. I might put Robert behind bars or in handcuffs, wearing a stripy shirt and eye-mask as a ‘robber’.

For non-Anglican names the connections may be a little more abstract but the process is essentially the same. Sudeepa’s name sounds a little like ‘so deep’ when I say it to myself, so I might imagine her standing on the edge of a lake or looking into a deep well. Muhammad, a very popular Muslim name, conjures up images of ancient Arabia for me, so I might see him adorned with long white robes and a head scarf. Alternatively, if he’s a lively character, I might see him more as Muhammad Ali, wearing bright red boxing gloves. Adding personal characteristics such as temperament and hobbies to your linked image can be a big help when it comes to remembering names, particularly when you have more than one student with the same name and you have to distinguish between them.

Once you’ve learned your students’ names in this way they will be cemented in your mind for good. Really simple, really works. And when you dismiss them all by name at the end of your first lesson together (without so much as a glance at your seating plan), the look on their faces is priceless.

Have massive expectations

In 1968, Rosenthal and Jacobson conducted a famous study which concluded that teacher expectations can have a positive impact on students’ intellectual development.2 In the same way that the Greek sculptor Pygmalion’s high expectations became a self-fulfilling prophecy and turned a lifeless statue into a beautiful living being, the thoughts and beliefs we hold about our students can have quite dramatic effects on them.

To take advantage of this phenomenon, start by giving your students positive labels – try referring to them all (even the really challenging ones) as ‘top students’, ‘excellent workers’ or your ‘favourites’ – and you might find it helps them feel more positive about themselves (and behave accordingly). Constantly remind them that they are capable, they are good role models, they are likeable, they are wonderful, they are helpful, they are worthy of success and they can improve, providing they are willing to put in the effort.

As a teacher I knew that high expectations were important – it was in all the books, and most of the training courses and INSET3 sessions I’d attended made mention of the fact. But it was only years later that I truly saw how powerful expectations are and the incredible effect (good and bad) they can have on young people.

I was once helping a friend to sell his house which I had been renting from him while he was abroad. One day, a well-to-do woman arrived at the door for a viewing. My computer, books and assorted paraphernalia were taking up most of the dining room and when she saw these she asked, ‘What is it you do?’ When I told her I was an ex-teacher and now helped teachers work with troubled kids, she gave me a pensive look and told me she had been a school failure herself and that her memories of her years in secondary school weren’t very positive.

But she then went on to tell me that she was now one of the highest paid lawyers in the north of England. She explained that as a young girl she was an A* student. All through primary school she had been top of her class but when she reached secondary school it all went wrong – for two years (her important exam years) her attainment dropped significantly and she completely failed her O levels. She had to re-sit almost all of them. She passed her re-sits with flying colours (getting As and Bs) and went on to get excellent grades in her A levels. The rest is history.

‘Wow!’ I said. ‘If we can find out what your magic recipe is for making such a massive improvement we could give struggling kids some powerful strategies for doing well in school.’ But first I needed to know what had happened to cause her to fail for two years. And this was the astounding part. Initially she had no idea and was completely dumbfounded as to why she had never analysed this for herself before now – she hadn’t given it a second thought. Now, however, she was as keen as I was to uncover the reasons for her fall and subsequent rise. In fact, we had both become so fascinated with the prospect that we had opened a bottle of red wine and completely forgotten about the house viewing!

Even after a torrent of probing questions from me (Did something terrible happen at home? Did you change schools? Did the curriculum change? Did you have a problem with some of your teachers? Were you being bullied?) we were still no closer to finding out what caused her to go rapidly from a high achiever to failure – and then back again to success.

Then suddenly she remembered. After a year at secondary school her year group were put into sets and as a young girl she assumed the setting was based on ability. In reality the groups had been created simply to divide the year group equally – they were assigned by position on the register. Her surname began with ‘W’ and she now found herself – to her utter horror and dismay – in what she assumed was the bottom set!

From that moment on, she immediately lost all confidence in her ability and effectively became a bottom set student. Her grades plummeted and her school life took a terrible turn. Were it not for an assessment after her exams – presumably initiated by her devastated and shocked parents or worried teachers – which showed her true abilities, who knows where she would be right now.

Clearly, the beliefs students hold about their capabilities – affected to a great extent by the expectations their teachers have of them – can have a significant impact on their efforts in class. Children really need to know that someone in authority believes in them.

Offer plenty of support

I remember one young 15-year-old lad in a class I was covering many years ago whose behaviour truly pushed the envelope of unmanageability. The first lesson I had with Jake was a full-on battle of wits from bell to bell – he just would not settle, would not engage and was intent on wrecking the entire lesson.

I caught him next lesson at the door and asked him to wait with me while the other students went in. He thought he was going to get a rollicking for last lesson’s performance and was rather taken aback when I said: ‘You know what, Jake? Last lesson I couldn’t help feeling there was something wrong – you didn’t seem happy at all. I don’t want you coming to my lessons and having a bad time. I don’t want to be on your case having a go at you.’ I smiled at him and he looked up at me as I continued, ‘My lessons are supposed to be useful to you – I want you to get something out of them. Can you tell me what I can do to make it better for you, please?’

There was a long pause as he tried to make sense of what I was saying. Then he opened up, as if I’d turned a tap on. He began to tell me how he couldn’t see the board, how he couldn’t read very well and was supposed to wear glasses, how other students made fun of him if he did and how he didn’t understand most of what was going on. His behaviour was the classic result of two of the most common de-motivators in the classroom – fear of failure and inadequacy.

We had to cut our conversation short so that I could get in to start the lesson, but those few moments outside the classroom were the beginning of a very different relationship between Jake and me. He now saw me as someone who was there to help him and I saw him as a young child with problems as opposed to a ‘problem child’. I made a few changes to accommodate his weaknesses and gave him some extra support; his behaviour miraculously changed overnight. He arrived to lessons with a smile and his hand shot up almost every time I asked a question. The effort he put into his work from this point on was simply unbelievable.

Give them responsibilities

Often, our most challenging students are those with the greatest leadership potential; their behaviour is driven by a quest for attention and power and their strong personalities make them popular ringleaders. Giving them a responsibility is very fulfilling for them and saves them trying to gain notoriety in less appropriate ways. It also gives you, the teacher, very useful classroom allies.

Responsibility can take many forms – from being in charge of certain equipment through to monitoring and supporting more vulnerable members of the class (such as victims of bullying), keeping a group’s noise levels at acceptable levels (such as the shushers we met in the introduction) or giving students the opportunity to grade their own work and choose lesson activities.

Here’s a list of possible classroom jobs and responsibilities:

• Gofer – a student selected to run errands (go for this, go for that).

• Board monitor – responsible for cleaning the board and ensuring the surrounding area is tidy.

• Scribe – if you like to have your lesson objective and lesson instructions written up at the start of the lesson, this student can do it for you.

• Gardener – responsible for the upkeep of indoor plants in the classroom.

• Equipment monitor – responsible for keeping equipment trays tidy and complete.

• Noise controller/shusher – responsible for maintaining an orderly working environment and keeping their table group’s conversation on track.

• Mr/Mrs Motivator – responsible for encouraging slow workers and keeping the mood in the room buoyant.

• Registration monitor – responsible for taking the register.

• VIP – welcoming new students and visitors and acting as a first port of call for other students who are experiencing problems of any kind. VIPs can also have special privileges such as breaktime refreshments, computer time, etc. The role can be awarded on a rotation basis or as a spontaneous reward for good effort. At one primary school I was working in recently, the VIPs were given high-vis workmen’s waistcoats to wear as a uniform so they could be easily identified – they wore them with pride!

Cards and notes

Don’t underestimate cards, notes and letters – they can be a very powerful way of connecting with some students, particularly those who are reluctant to talk face to face.

Cards, notes and letters show much more consideration and appreciation than spoken words. If it’s a student’s birthday, go a step further than just saying ‘happy birthday’ – help them feel special and give them a card (physically posting it home gets you bonus points).

Dear …,

The work you did in class today was excellent. It’s so nice to see you putting in more effort and you really can do well when you try, can’t you? Come to think of it, you could do even better if you would get your homework in on time. Just in case you didn’t write it down, tonight’s homework is …

If you need any help on it, come and see me before going home tonight so that we can make sure you do a good job on it. Let’s make it ‘your best ever homework’! I’ll look forward to seeing you hand it to me on Wednesday. Have fun …

Dear …,

It was wonderful to see you in class today. The lesson always has a livelier atmosphere when you’re around. For that reason it would be nice to see more of you. Can you make sure that you’re in class on time tomorrow, please, so that I don’t get worried about you? Remember, lessons start at 9.10 a.m. sharp. See you in the morning …

If a student is ill, go a step further than simply marking them absent on the register – send a get well card. And if a student tries particularly hard or does something especially nice, why not give them a thank you card?

Marking work can be a chore but it’s also another opportunity to connect, to strengthen bonds and to initiate communication with students who don’t like talking face to face. By using sticky notes, or even writing directly in their books, you can ask them questions, send good wishes, congratulate them on an achievement, tell them jokes and give feedback of all kinds. These private little dialogues all work towards conveying the message that you care about and value them.

The comment in the picture above, for example, was a note I placed in the work file of a boy who was visiting his father for the first time in several months. He was apprehensive about the visit so the ‘Good luck on Saturday’ message was just a quick, personal way of giving him a bit of support. Often students respond to written comments by writing replies and a sticky note conversation develops – as does the relationship.

Make time to listen to them

Breaktimes and lunchtimes are a fantastic relationship building opportunity. A friend and teaching colleague of mine made a point of never spending his free time in school in the staffroom. Instead he spent breaktimes and lunchtimes in his room with his door always open. Students came in to play chess and board games or just to chat; he rarely, if ever, had a problem with classroom management. His reputation for ‘being there’ for the students, for being approachable, had spread throughout the whole school and all the students knew him to be easy to talk to and kind. He was greatly respected for that – even by the toughest students in the school.

Give or lend them something special

How many times does your most challenging student forget to bring a pen to the lesson? Instead of handing them a chewed old Bic pen from the pen graveyard, why not use this as an opportunity to build your relationship with them?

Lending them a cheap, tatty, broken pen says ‘I don’t think very much of you – I don’t trust you enough to give you a decent pen and I don’t think you deserve one’, just as much as it says ‘Everyone keeps nicking my pens and this is all I’ve got left’. But taking them to one side and saying, ‘This pen was a gift from my son. I’m going to trust you with it because I know you’ll look after it and I want you to write well today’, gives an entirely different message.

Students respond to us in the way they feel they are being treated. Treat them with contempt and they will respond with indignation. Treating them with respect and giving them the clear message that you trust them will evoke an entirely different reaction.

