Settling the Class (Things That Have Worked for Me #2)

This post is part of a series of things I've picked up over the last 9 years that have turned out to be incredibly helpful. Obviously their mileage will vary depending on your context and I don't expect them to work for everyone, so feel free to either take these on board or put them in your brain-bin - I won't mind either way.

2. Don't Wait for the Class to Settle

If you're nearly 7 foot tall, and look like Conan the Barbarian, then you'll probably have no problem quelling the dissent of the class with a booming voice and a threatening neck-vein the size of a rope. For the rest of us, however, relying on physical intimidation or authoritarianism isn't necessarily going to work. I spend a lot of time telling student-teachers they should play to their strengths and that, if their strength isn't in presenting a strong and authoritative presence, they may need to rely on other strategies to shape a learning environment based on engagement. 

The time spent waiting for a mixed-ability class to become quiet is almost never time well spent. There are likely somewhere between 20 and 30 individual students (all with their own drama going on) and waiting for every single of one of them to simultaneously fall silent and pay attention can be an immense challenge. The probability of different interactions between this many people is so high that you can't predict how settled the class will be each time you see them (think about it - if you have 25 students then how is each individual potentially going to react to any combination of their 24 peers on a particular day? I'm not a Maths teacher but I'm sure the figure for the amount of student-combinations is quite high). 

I've most often fallen into the trap of waiting for the class to be quiet usually just before I'm about to play a film clip of some sort. Waiting for the students to be quiet before I play the clip (while forcing myself not to yell at them in order to make it happen) is almost always futile. This can be the same for a range of other activities, including whole class instruction. 

What surprisingly sometimes works instead is just moving straight into the clip or activity while the students are still unsettled. The activity becomes the thing that settles the students. If I have a task that requires instruction then I'll put the instructions up on the board or hand out the sheets... this will get those who understand (and are willing to work independently) to engage with the work. Then, while this half of the class is getting underway, I'll start moving around and instructing the other students one-on-one. This works because:

• The amount time spent moving around and doing one on one instruction tends to be equal to the amount of time it would get me to settle the whole class at once.
• Even if I do manage to settle the entire class and they become quiet, this doesn't mean that they are all attentive or capable of understanding the instructions. Just because a class is quiet and compliant it doesn't mean that they're listening. Once the activity gets underway, speaking one-on-one guarantees a higher level of engagement across the class as it allows for differentiated instruction. There are students who struggle to follow the more traditional lecturing-style of whole class instruction and moving around to them once their peers have started working gives them an opportunity to listen and interact with you.
• Even if I do decide to try and settle the whole class at once and it somehow takes less time then just putting the activity in front of them, I can usually be fairly certain that my personal stress level will be higher as a result. I want to be in this for the long haul, so it's better overall if I don't break myself trying to get over 20 students to simultaneously be quiet. If I can let go of the idea that my authority needs to be recognised (and let's be honest here, no syllabus includes 'recognition of teacher authority' as an outcome) then I find myself a lot less stressed by the settling section of a routine lesson. If being authoritative works for you then that's fine, but for myself it's not one of my strengths so I've had to develop and adopt the other aforementioned strategies to save my sanity.

Non-verbal cues are also good. This can include the tried-and-true methods of:

• Holding my hand up and waiting for silence. Students should reply by putting their own hands up so other students can see that I want some quiet. Yelling for silence has always felt counterproductive and contradictory to me so I've found modelling silence in this way a bit more logical. 
• The above can be accompanied by quietly counting from 1 to whatever until the class settles. If I have to, I'll resume from whichever number I got to at any point in the lesson and this becomes the amount of time some individuals from the class might owe me.
• Proximity. Standing near the most disruptive students usually has a dampening effect on their off-topic conversations. 
• Walking around and pointing to clear, simple instructions that have been written on the board can be effective too. Many students are disruptive or disengaged simply because they don't know what to do and they aren't able to understand verbal instructions. 
• Write personalised instructions on a note and quietly place it in front of the student. This works especially well for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. 
• This isn't exactly non-verbal but choice theory can be really effective with students who might be categorised as naturally oppositional. Quietly give them two choices (both choices need to be positive ones, EG. You can do this work, or this work) and then walk away and let them decide without you hovering over them or waiting for a response. The act of waiting for a response can often exacerbate the opposition we're trying to circumvent. 

