Behaviour management: coasting pupils

No one is as skilled as Toby when is comes to work avoidance. But while his talent for coasting isn’t disruptive, it will have a serious effect on his achievement in the long term, says Paul Dix...

The scenario:

Toby is coasting. He listens hard to the objectives of the lesson, notes them down, then does as little as possible before parroting them back in the plenary. Most of the time it works. Toby is fast becoming a renowned expert in the art of procrastination, dithering and general work avoidance. His ability has never been in doubt, but Toby worked out long ago how to keep under the radar. He knows that adults generally go for the chair-throwing, curtainchewing types first; that in a class of 29 children the odds are stacked against the adults, and constantly doing the bare minimum lowers everyone’s expectations beautifully. Toby’s behaviour doesn’t unduly affect the other children, but its mark on his achievement will be indelible if you don’t act quickly.

How do you respond? Do you:

A

COME DOWN LIKE A TON OF BRICKS

‘Sit on him’ for a week, crank up the severity of sanctions and force him to work in long bouts of enforced silence.

B

SERVE A LARGE SLICE OF MENTORING

Intensively mentor Toby and give him strategies he controls to develop his personal discipline.

C

FOCUS ON THE WHOLE CLASS

Try some innovative practice with the whole class to try and adjust Toby’s personal routines.

A

COME DOWN LIKE A TON OF BRICKS

The shock and awe raining down on Toby works magnificently, at first. The tears roll as he realises you have caught onto his game. His seat seems super glued yours and he barely catches breath between intensive bouts of silent work. The stay on task rule is applied with zeal and Toby finds himself subject to high level sanctions for behaviour – lunchtimes in isolation advertise this to everyone in the school. A reputation is forming.

After three days of towing the line, Toby starts to relax into his new role. You can’t sustain your ‘I’m very cross/ disappointed/ serious’ routine for much longer. What started out as a master and servant relationship is fast becoming a comedy double act with you setting them up and Toby knocking them down. As Toby begins to feel important for all the wrong reasons, you worry you may have tried to solve one problem and created many more. The rest of the class, confused by Toby’s sudden ascension to the right hand of the teacher, begin to adjust their attention strategies in the light of this new model.

Talking behaviour

• Can you force new routines on children?
• How useful are rules in tackling learning behaviours?
• Are sudden and intensive punishments useful in behaviour modification?

B

SERVE A LARGE SLICE OF MENTORING

You clear your social diary, ignore every piece of sage advice on work-life balance and begin intensively mentoring Toby. You start by mapping the consequences of his current choices for the next term. You map his current routine on postit notes, one note per behaviour, in front of him. You encourage him to map alternative behaviour and agree a plan for the next lesson. Toby keeps a diary of learning that he completes at the end of every day. The benefits of this approach for Toby are obvious and immediate. With more responsibility for his learning within an agreed structure, any procrastination is immediately apparent. In lesson time, the adults interrupt and disrupt the old routines by immediately reminding him of the new one. It is all very effective, but the impact on your time and the time you have for the other children is starting to show. The conflict between what Toby needs and what everyone else needs means the plan is not sustainable with just you involved.

Talking behaviour

• How do you balance the needs of Toby against the needs of the other children?
• Who else might be able to help in this mentoring role?
• Does investing a lot of time in Toby now mean that you will save time later in the term?

C

FOCUS ON THE WHOLE CLASS

Toby certainly needs to up his game, but he is not the only one. Instead of focusing all your attention on Toby you try some whole-class strategies with less focus on the individual. You start with the seating plan and ask each child to design his or her own based on the question, ‘who do you work with best?’. You direct them to build working partnerships that may well be entirely separate from friendship groups. You agree new routines for group, paired and individual work that lift the expectation. In addition, you try out physical warm ups, massage, yoga and trust games to encourage an interdependency in the class. With a small group of volunteer children that includes Toby and his parents, you teach some simple tapping techniques to interrupt and disrupt unwanted routines. Emotional Freedom Techniques (eftuk.co.uk) seemed a bit left field at first, but children soon tap their ‘magic buttons’ happily with big spoonfuls of positive affirmation. The heightened awareness on learning routines echoes through conversations between the children. Toby seems curious to try new ways of working, excited that he is part of testing new ideas and more engaged in his own learning as a result.

Talking Behaviour

• Is it right to experiment with new techniques when the evidence of effectiveness is not proven?
• Can changing the culture in the classroom for everyone positively affect individuals?
• Does a structured and controlled physical warm up have a positive effect on children’s ability to concentrate on their work?

Which approach did you use?

A

Your behaviour style:

YOUR BEHAVIOUR, MY RESPONSIBILITY

It is so tempting to try and simply interrupt routines you do not want by restricting choice and imposing your will. The initial success of such tactics means they are tempting to use for short-term gains. It is instant and powerful, but changes rarely endure beyond the third day without an enormous amount of time and attention. Try to ignore your urgent and emotional response to ‘sort it out’. Assuming control before you have a plan will inevitably remove all responsibility from the child. The only sustainable strategy is to involve the child in changing their own behaviour.

B

Your behaviour style:

MANIC MENTORING

Throwing every mentoring technique at the child all at once might be a bit too much too soon. Although teachers always go the extra mile for an individual in need, you cannot stop doing everything else for the sake of one child. Although you are seeing positive change initially, you need a plan for how you will withdraw your time and attention. The other children need your attention too, as does your work-life balance and your own health!

C

Your behaviour style:

TESTING AND REFINING

You are not afraid to try something new and sensibly want to take small steps rather than big leaps into the dark. You know using the power of group behaviour to modify the behaviour of the individual is the better long-term strategy. In learning, culture eats strategy for breakfast. By focusing your energy on the culture, you create the conditions for the individual to flourish. Of course, if your testing and experimentation do not have the desired effect, you can gradually introduce individual strategies to support any new initiatives.