Organise trips and visits

Taking your students out of the classroom environment brings a whole new dimension to your relationship with them. You naturally take on a more nurturing role in the eyes of your students which automatically suggests you care about them. Trips out, particularly residential trips, can also aid students’ development of a wide range of social skills so relationships can be established and strengthened far more quickly than in a classroom situation.

Teach them new skills

We can show our care for a student by empowering them with skills to overcome their difficulties and shortcomings. I often use the example of a student who seldom, if ever, hands in homework. Does ranting at them help them correct their behaviour and do the required work? Could it be that the lack of effort is intensified by a lack of skills rather than pure belligerence? Students who frequently break rules or seem unwilling to follow them need support and education as much as they do discipline.

Spending some time teaching this student time management skills, or ensuring they understand the work sufficiently to complete it, will show a deeper level of caring than a detention ever could and may even help them to get their homework in on time.

Attend school events

If your students play a sport or perform in a concert or production of any sort, go and watch them. There aren’t many better ways to show that you care about someone than giving up your free time to go and support them. Doing so also gives you a topic to talk about with them later in school.

Pay more attention to them

Make an effort to speak to every student each day and be sure to leave no one out of class discussions. Have a classroom photo-board and put up pictures of all your students – they can bring in their own from home or you can take pictures of them smiling and having fun in school. Pay attention to their health and if they don’t seem well send them to the nurse/clinic. If they miss more than one or two days due to ill health, call home to see how they are doing or send a get well card and a pack of catch-up work with a note from the rest of the class. If it’s their birthday, give them a cake and a card. If they are having a tough time at home, put a little note in their planner to wish them well. If they arrive at school with new shoes, a new coat, a new hairstyle or a nose ring, give them a compliment (you can always tell them to take the nose ring out after doing so). Little gestures like this will be remembered by your students for years – even a lifetime in some cases.

Perform acts of random kindness

If you’ve seen the film Evan Almighty (a funny and surprisingly good film with some powerful messages), you’ll know that the word ARK (as in Noah’s ark) stands for Acts of Random Kindness. The idea here is to try performing random acts of service or appreciation for your students to help them feel special. You can increase the effect by adding an encouraging note for them to ‘pay it forward’ (another great film) to other students. We’ve just mentioned one such act above – lending or giving them a special object of some sort – but this can be extended to giving additional time or going the extra mile to do something really special for a student or group. This is an excellent way to quickly change students’ negative attitudes and can go a long way towards creating a very positive classroom community.

Here’s an example of this which targets the whole group rather than individual students. It won’t appeal to everyone reading this but it’s very effective nonetheless. The idea is to go out of your way to be of total service to your class for a lesson or part thereof. And you can really go over the top with this – the emphasis should be on fun. For example, you could treat each student as if they were a ‘guest’ in your lesson – greet them politely by name at the door, seat them one at a time as if they are attending a fine restaurant and provide them with an unexpected gift of a pen or other equipment (plus the offer of a cushion if they are uncomfortable). Have soft music playing in the background and, while they are engaged in a nice activity, wait on them with soft drinks and a smorgasbord of sweets and treats to choose from, presented on a cake stand, of course. You could even dress up for the occasion and drape a wine waiter’s towel over your arm. This certainly isn’t a strategy for every lesson, nor for every group you teach, but as an impromptu way of saying thank you to a group who have made a big effort, or as an attempt to break the mood state of a difficult group, it takes some beating.

Display everyone’s work

Classroom displays should feature the work of every student in the group. Granted, some students may not have completed work for inclusion and some hate seeing their work up on the walls; if that’s the case, they can be given the chance to contribute to the display in other ways. One way is to put together a display making team. Arrange for someone from the art department (or an older/particularly artistic student) to give the group some tuition in display making skills such as lettering, colour, balance and so on, and give them the responsibility of managing and changing displays in your classroom. You could even hire the team out to other teachers at breaktime for a bit of extra cash.

Take the relationship challenge

Of all the strategies in this book this is probably one of the most powerful. Briefly, it involves making a definite commitment to improve relationships with any particularly hard to reach student who is causing you difficulties. That’s not to say you ignore the others but that you make more of an effort with this one student for a set period of time.

The idea is to aim to spend a minimum of 30 seconds a day for 20 days (four working weeks) engaged in relationship building conversation with this particular student and then see how your relationship with them changes. If you find yourself doing more, even better. The target is just 30 seconds – more than that is a bonus.

Just to clarify, ‘relationship building conversation’ doesn’t mean ordering them to sit properly in lessons or asking them why their homework hasn’t been handed in; it’s in addition to normal, day-to-day instructional conversation. You can talk about anything at all – TV, music, football scores, where they bought their cool new shoes, their hobbies/interests. If you find this difficult, remember to try any of the ‘way in’ conversation starters on pages 88–91.

Everyone can manage 30 seconds but it’s going to take slightly more than a ‘Hi, how’s it going?’ to fill it. On the days that you teach the student you will easily manage it during the lesson while other students are working, but on other days you will need to be more creative. It may mean actively seeking the student out in the lunch or bus queue, scheduling a weekly private ‘How can I help you more with your work?’ meeting, having lunch with them or just catching them in the corridor or outside your room before/after the lesson. There are countless opportunities to connect with students through the simple art of conversation – it’s just a matter of taking advantage of them.

Note: Initially you will almost certainly encounter reluctance and negativity, and in some circumstances all this extra attention can actually freak out some students. All the strategies I’ve mentioned are great relationship builders, but if you go in too hard, too heavy and too fast you can find students running in the opposite direction.

We’ve all played the attraction–rejection game (the more attention we give to someone, the more they back away), so the trick is to tread carefully at first. If you go running up to a student with whom you’ve never connected and suddenly offer them a pile of magazines (‘Here I got you these because I know you’re interested in mountain biking!’) and hit them with a load of personal probing questions out of the blue, naturally they are going to wonder what on earth is going on.

At best they will ignore you. At worst (particularly if you press too hard) they will think you’re weird and all efforts to build a relationship from that point on will have a new obstacle – suspicion. So go easy and take it slowly, particularly with very challenging students.

You can download instructions for the relationship challenge from: www.noisyclass.com/bookresources.

1 Richard Wiseman, 59 Seconds: Think A Little, Change A Lot (London: Macmillan, 2009).

2 See Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968).

3 For those unfamiliar with the term, INSET refers to IN-SErvice Training which is compulsory staff training in the UK.

Over the years I’ve noticed that teachers who find it hardest to manage student behaviour seem to be focused almost exclusively on what is going wrong in the classroom. They seem to be constantly on the lookout for students who aren’t doing as they want. The best teachers spend more time looking for and acknowledging good behaviour, and in doing so create an entirely different, upbeat feeling in the classroom. It should be no surprise that these teachers tend to have fewer classroom problems to cope with.

In this chapter we’re going to look at various positive reinforcement strategies used by successful teachers, starting with the most obvious one – praise.

The transformational power of praise

Let me share a little story to explain why I feel praise is one of the most powerful, transformational strategies a teacher can use.

I first started delivering behaviour management training professionally in 2006. Although I loved being in business for myself, after ten years or so in the classroom I found it very hard work. When I wasn’t driving up and down the motorway or travelling abroad delivering training in schools and universities, I was spending virtually every waking hour wading through the various administration procedures (I am hopeless at paperwork of any sort) as well as trying to get the online part of the business running smoothly (I am equally hopeless at anything to do with computers). So, a large part of my life was being spent doing things I’m no good at which caused me no end of stress and frustration. Come to think of it, I suppose a lot of young people feel that way about school!

In those early days I would spend 12 to 18 hours per day working on the business and I would do that seven days a week, week in, week out to keep my head above water. I was in a perpetual state of anxiety from not being able to get things moving fast enough to meet the various monthly payments I was tied into, while simultaneously dealing with a computer which seemed to hate me.

After a couple of years I hit a brick wall. My mother was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2008 and I found myself driving over to Cumbria from my home in Newcastle to help look after her three or four times a week, in-between caring for my teenage son (sorry, I forgot to point out that I was a failing single parent at the time). In addition, my father was suffering with leukaemia and Parkinson’s disease and my sister’s second kidney transplant had been rejected, leaving her on dialysis and in need of a third.

With all these issues on my mind and constraints on my time, the training bookings became sporadic and money soon started to dry up. On the odd occasion I was asked to run training in the south of England, I would sleep for a few hours in my car rather than book a hotel – partly to keep my costs down and partly so I could get back to help with my mother. It wasn’t long before my own health started to suffer and I got to the point where something was going to have to give.

Obviously, my priorities were my family so I decided that I would have to shut down my business. I had put my heart and soul into it and giving it up would be like chopping off my right arm, but it had to go for the sake of my family and my sanity. Reluctantly I wrote an email to all my customers explaining the situation and my need to cease working. A lot of them were paying a small monthly membership fee in return for updates and new materials each month (which was now pretty much my sole income), but judging by the supportive messages I received most people understood. I shut down the shopping cart and took the website down.

After three or four months without an income things started to get very, very difficult. There is an old saying that you are only three pay cheques away from the gutter and believe me, there is a lot of truth in it. Because after three months the reminders and warning letters start coming in for things like mortgages and cars. And people start threatening to turn off your gas and electric. At one point I went for almost two weeks without any food in the fridge at all; I relied on friends helping me out with food parcels. Financially I was ruined and on more than one occasion I found myself hiding under the table from bailiffs who were knocking on the door. It was a tough time but I literally didn’t have the headspace, the time or the energy to work.

Now, here’s the interesting bit and the point of the story (thanks for sticking with me so far) … After a few months I did slowly start to get the business going again but what got me back on my feet wasn’t what you might think. It wasn’t the threat of having my electricity or gas cut off. It wasn’t the fact that my car had been repossessed or even the danger of losing the roof over my head. The threats and punishments were not responsible for me changing my behaviour to start earning money again. (And yet how often do we threaten or punish kids, thinking this is the most effective way to get them to do what we want them to do?)

In my case the threats didn’t work because I was too low to care. I had reached the end of my rope and had become quite depressed: ‘Take the house, I really don’t care. Take the car, it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t care less.’ Again, this is the state of mind of many of our students. How many young people do you know who are genuinely bothered when they are threatened with yet another detention? ‘So what? Do it, I don’t care.’ This is crucially important: when we get so low that nothing matters, punishment will not work as an effective motivator.

What got me sufficiently motivated to get back to work, and you can easily apply this method in your classroom with your students, was the complete opposite to punishments, penalties and pressure. Over a period of a few months I received literally hundreds of emails, letters and phone calls from customers telling me how much they missed my updates, how wonderful they thought the service I’d given them had been and how much they respected my decision to put my family first. I got emails from people saying I had transformed the way they teach and that I had indirectly affected the lives of hundreds of students in their care.

The support was incredible and I often think back fondly to the consideration and compassion I was shown by complete strangers. Unbelievably, several of these kind-hearted souls even offered to come to my house and help me in person to look after my dear mother! These were people with whom I’d had no contact other than sending them a few emails each week. It was staggering. Now, please understand, I am not saying any of this to brag. I just want to make clear the transformative power of positive feedback and support and the wonderful effect it can have.