One more caveat before I finish up. I'm aware that behaviour management is very subjective and can be complex in light of school policies, and I'm also aware that nothing above is particularly revolutionary. My recent experiences teaching English Method to pre-service teachers has had me thinking a lot about articulating my processes and, as a result, I've been thinking of these blogs as living documents to help me sort and solidify pedagogy that I've found helpful. 

Hopefully there's something here that might prove useful to you too. 

Ten Things We Should Say Everyday (and Why They're Important)

Sydney Church of England Grammar is also known as the 'Shore School'

Earlier this year I attended the Project Zero conference at the Sydney Church of England Grammar School. It was ace, and I've already written about some of the other professional learning I did there on feedback processes and pushing for depth in student thinking. The conference itself was a great opportunity and saw over 500 people in attendance from the full gamut of Australian schools - state schools, independent schools, religious schools, and other educational sectors - and I recommend checking it out the next time it comes around.

One of the keynote lectures drew on the concept of a culture of thinking, with Dr Ron Ritchhart speaking quite passionately about the joy of 'learning together' and defining a culture as a shared language that represents a collective way of thinking. In the case of a learning culture, Dr Ritchhart identified several cultural forces that can shape this shared language:

• Routines
• Opportunity
• Modelling
• Time
• Interactions
• Environment
• Language
• Expectations

In the specific case of modelling, Dr Ritchhart elaborated further by describing this as demonstrating good practice and thinking aloud. More particularly, modelling of exemplar responses allows students to explicitly see how teacher cognition works, and - in the words of the great educator Vygotsky - lets "Children grow into the intellectual life around them". 

And that brings us to the title of this post, the ten things that Dr Ritchhart says we should say to students everyday. I've jotted them down here with his explanations of why they're important.

Dr Ron Ritchhart's presentation ^

1. Hello and Goodbye - all students need to feel known and acknowledged. Disruptive behaviour decreases, learning and engagement increases. Try not to be busy during this transition time while students are entering and leaving the class. 
2. WMYST?: What Makes You Say That? - make this an integral part of the classroom. Ask students this question so that they are forced to become more independent in terms of responding to class activities, providing their own thoughts rather than relying on the teacher's.
3. Talk to me about what you're doing - with this prompt, students are also being asked to make their metacognitive process more visible. Leave it open-ended, let the student find their own way to articulate what they're doing.
4. Here's where we're going with this - purpose is important. When people have a sense of purpose their learning increases dramatically. There is no research supporting 'learning intentions', the research tends to centre around 'purpose' instead, and this is because they aren't the same thing - stating a learning intention may not be as effective or the same thing as the broader purpose of something.
5. Here's the thinking you'll need to do... - when teachers explain an assignment or project to students we tend to get into the logistics by default. Then students fulfill these logistics and are surprised when they do get an A, and some aren't even sure how it happened or how it can be replicated. As teachers we need to keep in mind that i's the thinking that needs to be striven for, not the result.  
6. Let's debrief - new learning is incredibly fragile, so it's important to go over it to help reinforce/consolidate what students have just learned. Students in a high school setting are most often about to move on to another class or activity with completely different demands (for example, once the student finishes English they may be about to move on to their Mathematics or Geography class). One way that Dr Ritchhart highlighted was the 'IQ routine' in which students are invited to give insights and ask further questions at the end of each lesson.
7. I've noticed... - contrast this with 'I liked', which flips attention back onto the teacher. The language of 'I've noticed' is that it's less about turning students into people-pleasers and more about them considering what they've just done as learners. 
8. We - this creates a sense of community with the students.
9. I'm sorry - teachers need to be willing to admit mistakes, rather than seeing apology as a sign of weakness. 
10. Wow! - give students an opportunity to surprise us. Delight in their learning. If there are no 'wow' moments then you're playing too safe. 

