Organizational Strategies → It is critical for classrooms to maintain a consistent, organized, and supportive learning culture. These things can help children’s behavior be more functional. This takes specific work:
- Collaboration Among Adults → Teacher and paraeducator teams put more adults in the room with students, which has proven effective in supporting student learning and in managing student behavior. The adults should discuss guidelines defining the prosocial behaviors that are expected of students. “Be respectful,” for example, is a prosocial expectation. Defining what “be respectful” actually means and looks like in practice is also an important function of the team.
A careful definition of a behavior describes exactly what it does (and does not) look like. Carefully defining behavior helps the members of the teaching team act consistently. In other words, they all should hold the same expectations, use the same types of reinforcements, and provide similar feedback.
2. Instructional Routines and Classroom Expectations
Here is a great video from EDUTOPIA on things to think about with Classroom and Instructional Routines.
Routines 🡪 Routines are standard ways of doing things in the classroom; contribute to shared understandings and efficiency; contribute to orderliness, build confidence and community. Examples:
- using the restroom policies and rules,
- packing up for dismissal system,
- getting materials for lessons routines, etc.
Kids who have had routines, rules, expectations and systems taught to them are more likely to follow the boundaries and have more functional behavior.
Expectations 🡪 Expectations are statements about how members of a classroom (both adults and students) ought to act. Use positive statements that begin with what a student can do, and often provide a small reminder of expectations (instead of “do not ____.” . For example, “Thank you (PAUSE) for remembering (PAUSE) to raise your hands (PAUSE) during this activity.”
One of the routine ways that adults can shift the outcomes of their class setting is to add in more PAUSE when talking about or describing things to their students.