You see, positive praise works on an emotional level. It goes far beyond the need to meet a target or show progression; it goes straight to the heart. And that’s why it can cause deep changes in people very quickly. It has the power to literally change your most abhorrent students on the spot – as long as it’s done well, so that’s what we’re going to look at in this chapter.

How to make praise more effective

As part of an exercise during my teacher training, I was told to keep a record of the frequency of positive statements I used during my teaching practice lessons. During an observation, my mentor listed any positive comments I made and anything that wasn’t positive (not necessarily negative, just ‘not positive’). When I looked at the results at the end of the lesson I was amazed.

Almost everything I had said during the lesson had been in response to students doing something wrong – ‘Sit down,’ ‘Be quiet’, ‘No, not like that’, ‘Don’t do that’, ‘No’, ‘When I say so,’ ‘Stop punching me’. My whole lesson was a continuous stream of corrections, instructions, commands and negative statements. And I discovered that I hardly ever acknowledged the students doing something right, seldom congratulated them on their efforts and that all my exchanges with students had a generally harassed, punitive edge.

There is plenty of research to back up the fact that students need more positive than negative interaction but it’s irrelevant really. You need only put yourself in their shoes and imagine how you would feel receiving criticism after criticism to know the importance of positive feedback. So, after being made aware of my shortcomings in this department, I made an effort to address this during my next lesson.

I had read that making six positive statements for every negative one could bring about miraculous changes.1 I tried it and the results were dismal. I found myself saying the same weak, cheap statements that you can hear behind every classroom door. You know the ones – ‘Well done,’ ‘Very good’, ‘Ooooh, excellent’ – that kind of thing. Sure, I met my quota of so-called positive statements, just as I was advised, but what’s positive about a teacher striding around the classroom spewing out throwaway comments like that? Especially when they are usually said with barely more than a sideways glance at the work to which they relate.

When we’re talking about reaching students on an emotional level and creating lasting change, it’s the quality of the praise we need to focus on rather than the quantity. There is a lot more to effective praise than just saying ‘Well done’, so in this section I’m going to share with you some ideas for making it really effective.

Five ways to make praise and encouragement more effective

Here are some ways of improving praise so that it creates the kind of positive changes you want to see in your challenging students.

1. Make praise descriptive and specific

Real praise – the kind that actually makes a difference – comes from genuinely noticing when someone puts effort into something or has managed to complete something they wouldn’t normally manage to do and then describing what they have done. Giving thoughtful, specific recognition demonstrates that you are taking real notice in what they are doing – in a way that a throwaway ‘Well done’ doesn’t.

If you want to improve the behaviour of students using praise, the comments you use must be in full recognition of what they have done right. By that I mean praise needs to be specific and descriptive. Like this:

Jonny! Stand back and look at what you’ve done … This is a fantastic portrait! What really sets this apart is the way you’ve made that eye come to life by showing the light reflecting here. That really makes it look realistic. And the texture you’ve got on the hair is superb.

Jonny, you’ve sat quietly for the last ten minutes and got on with your work. That’s great because I’ve been able to go and help other students and I haven’t needed to speak at you or remind you to get on. Well done, you’ve shown you can work independently!

 

2. Praise effort rather than achievement

If a friend was dieting you wouldn’t wait until they had reached their target weight before making positive comments, would you? You would help them along the way with encouragement because acknowledging their effort helps them stick in and persevere and, importantly, it can help them to overcome or avoid frustration.

By focusing on effort rather than achievement we can praise a student even if they fail, and that’s very important. Waiting for a child to succeed in a task before praising them means missing out on untold opportunities to encourage them along the way.

Here are a couple of ways you can praise effort to encourage students:

Jonny, you are working really, really well on this. What you’ve done so far is spot on. Just keep going using the same technique and you’ll have it done in no time.

You’ve tried so hard on this, Jonny. It’s great to see you putting so much effort in – you’ve really showed tremendous determination and that’s an important strength to develop.

3. Make praise sincere

Real praise comes from the heart (flattery comes from the teeth) and kids are very quick to spot someone who is just trying to manipulate them with fake positive comments. If you want real transformations to take place you have to make praise genuine – it’s got to be sincere. That means you have to be hyper-vigilant to spot what might be very small positive improvements – just steps in the right direction. These are the things we need to jump on. We have to mark those moments because when we do, there is a good chance of them repeating that good behaviour.

4. Be aware that praise is often more effective on a one-to-one basis

Some students (a surprisingly large proportion) don’t like receiving praise in front of other people, so you have more chance of your praise being well-received if you give it one to one in private. Catch them at the beginning of the lesson before they go into class, at the end of the lesson or in lesson time (but out of earshot of the rest of the students). It only has to be a short conversation but even 30 seconds giving some sincere, heartfelt praise is going to be time well spent.

5. Help them reflect on their efforts

Some teachers lavish praise on students for literally anything and everything in the hope that the sheer quantity of positive words will raise their self-esteem and motivate them. But praise is more effective when we get students to stop and reflect on what they have done. By getting them to pause and think about their efforts, we encourage them to recognise and evaluate the feelings associated with positive action. If they enjoy these feelings there is more chance they will want to repeat the actions – for themselves and not just to please someone else. One way we can do this is to simply ask a question about their efforts:

Jonny, stop and look at your work a minute. Tell me what you think of what you’ve done today.

Hey Jonny, now that everything has settled down, how do you feel to have got over that difficult problem? What skills did you use to resolve it? How does it feel knowing that you can use those same skills next time you are confronted with a problem like this?

Now that we know how to improve the praise we give to students, here are some methods to actually deliver it.

Four brilliant praise methods for the classroom

These powerful praise strategies can be used in the classroom and around the school to create change in your students.

1. Proximity praise (aka windscreen wiper praise)

Proximity praise relies on the ‘ripple effect’ where the positive feelings bestowed on individual students spread or ripple around the room. Other students then get the message that if they behave in a similar way, they too will receive positive attention and praise.

We can multiply the power of this effect with a novel idea suggested by a participant on one of my classroom management courses. It’s called ‘windscreen wiper praise’ – it’s very straightforward but also very effective.

Let’s say Jonny is off task and not working as he should be. By praising two other students in class – the students sitting on either side of him, Kyle and Kieran – we use the power of proximity praise in a localised manner. If Kyle and Kieran are Jonny’s friends it will make this even more effective but it works well regardless. This is one possible scenario:

Hey, Kieran, you’ve got it. I honestly didn’t think you’d manage that question. Absolutely brilliant – it’s good to see you learning.

Let’s have a look at yours, Kyle … you’ve really improved. You’ve got that bit right, well done. Now, how could you improve this bit and get to the next level?

A moment later …

Thank you for putting that in the bin, Kyle. By the way, I saw that film last night you were talking about – it was really funny. Thanks for suggesting it.

Nice one, Kieran. I like what you’ve done there. I’m really pleased with you two, you’re working very well. Thank you.

The process is repeated several times.

Do you see how it works and have you guessed where the name ‘windscreen wiper praise’ comes from? The idea is that as a result of the teacher continually engaging with Kyle and Kieran, Jonny’s head will be going from side to side wondering what his two neighbours have done to attract all this positive attention. It’s likely that he will want some too.

2. Indirect praise

Indirect praise is a great way to acknowledge a student’s strengths, abilities and efforts without saying anything to them directly. Often, it can be more impactful (and easier for the student to accept) hearing teachers saying nice things about them to other people rather than to their face.

There are two ways of doing this. The first is to praise a student to his classmates. In this example, the teacher acknowledges a student’s efforts by telling other students in the class about their work. In each case the statements would be spoken just loud enough for Jonny to hear.

Go and ask Jonny about this bit – he’s picked it up very quickly.

Go and watch Jonny for a minute – he’s brilliant at this and you can learn a lot from him.

Go and ask Jonny if you can have a look at his answer from last lesson – it was exactly what I was looking for.

The alternative is to praise a student to a member of staff. This time, you report the student’s efforts and abilities to another member of staff just within earshot of the student, as if you’re not aware they are listening. Students love to discover that members of staff talk positively to each other about them.

Did you see what Jonny did this morning, Mr Smith? Honestly, I can’t believe how hard that lad is trying – what a turnaround.

3. Written praise (the students’ favourite)

I’ve surveyed hundreds of students at all ages over the years and asked them which form of positive acknowledgement/reward they most like to receive in return for good work/effort. I give them a list (e.g. take their work to a senior teacher, have work put on display, get mentioned in assembly, contact with home, get a merit mark, have a comment written in their book, stickers, candy/sweets, time on the computer, choice of activities) and ask them to tick the one they would prefer.

Surprisingly, the one which comes up top almost every time is contact with home, and from experience I’ve found that sending a positive letter home or making a short telephone call to parents/guardians can quickly transform a previously negative child into one who is far more motivated and eager to please. This method works well with all age groups (up to age 16 and beyond). It is also very effective for students who don’t accept public praise very well – a letter home means their friends will never find out!

Letters home can be quick notes or more formal letters on school headed paper. You can send out simple postcards for odd pieces of particularly good work or award ‘extra special’ letters in response to sustained effort. I find generic preprinted notes – the type you buy in ‘praise pad’ format too insincere. It’s much better to use typed, personalised letters, and the best way to organise these for speed and ease is to have a copy of the following letter template (or similar) ready written in a file on your computer.

Date

Dear …,

I just want to inform you that … was a delight to teach today. He/she worked hard, and behaved well and was a pleasure to have in the class. You should be very proud of him/her.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Smith

Teacher of (subject)

It’s then just a matter of typing in the name, setting the correct gender, printing it out on headed paper and either giving it to the student to take home or (better) posting it out to their home address. You can always add a little more flavour to the template depending on how much time you have at your disposal and what sort of mood you’re in.

4. Student generated praise – the ‘You’re great!’ sheet

The ‘You’re great!’ sheet is a lovely way to get students used to the idea of giving praise and receiving it from each other. It consists simply of five ‘You were a great team member because …’ prompts and one copy is given to each member of a table group or learning team.

Members of each team then take it in turns to write a positive comment about each of their fellow teammates before folding the paper (thereby hiding their comment) and passing the sheet on to another student. In this way, each student receives three or four inspiring comments relating to a different attribute or skill.

I first came across this idea when working as an activity instructor with a group of young offenders at an outdoor centre in the Lake District. The centre manager introduced the sheet at the end of a two day walking expedition and it was really touching to see the comments these young people wrote about each other. I think one of the reasons it works so well is because adolescents often find it hard to say what they feel, so being able to write comments, anonymously if they prefer, frees them up to say what they really admire about each other. Also, each student leaves the session with a written record of these compliments to look back on. Sadly, spoken words are often soon forgotten whereas written comments can be kept for a long time.