More on this can be found on Dr Ron Ritchhart's website here.

The Honeycomb Matrix

Like it or not, part of being a teacher inevitably involves some kind of behaviour management. There are many ways to approach this, and every experienced teacher will have strong views on the best ways to administer this part of the job. It shouldn't be a surprise that, like most other teachers, I have my own strong views on this subject. I tend to use this blog to primarily focus on content-specific resources but I would like to take a moment here to share a resource that is applicable to all KLAs and all year groups.

But firstly, a few things I consider when it comes to behaviour management:

They're Kids

As adults, it's an inconvenient truth that we have to deal with issues that arise from dealing with people who are yet to reach adulthood themselves. That is to say, we're adults and our students are not. A lot of friction can arise from expecting students to behave in ways that we might expect adults to behave. Or we might even just expect our students to behave as an 'ideal' type of child that we have in our head.

The students who present the biggest challenges do not fit into this paradigm. They often come to us unequipped for the mental marathons we want them to run. And, honestly, so they should - the entire basis for our profession is to assist the next generation in reaching some kind of adult actualisation in terms of emotional, mental and physical development. If they came to us fully-formed then we wouldn't be needed, would we?

Difficult Students are Difficult for a Reason

If a student is unable to behave in the way that we expect, for whatever reason, then that's something we should be compassionate about. The stories behind some of these students are absolutely devastating and, if we knew the full details behind why they behave the way they do, we would wonder how it is that they might be able to focus in class at all.

Some of these students are going to be defiant, and oppositional, and this can be because they are afraid and angry about things that really have nothing to do with us. So we should do our best not to take it personally, to disengage from the instinct to respond in opposition, and to remind ourselves that we're the adults in these situations. No matter how hard it might get in a particular lesson for us, at the end of the day we can walk away from the problems these students have - and they can't.

Behaviour isn't Straightforward

Behaviour is always a reflection of context, and a student's personal context is inevitably going to be complex. The problems exhibited by a challenging student are not simple in origin - they can be the result of multiple things. A student may have a learning difficulty, compounded by instability in their home environment, and further reinforced by issues that have arisen in social interaction over a sustained amount of time due to the other aforementioned problems. This in turn has probably led to friction with some teachers in the past, gaps in learning, and ongoing attendance issues due to said student aiming to avoid further conflict as much as possible.

It's not something that can be solved with a detention.

If I give this hypothetical student a detention is it going to change their behaviour the next time I have them in my class? The answer is no, so the only real consequence is that it would drive a wedge between myself and the student in question - a wedge that will make it difficult to continue working with said young individual. I've seen this happen; punishment for punishment's sake can lead to ongoing grudges between teachers and students that can last for years and are impossible to mediate. For the teacher it sometimes becomes about asserting authority and teaching the value of following rules. I cannot think of a single time that this approach actually resulted in a student adopting those values and responding to this authority in a supplicant and respectful way. For some teachers it slots into a metanarrative about "what's wrong with the world today"... I'm not saying that it's incorrect to criticially analyse the malaise one may perceive as having descended upon modern society, but what I am saying is that tying behaviour management practice to a theoretical idealised worldview won't actually get the kind of results that will make you and your students have a less stressful time in the classroom.

Would you rather be right, or would you rather just have the student learning something? Sometimes we can't have both, and being right (and authoritative) shouldn't be the cornerstone of education. Education should be the cornerstone of education.

But hey, don't just take my word for it, here is some supporting evidence:

• Annette Breaux - Positive Teaching Practice 
• The Demographic Approach - Regional Context s
• Beyond Bullying - Positive Behaviour-based Anti-Bullying program  
• Dr Roberto Parada - Dealing with Ill-Structured problems

Blank Honeycomb Matrix

The Honeycomb Matrix

Anyway! I honestly did not intend to write that much, but I am very passionate about Positive Behaviour for Learning.

