Challenging Behaviour Workshop

• Challenging behaviour
• Special Education

CHALLENGING BEHAVIOUR WORKSHOP

1. Review what we discussed last year
2. Take a closer look at teacher-focused actions
3. Practice some scenarios

Review

Last year we discussed some common classroom issues:

• Lower-level students disengaging & misbehaving.
• Students talking amongst themselves and interrupting classes
• Persistent Spanish speakers
• What do you remember?
• What have you been using?

Let's review the list we came up with last year.
When using these techniques, what did you find most useful when dealing with students disengaging and misbehaving?

Helper role – have a difficult student involved in helping the teacher, handing things out, writing on board etc.

Keep Ss busy with variety of activities and formats. Keep it moving, less opportunity to get bored and misbehave.

Change the seating plan, mixing up student abilities

Engage with Ss on their interests, real life and strengths

Find the kind of activities they enjoy and include more of them. Adapt activities for tricky groups.

Establish dialogue with parents early on

Use the 3 stage warning system and follow up on it

Establish rules early on, remind them, and stick to them. (rules can be made together with the class)

Reward or board points system, +/- points for speaking Spanish or other bad behaviour.

They can only choose one option as the programme doesn´t allow for more!

What did you find most effective when dealing with persistent Spanish speakers?

Helper role – have a difficult student involved in helping the teacher, handing things out, writing on board etc.

Keep Ss busy with variety of activities and formats. Keep it moving, less opportunity to get bored and misbehave

Change the seating plan, mixing up student abilities

Engage with Ss on their interests, real life and strengths

Find the kind of activities they enjoy and include more of them. Adapt activities for tricky groups.

Establish dialogue with parents early on

Use the 3 stage warning system and follow up on it

Establish rules early on, remind them, and stick to them. (rules can be made together with the class)

Reward or board points system, +/- points for speaking Spanish or other bad behaviour.

They can only choose one option as the programme doesn´t allow for more!

What about students talking amongst themselves and interrupting the class?

Helper role – have a difficult student involved in helping the teacher, handing things out, writing on board etc.

Keep Ss busy with variety of activities and formats. Keep it moving, less opportunity to get bored and misbehave

Change the seating plan, mixing up student abilities

Engage with Ss on their interests, real life and strengths

Find the kind of activities they enjoy and include more of them. Adapt activities for tricky groups.

Establish dialogue with parents early on

Use the 3 stage warning system and follow up on it

Establish rules early on, remind them, and stick to them. (rules can be made together with the class)

Reward or board points system, +/- points for speaking Spanish or other bad behaviour.

They can only choose one option as the programme doesn´t allow for more!

Are there any other/new techniques you tried this year and found effective?

There are some teacher-focused actions that might be worth reviewing (refreshing in some cases) that may also help manage challenging behaviour:

• Teacher talk
• Meaning conveyance 
• Teacher-student rapport 

We're going to divide up into 2 groups for the second and third parts of this workshop to enable a bit more discussion. 

Group 1	Group 2
Hywel	Sandra
Jared	Olivia
Michael	Wojtek
Tarquin	Sarah
Gary	Lucas
	Stacey

Teacher talk

On this slide you make a mindmap together with the participants. (I think they can give multiple answers + funny feature: you can drag someones reply to the trashcan in the corner to throw it away)

 Teacher Talk

So teacher talk refers to the time during which the teacher is talking to the whole group - informing, instructing, or correcting. 

Generally, if a teacher is unable to control the amount and quality of their spoken output it will lead to

1.  Confusing instructions
2. Fuzzy staging
3. Unclear meanings
4.  Slow class pace
5. Discipline problems (students can see it as downtime)

04:49

What's the problem and what would be better?

05:37

What's the issue here? And what would be better?

07:31

What's wrong here? How could we improve it?

Types of Ineffective Teacher Talk

1. Narrating (the teacher describing what they are going to ask students to do).

Teacher: So in a minute I am going to ask you to get into pairs.

or:

Teacher: First I will ask you to do exercise 1.

Types of Ineffective Teacher Talk

2. Using Embedded Language (the teacher being unnecessarily polite and therefore creating complexity).

Teacher: If you wouldn't mind, could you open your books at page 6?

or:

Teacher: It would be really great if you could finish exercise 8.

- Again, using imperative forms and starting instructions with a verb avoids this.

Again, using imperative forms

Types of Ineffective Teacher Talk

3. Topping Up (the teacher adds unnecessary information or extra information to responses).

Student: At the weekend I like to go swimming.

Teacher: Great! Swimming is my favourite sport; I think it's great exercise for everyone.

or:

Teacher: Which word in the sentence refers to time?

Student: 'back in the day' 

Teacher: Yes, so that is the time phrase that expresses the time of the sentence.

Topping up can be demoralising for learners, as it can make them feel that their responses are never sufficient.