I first started telling teachers about the ‘You’re great!’ sheet around ten years ago, and I’ve heard lots of wonderful stories during that time of students being so pleased with the comments they’ve received that they’ve kept these bits of paper for years!

You can download a copy of the ‘You’re great!’ sheet from: www.noisyclass.com/bookresources.

Seven creative positive reinforcement methods

Positive reinforcement isn’t just about giving verbal praise and encouragement; it helps if there is some variety in the way you acknowledge appropriate student behaviours. With that in mind, here are some creative ideas for marking the moment. Each one is guaranteed to raise the spirits in any classroom.

1. The victory dance

Teach students to develop their own personalised ten second ‘victory dance’. Whenever you want to offer special praise to a student, clear a space at the front of the room (or install a podium if you have spare budget), pump up the bass and allow them their ten seconds of fame!

2. Wooo! cards

Issue all students with a special ‘Wooo!’ card (a laminated piece of paper or card with ‘Wooo!’ written on it). Whenever a student performs particularly well in class or manages to complete something they have struggled with in the past, call out ‘Wooo!’ and have everyone else hold up their ‘Wooo!’ cards while shouting ‘Wooo!’ back at you.

3. Silent cheers

Teach students to reward fellow class members for good work and good behaviour with a silent cheer. Offer spot prizes for the most dramatic and convincing exhibition of silent applause. This is particularly useful during exam periods or when the teacher in the neighbouring classroom has expressed concern about the amount of fun your classes seem to be having.

4. Wiggly wooos

A slight variation on ‘Wooo!’ cards. Every time you say, ‘That deserves a wiggly wooo’, students wave their fingers in the direction of the student in question and call out ‘Wooo!’ in unison.

5. And the winner is …

Throughout the week be on the lookout for students doing good work, good deeds, improved effort and so on. Every time you see something positive, scribble the student’s name down on a piece of paper, together with a very brief reminder of their behaviour, and place it in a jar or container on your desk. At the end of the week, draw a few names from the jar and hand out surprise prizes to the winners (see also ‘wacky awards ceremonies’ below).

6. Wacky awards ceremonies

Before your wacky awards ceremony takes place, you first need to create a ‘wall of fame’ on which to display extra special work completed by students. This need be nothing more elaborate than painted brick effect paper (you can get the students to make this) stuck on an area of wall or over a display board.

Next, you need the awards and trophies. These could be gold discs (old vinyl records sprayed with gold paint and with the title of the work/award on the label), over-sized rosettes, chocolate medals covered with gold shiny paper, cheap plastic trophies and so on.

With these in place you can now hold wacky awards ceremonies at the end of the week or as a conclusion to a scheme of work. Trophies and awards should be presented to students with as much drama as possible (think Academy Awards ceremony) and their work can then be displayed on the wall of fame.

7. Staffroom praise board

This is a whole school approach to building a positive working environment as well as helping to develop positive relationships between all staff and students. It is based on the principle that individual students’ efforts often get overlooked, particularly in a large setting. This strategy ensures that even the smallest improvements made by individual students are noticed and acknowledged, potentially by every member of staff.

First, assign an area of wall in the staffroom for the praise board. There should be room for five to ten A4 sheets and it should be an area which staff will see whenever they enter the staffroom. Each week students are nominated for a place on the praise board (they aren’t told about this). Staff put forward a student and give reasons for their nomination. After a vote, a photo of each chosen student is put on the board together with a brief summary of why they have been selected.

The idea is that every member of staff will see this board regularly throughout the course of the week. When they next spot one of the students from the board – either in the classroom, in the dinner queue or out in the yard – they can mention how impressed they are with their achievement. Over the space of a week, a student will receive a huge amount of positive, and often much needed, reinforcement with several members of staff acknowledging the same achievement.

Hey Jonny, I hear you were very good in maths this week. Well done, mate, keep it up!

Great work, Jonny! A little bird told me you managed to get through a whole day without being sent out of a single lesson. Brilliant! Isn’t it better when you’re not getting a detention every day?

The danger of using rewards for positive reinforcement

The most commonly used motivational strategies in schools usually involve some kind of reward programme where, typically, points and prearranged prizes are awarded to students as they make progress along a chart or towards a points total.

I have worked in several settings where programmes like this have had a very positive, almost miraculous, effect, particularly on the behaviour of students. Sadly, these effects were always short lived for a significant percentage of the students they were set up to help and their efficacy waned with time.

No matter how elaborate or brightly painted the star chart and no matter how fantastic the prizes, some students will either become bored or frustrated with the system or the prearranged rewards. For many students, rewards are just not a suitable long term strategy. One of the main problems with reward programmes is that they don’t take into account students who lack the capacity or skills to complete a designated task or meet a required level of work. They just assume that the only reason they aren’t working is because they don’t want to.

For example, if you offer a group of teenagers a crisp £5 note each to copy some numbers and letters from the board, most of them will be finished in no time. But if you offer the same £5 reward in return for performing some advanced algebra with the numbers and letters they have just copied down, you will get a much different result. Those who have the skills to do the task may work a little harder to get the reward, but for those who don’t have a clue about algebra the reward won’t help at all. If anything, seeing other students happily working their way towards some extra money for the weekend – when they have no hope of doing so – will only add to their frustration.

Similarly, what about a student who is offered a reward to bring in his homework? If he lives in an acutely chaotic home where school is viewed negatively by other family members and he has never been taught even the most basic of time management skills, the reward won’t help him. It won’t make his family members support him and it won’t teach him the required organisational skills to make the time to sit down to do his homework.

You can probably find a simple example of this in action in your own life too – whenever you lose a personal item, for instance. The prize or reward is finding the lost item, and if it’s a particularly valuable or treasured item then the prize is great. Yet no matter how much you want to find the item, if you don’t know how or where to find it, you’re at a disadvantage. Your valuable reward can’t improve your ability to locate it.

During courses I often use the promise of cash rewards for a series of impossible tasks to hammer home this message. Participants are offered increasingly valuable cash prizes if they manage to complete a series of puzzles. But they can’t do it, no matter how much they want to. It makes no difference how much I increase the prize fund either – they can’t complete the task because they don’t have the required knowledge. Bottom line: if the skills are lacking, the reward won’t work.

Another problem with rewards is that they can divert attention from the actual task in hand. When the reward itself becomes the goal, the student loses interest in the task and is unlikely to feel any benefit or derive any joy from completing it for its own sake. Also, when a student becomes fixated on an incentive in this way, they become reliant on the view of the teacher or whoever is responsible for giving the reward, and therefore independence isn’t promoted.

It’s bad enough that rewards can stifle independence and lead to arguments but the biggest problem has to be that they only have a temporary impact. Once the treats (or the person giving the treats) have gone, the negative behaviour resumes. At worst they help to build and sustain a society of young people who will only do as they are asked as long as they are given something of value in return: ‘Sure, I’ll do as you ask but what’s in it for me? What are you going to give me?’

Do we want a society like that? Of course not, so we need to get away from relying on rewards based systems. Our aim must be to teach appropriate behaviour and encourage students to behave appropriately for the right reasons and for the intrinsic rewards such behaviour brings – not because they have been promised a nice treat.

Despite these qualifications, rewards themselves aren’t all bad if offered wisely – we just have to get the timing right. You see, when rewards are promised in advance (‘Do this and I’ll give you this’) they are nothing more than bribes. But when they are unexpected and are given after an increased effort or positive change in behaviour, they can mark the moment very well and reinforce the behaviour we want to see.

Student effort should be recognised and celebrated, and rewards can be used to this end. But we can do better than to rely entirely on bribery where treats are promised in advance of an achieved target, as is the case with most school reward systems. Let’s look at a better way to use rewards as true motivators – offering them spontaneously as occasional surprises.

The right way to use rewards

Gifts, presents and favours are always pleasing to receive but they have far more impact when they are a total surprise. One of the most effective reward systems I ever saw in operation in a school worked entirely on this basis. Unlike most other centres and special schools I had worked in for children with behavioural difficulties, there were no formalised reward systems in place here – there were no sticker charts or points totals leading to ‘golden time’ or the obligatory range of treats and prizes at the end of the week. Instead, students who had shown improved effort were given pleasant and unexpected surprises.

A surprise might be a trip into town, a visit to a park or sports centre or to an event or show, helping out with unpacking some deliveries, lunch at a cafe with a youth worker or even lending the caretaker a hand with some gardening. It all depended on the student’s interest and the level of reward the teachers felt they deserved.

I know surprises like these are impractical for most comprehensives and larger schools, but part of the effectiveness of this approach was in the method of delivery rather than the reward itself. A member of staff (a youth worker, assistant or another teacher) would walk into the classroom (this was prearranged with the class teacher) and say something along the lines of: ‘Jonny, I hear you’ve been working very hard this week. I think you deserve to come out with me today – we’re going for a trip to the garage.’

The impact this had on the other students (and Jonny, of course) was quite astounding. There was no build-up or expectation on the students’ part, but good effort was most definitely rewarded. The set-up gave the opportunity for the teacher to say, ‘Look what happens when you work hard’, and it was a profound moment for the other students to see Jonny walk out of the room for his treat. Individual spontaneous rewards like this are most effective when they mean something to the student. This is one reason why it is so important to get to know students and find out their hobbies and passions.

The following spontaneous rewards can be adapted to fit any individual student’s interests, although some of them are applicable to younger children only.

Classroom privileges

The individual rewards listed below may seem small and insignificant compared to the expensive tangible prizes (record vouchers, mobile phone vouchers, etc.) offered in some school reward systems, but if chosen wisely and delivered at the right time, and in the right way, they can have a positive and lasting impact on students.

• Sit at the teacher’s desk.

• Time on the computer.

• Be first in line for lunch (or can nominate a friend).

• Classroom job – taking care of the class animal(s), being in charge of materials/supplies, watering plants, taking the register, operating the whiteboard, etc.

• Have lunch with the teacher (or head teacher).

• Use specific materials/equipment – special pens/paper/computer program, etc.

• Show visitors around the school.

• Be a helper in the room with younger/less able children.

• Help the secretary.

• Help the librarian.

• Invite a friend from another class into the room for lunch.

• Take a class game home for the night.

• Keep a favourite soft toy/class mascot on your desk.

• Use the couch or beanbag chair.

• Set up a display.

• Be leader of a class game.

• Get a worksheet from the ‘fun pile’.

Special awards and trophies

Awards are almost always used in classrooms in the form of certificates, but why stop there? A trophy is far more appealing – even if it is just a flimsy, plastic joke ‘Oscar’ – and it doesn’t have to be something the students take home. It’s the recognition and the ceremony that counts. A very brief, simple, humorous, surprise award ceremony can take place spontaneously to highlight students’ progress in any given area – for example:

• Today’s Independent Worker award goes to … (suggested joke trophy: toy plastic workman figure).