The Honeycomb Matrix is a quantitative assessment tool that aims to assist students in engaging with their class work. Nothing more, nothing less. Firstly, here is what it is not:

• It is not used to generate marks or data for assessment of ability.
• It is not used to assess thinking skills or the ability of a student to understand certain domains of knowledge.

What it does do is this:

• It allows students to see how well they work while they are present in class.
• It allows the teacher to build a culture of student engagement with classwork.
• It makes it clear to students that the most important thing is, and always will be, how hard they try in regards to the work set during class time - thus promoting a growth mind-set. 

I have been using and developing this matrix for three years now and I can give you some feedback on its impact in the classroom. Back in 2014 I introduced a version of this matrix to a mixed ability Year 7 class where 40% of the students were only completing 10-40% of the set classwork. After a term of transparently judging student engagement against the matrix, student work levels got to the point where all students in this class were completing 40% of set activities (or higher). The top end of the class improved too, with a third of these students achieving 85% of completed classwork or higher.

How it Works

The matrix is good for 10 lessons at a time. Each column has two boxes per student - one to note down if they are present in class or not (this way you can use it as your roll and avoid double-handling if your school is not on electronic rolls), and one to note down a score that equates to the amount of work completed. The scores run as thus:

0 = no work.

1 = some work.

2 = most work.

3 = all work.

4 = exemplar work (more work than the teacher expected in their wildest dreams*)

*It should be noted here that 4s are only given out in exceptional circumstances.

Make it clear to the students that 3 is the normal maximum, and that it works out as 3 out of 3. If they should get a 4 then this is actually a 4 out of 3. It's at this point that I like to remind students that I can do this because I'm not a Maths teacher.

At the end of the topic, add up all the scores and divide it by the amount of lessons that the student was present for, with each lesson worth 3 points in total.

Sample Honeycomb Matrix (with fake students)

Here's an example of how it would work:

Jane Rice has been present for ten lessons. This means that her possible total is 30. Her actual work score is about 21 out of 30, which means she has completed 70% of the work for the term.

Let's say a student gets an exemplar score at some point, or completes work that they missed out on due to absence (thus earning points for lessons in which they weren't present - which is encouraged). They can theoretically get 100+%. Well, it's not really theoretical, because this does happen - usually with one or two students per class.

At the end of each topic the percentages are equated to grades, and I keep a sign up in the classroom that explains the system:

• 100+% = A+ (getting the student two Bronze Awards)
• 85-100% = A (getting the student one Bronze Award)
• 70-84% = B 
• 45-69% = C
• 25-44% = D
• 0-24% = E (and a call home to express concern to their parents)

Since introducing this system to all of my classes, I haven't had to call home about unacceptable levels of class work once.

Another positive byproduct of this system is that it doubles as an efficient way to mark books. By filling in the Honeycomb Matrix once at the end of every lesson after observing the students working, and then calculating totals at the end of each topic, I have a handy percentage that can be typed up and handed to each student. I don't even need to collect books (which can often be problematic anyway as students who haven't done any work often actively avoid handing their book over to you).

[I'll note here that every now and again I do collect books to do some close-up marking on the quality of a written paragraph or something like that, but that's not what this blog post is about].

After a while the students get used to the system. A good example of this has been my senior English Studies classes. By transferring my expectations for behaviour primarily onto classwork, it assists in building a positive working relationship with the students, and they will often be quite honest in telling me if they've only done a 1 out of 3 for the lesson. For reluctant workers, knowing that I'm explicitly keeping track of what they do every lesson ensures that they do put some effort in occasionally and are able to meet the expected minimum. 

Also included at the front of the sheet are an optional two columns for diagnosis. Students can be informally pre-assessed at the start of the topic (or 10 lesson cycle) and then broken into three streams of ability to allow for occasional differentiation of tasks.