Types of Ineffective Teacher Talk

4. Using ungraded language 

Teacher: The task is to establish and confirm the identity of your partner's destination by exchanging key information within a limited timeframe.

Types of Ineffective Teacher Talk

5. Echoing (when the teacher repeats students)

Student: Yesterday I went to the zoo.

Teacher: You went to the zoo.

Student: Yes, it was interesting.

Teacher: It was very interesting.

Careful! This can be used as a correction tool to highlight mistakes or corrections, but for many teachers this quickly becomes a habit and can have the effect of closing down extended communication.

Types of Ineffective Teacher Talk

6. Reformulation (saying the same thing in multiple ways)

Teacher: In pairs, complete the ten sentences with the correct grammar, so, in twos, write the sentence. Use the correct grammar. Work together. Two people per group. Do all the sentences.

7. Oral tics (over-use of an unnecessary word or phrase)

Teacher: Yep, the answer is yep, ten. Yep, that was good, yep, very good. Yep, well done.

(other common ones are OK, right, and like.)

8. Unnecessary Repetition

Teacher: Please do exercise 7, working with your partner. Yes, do exercise 7, working with your partner. Ok, exercise 7, working with your partner.

Student: Yesterday I went to the zoo.

Teacher: You went to the zoo.

Student: Yes, it was interesting.

Teacher: It was very interesting.

Careful! This can be used as a correction tool to highlight mistakes or corrections, but for many teachers this quickly becomes a habit and can have the effect of closing down extended communication.

Let's discuss this...

• Discuss with your group which of these are most relevant for you
  
• Which do you think are most likely to result in Ss disengaging / behaving badly?
  
• Discuss your most challenging groups and how you could apply these techniques to try to encourage limit TT and reduce disengagement

Group discussion

General tips:

Plan how you will deliver instructions​

• Few words as possible, visual cues, mimes​
  
• Include visual cues, drawings, body language, mimes etc​
  
• Have Ss read instructions to exercises​
  
• Ask for volunteers to help model, or strong Ss to explain​
  

Group work wherever possible​

• For vocab, have Ss brainstorm in pairs / groups before (see what they know)​
  
• For unfinished exercises, have Ss cross-question to check answers for missing questions (“Pablo, do you have the answer for Q3?”)​
  
• Do questions one at a time, with Ss cross-checking answers (beware of passengers)​
  
• Post questions on whiteboard and give time for answers to be prepared

General tips:

Don’t echo answers​

• Echoing Ss answers means Ss don’t need to listen to each other​
• Write a question on the board ‘Furniture in the bedroom’. Ss offer their answers, if the others didn’t hear, they must ask the S to repeat or speak up. Encourage the class to discuss with each other if they are unsure. S1 – “how do you say ‘Espejo’?”. Hopefully someone will give them the answer without T needing to intervene​

Wait, give space to answer, use body language to prompt, don’t fear the silence!​

• S1: Why is that? / T: Ah, yes, you see here we have the auxiliary, so blah blah blah…​
  
• S1: Why is that? / T: Mmmm. (pauses, looks around the room, waits…) / S2: I think because, is question… / T: (pointedly shuts up, open body language, waiting…) / S3: Yes, “Do” because it is question, same like in yesterday lesson…​

Avoid commentating​

• I’m going to rub this off the board, where’s the board rubber, here it is. Now, I’ll give out these papers, sorry about the copy, the photocopier is running out of ink…​
  
• It can overload the Ss with language they don’t understand 

Part 3: Giving clear instructions / Meaning Conveyance

• It seems obvious and straightforward but
• It's importance is often overlooked
• It's harder than you think and there are many traps you can easily fall into

Giving Clear Instructions 

&

Meaning Conveyance 

Part 3: Giving clear instructions / Meaning Conveyance

• It seems obvious and straightforward but,
• It's importance is often overlooked
• It's harder than you think and there are many traps you can easily fall into

What did you learn & what can we add?

Tips on giving clear instructions / meaning conveyance

Plan how you will deliver instructions​

• Few words as possible​
  
• Include visual cues, drawings, body language, mimes etc​
  
• Have Ss read instructions to exercises​
  
• Ask for volunteers to help model, or strong Ss to explain​
  

​

Think about your language level​

• Avoid idioms, phrasal verbs, colloquialisms​
  
• Go as basic as possible, let Ss fill the gaps of instructions

Tips on giving clear instructions / meaning conveyance

Avoiding overuse of phrases like ‘Do you understand?’ or ‘OK?’​

• Ss will say ‘yes’ to save face​

​

Use open-ended questions to check understanding ​

• ‘What do you need to do?’, ‘What did you understand from my instructions?’ and use other Ss to fill the gaps​
  

​

Make instructions imperatives​

• Work by yourself, go to page 12, raise your hand, you have 5 minutes to finish