• This week’s Early Finisher award goes to … (suggested joke trophy: toy plastic watch).

• Today’s most improved student is … (suggested joke trophy: rosette or certificate).

• This week’s Mrs Mop award for tidying the room goes to … (suggested joke trophy: a duster or scrubbing brush).

• Today’s Mr Motivator award for keeping everyone positive goes to … (suggested joke trophy: cheerleader’s pompom or whistle).

Work related rewards

• Allow them to show work to a younger class – as an example of the excellent work these students will be producing as they move up through the school.

• Ask the head teacher to come in and look at the student’s work (or send the student to the head teacher’s office with their work).

• Put the work on a special ‘wall of fame’ noticeboard reserved for the very best work each week or on a special display board near the school entrance.

• Make an arrangement with a local paper/free sheet publisher to feature ‘excellent school work’ and allow the student to send their work in for publishing.

• Compile a class/school newsletter and feature a collection of the best work in it each week/month.

• Send the work home to parents or invite parents in to see it.

• Put up a website or blog for excellent work to be displayed.

Trips and excursions

• Lunch off site.

• Accompany a teacher to ‘advise’ him/her on a special purchase – for home or school use.

• Museum, library or exhibition related to the student’s particular interests.

• Any work-related visit associated with the student’s hobby or interest (e.g. football ground, bicycle shop, beauty salon).

• Park, swimming pool, sports centre, ice rink, etc.

• An errand to help a member of staff.

• A visit to a hospital, care home, dogs’ home, etc. to do voluntary work.

• Involvement in a local environmental ‘clean up’ project.

The golden ticket

This is a very special spontaneous reward. The golden ticket creates a moment of buzz, intrigue, excitement and expectation which gets students talking, puts a smile on their faces and has them returning to lessons in a great mood – thus doing no harm at all to your status as their favourite teacher.

The golden ticket can be used to represent a huge variety of pleasurable experiences for your students, with the proud winner being even luckier than young Charlie Bucket himself. The lucky ticket holder could be entitled to such things as early lunch, a no-homework night or five minutes of a preferred activity (e.g. computer time, drawing, playing a game, eating a snack, having a cup of tea, watching a film).

If you’re wondering where you might procure a shiny, glittering, realistic looking golden ticket, then you need look no further than the online resource area which accompanies this book. You can download a golden ticket reward template from: www.noisyclass.com/bookresources. Just print one out on yellow paper, add some gold glitter and hey presto!

The million pound behaviour note

Here’s another very quirky reward you can give your students when they do something extra special. The million pound behaviour note (also available in dollars and euros) is a cool reward you might want to give out now and again when your students surprise you by making progress in terms of behaviour. Like any reward, the novelty value will wear thin over time but you might just find, for a while at least, that these little slips of paper will prove very popular and bring a new level of eager compliance to your classroom!

You can download a copy of the million pound behaviour note from: www.noisyclass.com/bookresources.

1 See Marcial Losada and Emily Heaphy, The Role of Positivity and Connectivity in the Performance of Business Teams, American Behavioural Scientist 47(6) (2004): 740–765.

An important step in succeeding with the really tough group, therefore, is to take control at the door. And the manner in which you do this is crucial. When I first started teaching I basically had one very ineffective strategy at my disposal for managing behaviour. If they didn’t do as I asked, I shouted at them. And if they still didn’t do as I asked, I shouted a bit louder. Eventually I was shouting at the top of my voice and the kids were just gawping at me.

You can’t get control just by barking orders at this group and then expect them to stand to attention like well-trained soldiers. Yelling at them only gives tough students more reasons to hate you. It gives the argumentative ones an excuse to answer back. It puts the wallflowers on the defensive. It conveys the message that you have lost control, and it raises your blood pressure.

There is not a single person who benefits from you yelling and shouting, and when you use any kind of aggressive approach with young people (even frowning can be interpreted as an act of hostility by some students) you’re going to establish a negative ‘them and us’ atmosphere before they walk through the door. When this happens, it’s almost guaranteed that your lesson is going to be a battle.

So, a difficult group needs to be calmed down g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y. By establishing a calm, welcoming atmosphere at the door you set the tone for the rest of the lesson. And then, once they are in a more relaxed state in which they are more likely to listen, you can tell them what to do with a much better chance of them actually doing it.

The main thrust of this approach is prevention. It’s about spotting and dealing with problems as early as possible in order to stop them from escalating. As we’ve already discussed, when you’re addressing a student on a one-to-one basis, particularly about issues of a sensitive nature, it is crucial that you do so quietly and caringly and out of earshot of other students.

Here are some suggestions for what to say to a student who looks unsettled or agitated at your classroom door:

Or:

Note: If you’re faced with a particularly agitated student, see ‘Dealing with problems’ on page 217 for a more detailed approach.

When issues come up they must be addressed before you let the students into the room, because if they are going into the classroom with unanswered concerns they will almost certainly cause problems and disruptions down the line. Obviously, some problems are easier to deal with than others so here’s a useful stock response to use for an issue that can’t be sorted out on the spot:

So, the class is lined up, calmed down and ready to go into the classroom. Now we need to sidestep a moment to discuss where they will be sitting.

The method we’re going to use to get our reasonably well-settled students into the classroom is called the filter method and it goes like this:

We’re going to cover four different ways you can start a lesson: the formal start, the settled start, the fun start and the engaging question start.

The formal start

The formal start usually commences with administration duties, such as taking the register, before launching into an explanation, demonstration or introductory lesson task of some sort.

Taking a register can actually be a great way to settle and prepare the group for the opening teaching activity, but only if the teacher commands sufficient respect to maintain control throughout the process. If not, it can quickly turn into a circus of silly noises, false names and wind-ups, making for a very chaotic lesson start which is difficult to overcome.

With a tough group, if you have any doubts as to your ability to maintain order, I suggest taking the register on an informal basis – checking names while students are engaged quietly in an appropriate activity such as those explained in the settled start.

The formal start is reserved for reasonably malleable, sensible groups of students with which the teacher commands a suitable amount of respect. If you are struggling with a particular class and find the students aren’t responding to you during registration, the settled start offers a more controlled opening to the lesson and works very well with the filter method explained in Chapter 9.

We’ll come on to later how we deal with any students who aren’t settled at this stage, those who drift off task plus a wide range of other disruptions, but what we need to do now is maintain this calm, productive learning environment for the students who are currently engaged. In this chapter we’ll go through some general suggestions for keeping the lesson flowing as well as some ideas for making lessons more interesting.

Engaging lessons

When faced with a disruptive class over a long period, some teachers tend to stop trying hard to engage the class (which is understandable) and instead resort to dull, uninspiring lesson tasks. While the occasional copying from the board or worksheet based lesson is fine to remind them what they are missing, or to give yourself a well-earned break, if these tedious activities become the norm, then behaviour will undoubtedly deteriorate.

Some years ago I had an experience which made me appreciate the huge importance of engaging learning activities in terms of preventing behaviour problems in class. I was working in a pupil referral unit where every minute of every day was spent focusing on addressing bad behaviour. From 8.30 a.m. until 3.30 p.m. the attention of every member of staff was firmly focused on trying to help the students get through the day without either causing or being involved in a serious incident. It was very tiring and stressful.

On this particular day we were instructed by the head to take our respective class members to the hall as there was to be an interactive lesson provided by a company working with reptiles, large insects and assorted creepy-crawlies from far off countries. The usual response from the students to any outside agency was at best rude and at worst quite violent so I approached the hall with some trepidation.

And then a strange thing happened. As the students entered the hall, the young woman in charge of the animals stood at the door to greet them warmly with a smile. She held one finger to her lips gesturing ‘please be quiet’. In her other hand, close to her chest, she held a rat. Behind her were about eight crates and boxes with lids on. Some of them were semi-transparent and you could just make out something moving around jerkily within. One of the boxes had a very large, hairy insect leg protruding from under the lid.

The effect on the behaviour of our students was miraculous. Their whole demeanour changed as soon as they entered the room. They slowed down, their eyes widened and they moved towards the rows of seats in silence. Once everyone was in the room, the young woman introduced herself and proceeded to talk about each of the animals in turn. She allowed those who wanted to the chance to stroke them and examine them more closely.

Only moments earlier several of these kids had been fighting viciously. These teenagers were frequently found on the roof of the building throwing stones or screaming abuse at staff. And yet here they were sitting engrossed in a learning activity. They were absolutely transfixed, and I realised that for the very first time not one member of staff was having to deal with a behaviour related issue.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I realise we can’t produce a box of snakes and tarantulas every time we are presented with a difficult group, but we can learn from this experience. If you provide students with an activity which interests and engages them, you will have less to do in terms of managing behaviour.

So how do you do that? How do you make your lessons more successful and more appealing to students when the lady with the hairy legs isn’t available?

The secret to making your lessons more appealing and engaging

I like to use an analogy which simplifies the task of engaging students considerably – I call it the ‘emotion rucksack’. If you’re faced with students dragging their heels and groaning as they walk up the corridor towards your classroom, it’s obvious they have already made up their minds that the lesson is going to be something they have to endure rather than something they will actually enjoy.

In this situation, I imagine these students each carrying a huge rucksack on their back filled with undesirable emotions. They are weighed down with negative thoughts, feelings and emotions about a particular lesson (and probably about school and life in general). These thoughts, feelings and emotions are often based on their personal past experiences – previous lessons they have attended or perhaps just comments from peers (‘I hate that lesson and you should too’).

Let’s say, for example, that in one or more previous lessons they have struggled to grasp the skills required to complete the assigned work tasks. If that’s the case, they will almost certainly be bringing a degree of frustration, anxiety and perhaps fear and inadequacy in their rucksack to the next lesson. If they feel they have been picked on by the teacher in previous lessons, they will be carrying feelings of distrust and perhaps even anger or revenge. If they found the subject too simple, completely boring or totally irrelevant, they will likely be carrying annoyance, irritation or apathy.

I’m sure you get the idea. Most, if not all, challenging students are arriving at the classroom door having already decided that the lesson is something they are not going to enjoy or benefit from. And it is very difficult to teach them and manage their behaviour when they are in this state.

The way around this problem is actually very simple. All you have to do is change what they are carrying in their rucksack. If we can have our students walking into class carrying a little bit of intrigue because of an interesting demonstration or story we shared last lesson, or optimism based on the (appropriate) fun and laughter they experienced last lesson, they are likely to be more enthusiastic about returning to class.

If they are carrying recollections of a brief taste of success and achievement they felt having understood a difficult concept for the first time, or feelings of confidence based on the praise they received for their efforts, or a sense of camaraderie or acceptance as the result of a successful group work session, we can expect them to be happy to return to class and to be in a state more conducive to learning when they do so.