In short, the sheet becomes an all-in-one organisation tool for each of my classes.

Resource - Honeycomb Matrix

Resource - Honeycomb Matrix Completed Example

Teaching: The Demographic Approach

In the words of my city council, "Penrith is here"

English is all about context. We look at the context of authors, the context of their texts, the context of a text's intended audience, the context of our students in responding to said text, and the context of the teacher teaching the text and how it fits into the syllabus. But really, thinking outside of the KLA, isn't everything about context?

"I want to give you $20".

If someone said that to me, then I would want to know why. What is the context? I would want to know who's giving me this money, why they are giving it to me, and what they expect me to either do for it or do with it. 

Then I would accept the $20. Most likely. Well, it depends on the context.

I teach in Western Sydney at Glenmore Park High School; a fantastic comprehensive government school full of great students who will no doubt grow into our proud future. Like all schools, it comes with its own context - both in terms of the immediate community and the wider demographic of Western Sydney - and these are things that bear some examination for a couple of reasons:

• If we know where the child is from, we'll have a better idea of where they're going.
• If we know what their parents expect and want, we'll be able to better cater to the needs of our community.
• If we know the sort of priorities and attitudes that have been passed on to the students from their community, we'll know how to better implement the kind of change that will have a generational effect and foster increased positivity towards education in our demographic.

In my case, Penrith City Council have a wonderful website with data on the city's demographics called Penrith Progression. There are some caveats that need minding when looking at statistics, such as not drawing direct conclusions when data could be correlating with certain observed trends. This simply means that if I see a percentage in the numbers then I should be careful not to say that this automatically proves a hypothesis I may hold. That would be an opinion, rather than a fact. 

I can, however, use the demographic data as a basis for assumptions. I can assume certain things as a means to explore pedagogy. This should be a design process rather than a solution. I can use the information gleaned from Penrith Progression (or any other set of figures related to demographics) to support ideas I want to test out. If these ideas work; hurray! If they don't; look at the data again and perhaps craft a new hypothesis - try something else. Perfection is impossible and pedagogy should therefore be flexible and fluid; constantly shifting and improving to make things better. In short: it's a design process.

For those who teach in Western Sydney, here are Penrith's demographics (as of 2015):

Housing

• 50% of families in Penrith have children, which is equal to the rest of Sydney, however, Penrith has a 25% higher proportion of single-parent families.
• The average personal income for an adult in Penrith is $632 per week - better than Blacktown or Liverpool, but less than Sydney and Camden.
• 10% of Western Sydney's population is concentrated in Penrith.
• 22% of Penrith residents own their house outright, with a further 42% paying off a mortgage. A further 26% rent. This compares as similar to Blacktown and Liverpool, however, it does constitute a drop compared to Penrith in 2005, where 32% of houses were owned outright. There has also been a shift towards increased renting in Penrith (something that has not occurred in Blacktown or Liverpool).

 Education

• In all of Western Sydney, Penrith has the highest proportion of adults who finished school at Year 10 (32%) and the least to complete Year 12 (38% - compared to 50% in both Blacktown and Liverpool). 
• Penrith is a 'leading skills city', with 22% of adults having vocational certificates (trades). In contrast, 10% go to university - which is less than other Western Sydney areas (Liverpool has 17% of their Year 12 students going on to university). 

Other

• People in Penrith are much more likely to go on to work in their hometown. 56% of workers in Penrith also live here, which contrasts with 38% in Liverpool and 44% in Blacktown.
• In the next 15 years, demographic models currently predict that the amount of Penrith citizens under the age of 15 will increase by a whooping 42%.

Some ideas I've assumed from this information were that:

1. Due to such a relatively high proportion of Penrith students staying on in Penrith to work, this may mean that attitudes towards work and education are more likely to be entrenched and generational. 
2. The increase in the number of Penrith-dwelling teenagers in the near future will mean that schools (particularly those in growth areas, like Glenmore Park High School) will continue expanding towards capacity.

You might be wondering what I do with this information. In my personal teaching context, the main idea is that it supports a Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) approach that favours the building of positive relationships through extrinsic recognition of desired attitudes and actions. If I want to affect generational change then it becomes important to teach students (especially those who might be at risk of long term disengagement) that school can be a positive experience and that, even if they leave with the sole purpose of picking up a trade, they may therefore pass on positive opinions of schooling to their own children. This may, in turn, then improve the percentage of students primed for university enrollment in the next generation.

It's a long game, but I've always preferred to play the long game. And, at the end of the day, I shouldn't really need an excuse for having a PBL focus in my pedagogy, but it certainly helps to reinforce it if I can see what the data says about my city. I can use this information in my design process for catering to my community better.   

What Could I Be Doing Differently?

Most of my blog tends to focus on the practical and pragmatic. Well, I at least hope that's the case - it's up to those of you who read it to decide if these lessons and resources have been practical. The point is that I like to focus on what it is that we, as teachers, can do in the classroom to make things run more efficiently and effectively. 

It's not a perfect world though, and things can and do occasionally go pear-shaped in the classroom. There's a tendency in teaching for people to externalise these issues and look for blame-factors - heck, it's something that lots of people do in life in general. I'm not saying that external factors don't exist but there's little point in stressing about what you cannot change.

Therefore, if something ever goes askew or wrong then I like to internalise the problem and look for what it is that I, the classroom teacher, could be doing differently to avoid or fix the situation. There are three things that I always come back to in my head, and they work like a mantra:

1. If I don't like something, then I'm the only one who can fix it - and that extends to fixing my perception. I might just be looking at the whole situation the wrong way. What could I be doing differently?
2. If I want something done the way I want it done, then I should do it myself. That's how things get done. No one else is going to do something for you, they have their own things to do.
3. Don't ever ask anyone - parents, other teachers, students - to do something that I myself would not be prepared to do. 

I recently read 101 Answers for New Teachers and Their Mentors by Annette Breaux. It's a fantastically positive book for educators that has given me a whole bunch of great ideas and reaffirmed my teaching philosophy. I think that we all, at some level, want to be appreciated by our clientele - the students, the parents, and even the administrators/executive branch that we work for. It's their taxes that generate our salaries - we owe it to each of these groups to do a good job. 

At the end of 101 Answers is a section from one of Breaux's other books, Seven Simple Secrets, that details what makes for effective and appreciated teachers, and a lot of it just makes sense to me. I read over it and came up with this list on how I reinforce positive teaching practice:

Things that students like:

• Teachers who are nice to them
• Teachers who make learning fun
• Teachers who help students succeed
• Teachers who challenge students
• Teachers who are clear and consistent with expectations 
• Teachers who are willing to start each day afresh
• Teachers who get to know their students as people

Things that parents like:

• When teachers treat their child as fairly as we would treat our own
• Teachers who do their best to keep them informed
• When teachers make an effort to communicate positively
• When teachers listen to what they have to say 
• Teachers who never give up on their child
• Teachers who challenge students while making learning fun 

Things that the executive like:

• Teachers who prepare their lessons well before they teach them
• Teachers who handle their own discipline problems
• Teachers that make decisions based on what's best for students
• Teachers who maintain professionalism when interacting with non-administrators (parents, students, other teachers)
• Teachers who continue to educate themselves
• Teachers who manage their classroom efficiently 
• Teachers who treat every child with respect and dignity
• Teachers who cater for all stakeholders 

I'm not saying that I'm a great teacher, but I think that if I continue to work on doing each of these things to the best of my ability then I'm going to get there eventually. We can always be better at what we do.

I realise that not every teacher reading this will be willing to focus their frustrations entirely on themselves but I figure that there's more than enough negative stuff out there so a little bit of positive practicality can't go astray.