What you want is students coming to your lessons looking forward to learning and being with you because they enjoyed your lesson. If they succeeded, achieved, discovered, learned something interesting, had fun, shared a laugh, improved and felt better about themselves; if they were motivated, cared for and moved emotionally, it stands to reason that they will feel more optimistic about the next lesson because they can expect more of the same.

These are things that any teacher can put in place in any lesson. It comes down to helping the students to feel wanted, valued and appreciated and making sure that they gain something positive from the short period of time you spend together.

Ten ways to make lessons appealing and engaging

1. Use lots of genuine praise

When negative behaviour has become entrenched (as it does with a very difficult group), we tend to focus on what is going wrong in the classroom (‘I told you to be quiet!’ ‘That’s the third time I’ve had to tell you!’ ‘Be quiet!’). And this makes for a very negative environment, reinforcing the group’s entrenched view that school is not a particularly nice place to be.

Focusing on what the students are doing right seems counter-intuitive (they need to be told, dammit!) but it is the quickest way I know of to transform negative moods. I don’t care what anyone says: there is not a child on the planet who, deep down, doesn’t want to succeed. And if you are the (only) one who consistently recognises and acknowledges when they have tried to do something right or made an effort – no matter how small – to improve, they will respond to you. The only caveat is that praise must only be given at the right time (i.e. when it is deserved) and in the right way. (For more on praise see Chapter 6.)

2. Make sure the tasks are achievable and appropriate

The joy of achievement is something which tough students rarely experience in school. They seldom get to enjoy the personal feelings of satisfaction associated with working hard at a task and seeing it through to completion. And yet mastery in a subject is widely cited as one of the most powerful motivators, so we must strive to give our toughest students maximum opportunity to feel competent, to achieve and to succeed if we are to encourage them to attempt future work tasks and to raise their enthusiasm for learning.

Often these students are reluctant to go to class purely because they are so used to failing (and continually being criticised for doing so). Their fear of looking foolish and their unwillingness to try is often masked by inappropriate or silly behaviour and other avoidance tactics. One of the lecturers on my PGCE teacher training course many years ago had an impressive way of highlighting the importance of this.

At the start of an afternoon lecture session towards the end of the course, Mr A (as he was affectionately known) announced proudly that the class was to be privy to a revolutionary new standardised science test that a private company would be marketing to schools in the near future. He thought it would be a wonderful addition to our training if we were to spend half an hour or so piloting it during our next session – with us acting the part of school students. He had managed to get the company to agree to the trial.

He explained that we would be required to adhere to strict exam conditions and when we returned the next day the furniture had already been rearranged in rows. We were directed to our places and sat in silence awaiting the test papers. While we were waiting he introduced a very stern woman wearing a smart business suit. She wore a badge indicating she represented Star Education – the company that was marketing the new tests. After a brief introduction, and satisfied that we understood the serious nature of the pilot and the importance of attempting all the questions, she indicated that the papers could be given out.

Nothing could have prepared me for that test. I’m not naturally the calmest of people in challenging situations and I must admit I had always found exams at school very stressful. But that was nothing to how I felt when I began to read the questions on this paper! I honestly couldn’t make one iota of sense of them. My mind was twisting, my palms were sweaty and my heart was racing – I was really struggling.

I looked round the room and was relieved to see other people clearly having as much difficulty as I was. A few individuals were scribbling furiously but you could tell they were in a panic, jotting an answer down then scrubbing it out and trying another possible solution. By the expressions on their faces, their new solution didn’t work either.

Remembering my old school days, I did what I always did at the start of a test when I realised I didn’t have a hope in hell of coming up with an answer to the first question – I skimmed over the rest of them, hoping to find a lifeline, that one gleaming pearl I understood and could at least attempt. But there wasn’t one question on the paper I had a hope of answering confidently.

I started to make my frustrations heard. I pushed the paper away, slammed my pencil down and muttered an obscenity. Someone behind me sniggered. A piece of crumpled paper – a test paper – was thrown from the back of the room. Clearly someone else had also given up. And then suddenly the room erupted. A few people remained silent and did their best to complete the test but the majority of us were seething. We were incensed at having been given such a ridiculously incomprehensible task. Hands went up. A young woman stormed out of the room dismissively shaking her head at the frowning adjudicator. Her cry of, ‘This is f****** stupid!’ summed up everyone’s frustration.

In response to the pandemonium, both our lecturer and the stern woman in charge of the test slowly made their way to the front of the room and turned to face us. The room fell silent. We waited for Mr A to tell us what would happen next. ‘Well, thank you everyone for so willingly taking part in the pilot, and may I take this opportunity to introduce you to my wife.’ He gestured to the woman beside him. ‘She doesn’t really work for Star Education. There is no such company to my knowledge; we made the test up a couple of days ago.’ He paused, a smile creeping onto his face, before continuing, ‘Now you know what it feels like to be a child who is given work that is far too difficult for them!’

What always amazes me when I think about this incident is that every single person in the room that day was an adult and a professional – we were just days away from being qualified as teachers. And yet our behaviour was that of maladjusted teenagers. All the frustrating behaviours we complain about in the classroom were on display – muttering obscenities, throwing equipment around the room, shouting, talking out of turn, leaving the room without permission, arguing with the teacher – and it was due solely to the work task being too difficult and too confusing.

Colleagues I’ve shared this with tell me they often think of that story when planning any kind of activity, particularly for children with special educational needs, and are reminded of it whenever a lesson fails miserably. It highlights the extreme importance of making sure that work tasks are both achievable and appropriate. If the work is too easy students will get bored – and will tell you so. If it’s too difficult you will encounter mayhem.

Three simple ways to make sure work tasks don’t overwhelm students and cause disruption

1. Pitch work at their ability level.

2. Avoid work that is text heavy.

3. Don’t feed them all at once – split work into bite sized chunks.

Particularly when working with pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties, it pays to break tasks up into small chunks. This is particularly necessary when you have to complete assessments with difficult children. There is nothing wrong with breaking a test up into a series of smaller tests and giving them to pupils over a series of days rather than in one very stressful session. As long as the work gets done, where’s the problem? Similarly, if you sense that a student is struggling with the work you’ve set them, take some of it away or cover it up – let them focus on an amount that they feel is achievable.

Always bear in mind that those students who show reluctance to take part in an activity, or are intent on disrupting your lessons to avoid working, may well be doing so because of a fear of failure.

3. Use music and sound effects

Music has a massive effect on young people – it is such a vital and influential part of their lives that we must include it somehow. You can use it to relax your students and focus their attention or to enhance creativity and boost achievement. Music can energise and bring new life to a tired group, just as it can calm down a hyped-up individual. It can provide fun and a change of mindset as well as building rapport and encouraging bonding. The right music, in the right situation, is a great team builder and a valuable aid to learning. And, of course, the opportunity to laugh at teacher’s gramophone record collection is always welcome.

Similarly, sound effects can be used in a variety of ways in the classroom. From rapturous game show applause when students answer questions correctly to the sound of a machine gun when they are being cheeky, sound effects can bring laughter to a lesson. Mobile technology makes this easy and accessible. Most mobile phones can be plugged into a speaker system and then used to access all manner of sound effect applications, and it’s amazing just how realistic these are. Just for kicks, I often use my iPhone to trick the kids outside our house into thinking the ice cream van has arrived.

Four ways to use music in the classroom

1. Use music to set the mood and mark transitions

Different types of music can be played at appropriate times during a lesson to motivate, calm, focus or relax students, with different tempos and genres being more suited to particular types of activity. A CD of TV and film theme tunes is a great investment for this. You could play ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ as the students arrive, the title theme from Chariots of Fire, the Rocky title track ‘Gonna Fly Now’ or the ‘Theme from Mission: Impossible’ during tough tasks, The Benny Hill Show theme tune when you want them to change activities or the Countdown clock music when you want them to answer spot questions.

Music also provides an aid to marking transitions between different lesson activities. Slowly turning the track off once all the students are at their desks gives a clear indication that the lesson is about to formally start and is far less abrasive than the usual, ‘Quiet! Let’s make a start!’

A session of active learning, in which students are expected and encouraged to be moving freely around the room, could be accompanied by some lively dance music to keep the pace going, while a discussion would favour a slower, less intrusive tempo. Playing this new track at a lower volume would promote a more settled atmosphere while still providing some cover for those who are reluctant to speak out. It can be daunting for self-conscious students to have their say during discussions. Another tune could be brought in towards the end of the debate to signify the transition to the next activity or to bring the lesson to a close. At the end, some uplifting music would help to cement positive emotions as the students file out of the room – the title theme from The Great Escape perhaps.

Baroque music has been found to stimulate right-side brain activity and aid concentration, and can be an excellent accompaniment to small group discussions and cooperative work or as calming background music as your students enter the room.

2. Use music to settle and harmonise the class

Classical music can have a surprisingly positive effect on the classroom environment. Some of the most challenging pupils I have taught complained bitterly when I first introduced classics such as Ravel’s Boléro as background music to our lessons, swearing that the only sound they could possibly listen to was hardcore house. At first, predictably, we got nowhere – they would actually sit staring at me with fingers in ears saying repeatedly, ‘We’re not listenin’, it’s crap!’

Gradually, as they began to recognise melodies from various adverts and films, they became more tolerant and eventually started asking for certain pieces to be replayed. ‘O Fortuna’ from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana (used in the Old Spice adverts) and Delibes’ ‘Flower Duet’ from the opera Lakmé (used by British Airways) were both very popular, but so were many more. The response was actually quite amazing. Although I can provide no hard data to back this up, I believe there was a much calmer atmosphere and a marked decrease in behaviour problems when these pieces of music were played at a moderate volume throughout my lessons.

3. Use music as a classroom management tool

Music can act as a noise screen, masking out unwanted noises and dominant voices which would otherwise distract some workers. In addition, it can provide teachers with necessary privacy when giving feedback to individual learners or when challenging those who aren’t participating as they should be.

4. Use music for impromptu furniture repairs

A stack of One Direction CDs is ideal for propping up a wonky table leg.

4. Use props

A prop box full of silly hats, masks, clothes, wigs and jokes is a fun classroom must-have for role play and other activities. Use the props whenever you’re introducing a relevant topic or perhaps for the students to wear for recall activities (‘Today you must answer the question in the style of a rock star/farmer/airline pilot/weather girl/newsreader, etc. and wear this crazy wig/hat/mask while doing so’).

You could wear huge plastic ears or over-sized pink fluffy ear muffs when noise levels get too high; a big inflatable hammer, policeman’s helmet, huge vampire fangs or enormous foam boxing gloves can help to take care of students who are just starting to go off the boil; a big roving reporter’s microphone is a much better way to ask for answers than hands up; a ‘honk-honk’ bicycle horn can signify the end of activities; and a Stetson, sheriff’s badge or toy pistols can be used to deal with students who get answers wrong in quizzes. Use your imagination!

Subject related props also offer a wonderful way to introduce a new topic. Without doubt the best prop I ever had the privilege to use in a lesson was a genuine relic from the Titanic. It was a broken pocket watch belonging to a young boy who had been working as a bellboy on one of the lifts. My students had been working on their research project for a few weeks and were fascinated by the whole Titanic story. To see this piece of living history up close and tangible, after previously only having had access to pictures, videos and reference books, was simply amazing for them. They had already discovered the exact time the ship was documented as taking her final plunge, 2.20 a.m., and had filled this time in as the last entry on their timelines. When they saw that the watch had actually stopped at precisely 2.20 a.m. they were, understandably, completely spellbound.

Obviously this was a one-off. The chances of getting your hands on priceless relics are slim and any efforts to procure them from your local museum may not be viewed favourably. I was lucky – not because I had originally arranged to bring in Kate Winslet, but because a friend of mine knew the woman who owned the watch. She had never shown the pocket watch to anyone outside her home up until that point but she was thrilled to be able to enhance the children’s education by coming into school to show them. Like I say, I was lucky, but we all have friends and relatives and it’s possible that one of them has, or knows someone who has, a suitable prop for your next lesson.

As an introduction to a lesson they can grab attention like nothing else. The Titanic watch, for example, was actually introduced to the group as part of a simple fun starter activity, ‘What’s in the bag?’ (see page 162). When the students entered the room, the bag (one of the original sacks used by the authorities to hold passengers’ belongings retrieved after the accident) was waiting ominously on the centre table.

5. Include challenge

Someone once told me there are two sure-fire ways to get disinterested students engaged – bet them or pay them. I don’t want you to be out of pocket so let’s look at the first one. Challenge is a universal motivator but to use it effectively we have to get both the context and the level of challenge right. In terms of context, the challenge has to interest the students. A physical activity will appeal more to physical students, a sports challenge will appeal more to sporty students and a technical challenge will appeal more to geeks (ahem). Finding the right context to motivate disengaged students requires getting to know them so that you can base the challenge on something which interests them.

Setting challenges at the right level is also important. If the challenge is too easy there will be no feeling of success if it is completed, and the student will likely deem it too boring or childish to bother with in the first place. If it is too difficult they will be put off from trying in future challenges.

Quick ways to get challenge into your lessons

• Tell them they can set the maximum number of mistakes they are each allowed in a piece of work.

• Let them choose the question they should answer in a specified time.

• Challenge them to beat your previous class (e.g. ‘They managed to be sitting in their seats with their mouths closed and their books open in 7.5 seconds!’).

• Use challenges from other people (e.g. ‘People looking at your past scores will assume you’re going to get a C in this next test. How about we put a plan together to prove them wrong?’ ‘In the staff meeting this morning all the staff were told that not one class has achieved 100% attendance for a whole term. How about we work together to prove them all wrong?’).

• Set a silent challenge – get a timer and build up the time they can stay silent. Start with two or three minutes of silent working, then five, then seven … You’ll be surprised how long they can go once they start to experience some success and actually start seeing the benefits of silence.

• Set some fun challenges (e.g. ‘I’m betting there isn’t a person in this room who can eat four dried crackers in under one minute!’). My favourite A-level biology teacher (I hope you’re reading this Mr Finlinson!) set that last challenge to us one day at the start of a module on digestion to illustrate the fact that the breakdown of food starts in the mouth with the action of saliva and chewing. It was messy, and I still smile when I think about it almost 30 years later!

6. Give them some choice

Being given some choice in what they do gives students a sense of control and autonomy, and this moves them from feeling stuck or trapped into action. It gives them a sense of freedom. The simplest way to offer choice is to take some of the pressure out of our requests in order to create more willingness in students to take part.

For example, on test papers the questions which give a choice (‘Answer two from section A, two from section B, and two from section C’) are less threatening and more appealing than those which offer no choice at all. Instead of, ‘Turn to page 20 and get on with the exercises; when you’ve finished those you can complete this worksheet’, try, ‘I’ve written some choices on the board. You only have to do five from the ten choices, and you can do them in any order you like.’

This small difference in the way the work is presented makes a world of difference to the way students respond. Alternatively, you could give the entire class a limited choice in the form of a voting slip (verbal discussion can sometimes lead to arguments and, besides, a vote is more fun) written out as follows.

Which of the following tasks would you prefer?

1.    Produce a mind-map on …

2.    Produce a newspaper report on …

3.    Work as a group to find a solution to …

4.    Complete exercise 5 in the textbook …

The activity with the most votes wins and by taking part in this vote you agree to take part in the chosen activity without argument.

7. Make work relevant to them

As we saw in Chapter 10, students respond most positively in lessons when tasks and challenges are connected to what they know in the real world. We have to introduce new topics and information to them in a way that is relevant to them if we want them to be interested.

Let me give you an example from my own teaching experience to illustrate how this might be done. I used to teach Shakespeare to teenage boys who had been excluded from mainstream school. These boys seldom spoke in recognisable, grammatically correct sentences – monosyllabic grunts were the chosen mode of expression – so you can probably imagine what they thought of Shakespeare!

The first year I struggled to find suitable resources to engage them. Textbooks that claimed to be packed with engaging activities for low ability, disengaged students proved to be of little use. The government frameworks which provided very prescriptive three-part lessons (written by highly paid consultants) were even less useful. After three or four lessons the mere mention of the word ‘Shakespeare’ set these boys into a rage, with them threatening to literally rip the room apart if I tried to inflict any more on them.

So how does a teacher introduce a playwright such as Shakespeare, so far removed from modern life, to a group of disaffected 15-year-old boys? How do we get them to identify with Shakespeare as a writer and see him as having something relevant to offer, so that they might be interested enough to at least listen to part of a play – you know, just in case he’s actually any good?

My new cohort of students came to my lessons already hating Shakespeare. They hated the language (largely because they couldn’t understand it) and other kids in school who had already had to endure him told them that the Shakespeare lessons were, in a word, ‘crap’. I was beaten before the lesson had started. They had already made up their minds that Shakespeare was spelled ‘s**t’.

Yet in the late 1500s and early 1600s, long before the first teenage boys stalked the earth, Shakespeare wrote drama which captured hearts and minds. His plays were tremendously entertaining and the public flocked to see them. He was the Quentin Tarantino of his day (although probably a better actor). So that’s how I introduced him to the class. I didn’t even mention the name at first. Instead we talked about films the students had all watched. Horror films, comedies and gangster films, such as Reservoir Dogs, got them talking. We talked about the emotions they evoked and why they found them so entertaining.

I asked them what they would do without television and cinema. What entertainment was on offer before this technology became such a big part of our lives? Most of them had heard of these buildings called ‘theatres’ but probably couldn’t have told one apart from a supermarket, and none had actually been inside one. So I organised a trip. They loved it. They wanted to know more about this interactive, wonderful form of entertainment. And from that point on they had an interest in William Shakespeare, where previously there had been ignorance, fear and loathing.

Shakespeare was made interesting to these boys over a series of lessons, but the key was first getting them to see that the entertainment they loved was the very same entertainment that was loved hundreds of years ago. It was made relevant to them. Shakespeare wrote comedies and bloody tragedies which were adored by his fans – the film-goers of yesteryear. Once the students could see that there were parallels between the entertainment back then and the blockbusters of today, they were interested to learn more.

Five ways to make work relevant to your students

1. Link to current real world problems

The integration of the current social context into a subject encourages students to move away from seeing the learning as far removed from their lives. Could you start the lesson by talking about a recent news item (and showing them the story in a newspaper) or a relevant current real life issue that this particular age group are interested in or affected by?

2. Link to their environment

By taking the curriculum out into the real world and showing how knowledge can be used in their own environment we give the learning immediate relevance. Could you start the lesson by linking content to a photograph of their town centre, a newspaper article about their neighbourhood, a news video about a local event or even by taking them out into the community?

3. Link to their interests

In Chapter 5 on building relationships, we looked at the importance of discovering and getting to know your students’ interests and hobbies. Linking content to young people’s interests is one of the best ways for them to see the importance of a topic, but even in the absence of detailed personal information about each student there are common areas which will be of interest to most – for example, sport, fashion, celebrities, music, gore/horror, any current Xbox/PS4 game, recent blockbuster films and popular TV shows or a place they all congregate at night (local park/mall).

4. Link to age appropriate real life issues

Adolescence can be a very troubling time, with most teenagers encountering issues which they find confusing and difficult. When learning is linked to topics which the students may be experiencing first hand, such as gangs/gang culture, drugs/alcohol, self-confidence and low self-esteem, they are more likely to empathise and therefore more able to see the relevance of what is being presented.

5. Use metaphors and analogies

Metaphors and analogies are one of the very best ways of making new concepts relevant to students because they draw parallels between the new information and previously known, commonplace or everyday objects, happenings or actions. I use metaphors and analogies a lot in my teaching to describe processes, actions and concepts – virtually anything, in fact – because they give students an easy way to grasp and understand new material. You could say it’s like turning a light on for them or providing them with a map. Get it?

There is an easy way to come up with a metaphor for virtually anything you’re teaching. Just ask yourself a simple question, ‘What is it like?’ and pick the answer which you feel would be most relevant to your students. For example, diffusion (the spread of particles from regions of higher concentration to regions of lower concentration) is a difficult concept to explain to students, so let’s ask the question: ‘What is it like?’

1. It’s like watching people travelling down a tightly packed escalator and then all spreading out in different directions when they get to the bottom.

2. It’s like watching the smoke from a bonfire spread out.

3. It’s like hearing a student breaking wind at the back of the class and then watching the succession of other class members clutching their noses as the chemical weapon spreads through the room.

Any one of those analogies could be used to describe the process of diffusion in a way that students who had no concept of the process could relate to; but for some reason, most of my students find analogy (3) easiest to understand.

8. Add a touch of magic

There are some teachers reading this (you may be one of them) who will think the idea of using magic is ridiculous. But magic is amazingly effective for capturing the attention and imagination of your students, for changing the mood of a negative group and also as a ‘brain break’. In some cases, tricks can even be adapted to illustrate key points in the curriculum.

I stumbled on the idea of using magic quite by accident. I first started using magic in lessons as a result of a unit of work I was doing with my class on Shakespeare. We had been studying Macbeth and their interest in the witches led to discussions on the paranormal, which naturally led to a lesson on magic and illusions – and they enjoyed it tremendously. As a treat, I decided to show them a few simple tricks I had learned from a friend who ran a corporate entertainment business, and the response was just amazing. I couldn’t believe how much interest was generated from these simple tricks and illusions, so I tried to show them at least one new trick each week from then on. In time students were bringing in their own tricks to show the rest of the class and it became something of a ritual to have a (excuse the pun) ‘magic moment’ each week.

I’ve found that students of all ages love ‘mind magic’ tricks in which you apparently read their mind or foretell events yet to come. Obviously, you don’t actually need to be psychic in order to do these types of tricks – you just need the instructions I’ve provided below.

Magic trick #1: other people in school

The illusion: Hand out three slips of paper and ask for three student volunteers to help you. Two are asked to write the name of a student in the class on their slip. The third person is asked to write the name of a student from another class/year group.

The three slips are folded and placed in a hat (without you touching them). You are then blindfolded or the hat is held high over your head so you can’t see into it. You are able to reach in and bring out the slip of paper with the name of the person from another class written on it. You can adapt this trick to the curriculum by having students choose key words, dates and so on instead.

How it’s done: This is a very easy trick. Take a sheet of note paper and tear it into three pieces. The top and bottom pieces will have one smooth edge and one rough edge, but the centre piece will have two rough edges.

Make sure the person who is writing the name of the student from another class writes on the centre slip, while the other two students write down the names of a student in their own class. Get them to fold the slips and drop them into the hat.

When you reach into the hat, all you need to do is feel for the slip with two rough edges. When you have found it, don’t bring it out right away. Ask the students to concentrate on the names they have written. Bring out the slip, still folded, and hold it against your head. Build up the suspense until you have created a mystery. Then reveal the slip in your hand as the one with the name of the student from another class. If you wish, you may leave the room while the names are being written so that the spectator students know which names have been written, and then be brought in blindfolded for a dramatic denouement.

Magic trick #2: famous names

The illusion: Ask members of the class to call out the names of about ten famous people, past or present. You can adapt this trick to the curriculum by having students choose key words, dates and so on.

Each name/word is written on a separate card. The cards are then well mixed and you make a prediction on a pad of paper as to which card you think will be picked. A student selects one of the cards. He reads his selection aloud and the name you wrote on the pad is the same as the name read out.

How it’s done: You will need ten small cards, a pad of paper and a hat. With everything at hand, ask someone to call out the name of a famous person/key word associated with the lesson topic. Write this down on one of the cards and drop it into the hat. Ask for another name/word. This time do not write the name/word that is called, but write the first name/word that was called. Now both cards in the hat have the same name written on them. As different names/words are called out you continue writing the original word on each card until you have about ten cards in the hat, all with the same word on them. Now write this word on the pad so that the class can’t see it.

Place the pad where it can be seen, but with the writing facing away from the audience. Invite a student to come up and assist you. Shake the hat to mix the cards. Ask the student to reach into the hat and select one of the cards and read aloud the word written on it. After he or she does this, turn the pad around to show that the name selected was the same as the one you predicted. Be sure to destroy the slips after the trick so that no one can work out how you did it.

Magic trick #3: you WILL follow my instructions

The illusion: You reach into your pocket or desk drawer and start pulling out random objects – a pair of scissors, some keys, a whistle, a wristwatch, a flux capacitor, thumb screws, etc. You select three items (let’s say the watch, the keys and the whistle) and place them on the desk.

You say: ‘Jonny, you’re going to pick one of these items and I’m going to make you pick the one I want you to pick using subliminal messaging. The key here, I’ll say that again, the key here is to focus on one item and pick the one that locks [looks] right.’ (You make it quite obvious that you are trying to suggest the keys to Jonny by highlighting the words key and locks.)

Jonny smiles a smile which says, ‘I don’t think so, sir,’ and picks the watch. You look surprised but then say, ‘Well, that’s very interesting, Jonny. You obviously think you can ignore my instructions completely but you underestimate the power I have over you.’ You point at a blank piece of paper on the desk and ask Jonny to turn it over. On the other side it reads ‘You will pick the watch – told you!’

How it’s done: You are actually covered no matter what object the student picks with this nifty little trick. If he picks the keys you direct him to look closely at the keys and read the key fob. On the key fob is written, ‘Ha ha, I knew you’d pick the keys! Don’t underestimate me.’ By placing the keys with the fob facing down on the table he would not see this during the trick until he picks them up.

Similarly, if he picks the whistle, you ask him to look carefully at the ribbon to which the whistle is tied. Written clearly along it are the words, ‘Ha ha, I knew you’d pick the whistle! Don’t underestimate me.’ Again, he would only see these words when his attention is drawn to them – after he has picked the item. If you happen to have a Dictaphone in your drawer a nice variation is to have a message pre-recorded: ‘Ha ha, I knew you’d pick the Dictaphone …’

This trick is quite adaptable. You can use a whole range of topic related props and it also works with children not called Jonny.

You’ll find a few more mind magic tricks you can use in class at: www.noisyclass.com/bookresources.

9. Include mini reviews

Mini reviews can be used to inject some energy into the lesson at any stage and are a very effective way to reinforce any piece of learning.

Joggers

Ask the whole class to stand up and get them jogging on the spot. Students have to continue jogging on the spot until sufficient (depending on the target number) relevant, topic related facts have been called out.

Fireworks

Tell students that a ‘firework’ is what you call it when a student jumps up from their seat and contributes something positive to the lesson – for example, by stating something they have learned so far in the lesson or during the last phase of work. Start a timer and tell students you want to see a number of fireworks from them in the next 30 or 60 seconds (any longer than that drags the activity out too long and enthusiasm starts to wane). Sometimes an incentive may be helpful: ‘Okay, it’s breaktime in ten minutes, but if you want your break I need to see 15 fireworks in the next 60 seconds.’

10. Include teach-backs

Teach-back activities are fun ways to encourage students to cement their learning by teaching others what they have been taught. Remember the saying, ‘You never really learn anything until you teach it’? As well as helping students to learn new information, teach-back activities are great for the teacher too because they let you check for understanding and see how much your students have learned. They also give you a bit of free time (remember that?).

Ready, steady … teach!

This is a great routine to build up with your students and can be used as a quick (and often extremely lively) review at the end of any phase of teacher-talk or explanation. It’s very effective.

Explain to the students that whenever you call out the words ‘Ready, steady … teach!’ (in your best Ainsley Harriott voice) they are to work with their allotted learning partner for 30 or 60 seconds to teach-back what they have learned moments before.

Learning partners should be numbered 1 and 2 because this teach-back has three phases:

Phase 1: After teaching the group the new information, the teacher asks if there are any questions before moving on in order to clarify the learning and eliminate misunderstandings during the next stage.

Phase 2: The teacher calls ‘Ready, steady … teach!’ and partner 1 immediately starts teaching partner 2 the new concept. It’s important that they are encouraged to over-emphasise the key points with facial expressions and exaggerated hand gestures (humour makes learning stick) but also that they move through the information fairly briskly. For a difficult concept students are given up to a minute to teach-back the key points of the new information, but it is best to keep the activity brief – once they lose interest the effect is lost. This should be a fast paced, snappy review, nothing more.

Phase 3: The teacher brings the first session of teaching to a close (I like to use a ‘honk-honk’ bicycle horn to call attention and signify transitions) and have partners swap roles. On the second call of ‘Ready, steady … teach!’ partner 2 teaches partner 1. The partners then thank each other for being wonderful teachers and the lesson continues.

But which of these instructions is going to give her the greatest chance of success? (And if the correct answer isn’t obvious by now, go and sit at the back of the class.)

(a) The bell is about to ring, everyone. Put everything away and get ready to be dismissed please … Come on everyone … Quickly now … Let’s get packed away … Hurry up!

(b) Okay everyone, the bell is going to go in five minutes – it’s time to clear away. You know what to do.

After giving instruction (b) the teacher then points to a printed routine, clearly displayed on the wall at the front of the room:

Vague instructions such as those in (a) more often than not lead to misbehaviour because they don’t give the students clear enough direction. They will wander, play dumb, claim they didn’t hear the bell and protest that they don’t know where things are supposed to go. What should be a simple job quickly degenerates into a time consuming struggle in which you find yourself repeating instructions, shouting, yelling and having to deal with one avoidance tactic after another.

Instruction (b) works because the teacher has already spent time teaching her students a clear routine for the end of the lesson. There is no need for confusion or wasted time. No need to repeat instructions. No need to check that everyone has understood or give extra prompts to those who haven’t. Everyone knows exactly what to do and the teacher is free to oversee the whole process with little need for involvement or intervention.

So, that’s it. With the strategies we’ve explored hopefully you are feeling in control and ready for your next class.

You can download a full set of ready-made routines from: www.noisyclass.com/bookresources.

If you enjoyed Taking Control of the Noisy Class, you might also be interested in Sorting out Behaviour by Jeremy Rowe. Here’s a short extract:

Introduction

Like most of us, I’ve worked in schools that have got their approach to behaviour right  and in some that have got it wrong. Right is better. I’ve been lucky to have had the opportunity to work with magnificent teams at Pool Academy in Cornwall and Sir John Leman High School in Suffolk, both of which are packed with colleagues who know it is possible to improve and have been prepared to do what is needed to make that improvement happen.

By working together consistently and strategically, both schools were able to see genuine improvements. This can only be achieved by teams unswervingly operating value-based systems. Without that, staff are out on a limb and the minority of students who can be difficult will have a field day.

Like you, I am doing the job day-in and day-out and, like you, I get it wrong sometimes. In fact, the minute you think you’ve sussed it, a child will literally take your legs from under you! Remembering that is quite helpful, I think.

My basic view is that behaviour is about choice. That doesn’t mean that situations are equally easy for all of us to handle, but I believe that if we factor choice out of a situation we could be robbing an individual of their entitlements and their independence. If we were all predestined to behave in certain ways, all responses would be predictable. People choose how they behave. All of us.

Below is a short quiz:

Can bad behaviour be eradicated in our schools?

Can it be improved?

Should we try to improve it?1

For me, everything became clear as a result of one early conversation I had in which I was told there was no soap in the students’ toilets because ‘they messed around with it’. What this meant was that a couple of students did. What it really meant, though, was both profound and frightening. It did not simply mean that one or two students were running the school. They had in fact, been given the power to do something much more important. They were being allowed to define the school. No child could wash their hands because one or two students didn’t want them to. From that point onwards, I made a virtue out of taking risks with what students could ‘cope with’ – and never looked back.

I hope that this book provides a straightforward description of what we do, and why we feel these approaches work. None of the ideas are patented; all of them are taken wholesale or adapted from other schools. You will know the idiosyncrasies of your own school and what would be successful.

I’m not using a Marxist or feminist perspective – mainly because I don’t understand them. I haven’t done a lot of research either, because I was too busy actually improving our school – so there aren’t twenty pages of references at the back. Sorry.

Incidentally, it is important to remember that children are not criminals and that the negative behavioural choices a minority occasionally make are not crimes. Our job isn’t about retribution; it is about ensuring young people learn from their mistakes, so they can take their place in society and succeed.

My intention is to set out a simple, occasionally slightly difficult, approach to student behaviour that actually works. My school isn’t perfect, but it is better as a result. And that’s important.

Key points

If you want to read more, you can buy it now:

Sorting out Behaviour