Behaviour Management Strategies With the Highest-

Impact
1.Constructive Teacher-Student Relationships
Teachers who have strong relationships with their
students find it much easier to manage their students’
behaviour. You forge strong relationships by being
both firm and caring – while also expecting your
students to do their very best at school.
2.With-It-Ness
Students are far less likely to misbehave when they know their
teacher notices every little thing going on in the classroom.
Students need to think that you have eyes in the back of your
head.
Start the year by setting up your room in a way that maximises
visibility. Then, do simple things such as positioning yourself so
you see all of your students, continuously scanning the room to see
what is going on and limiting times when you have your back to the
class can make a big difference. With-it-ness is also essential to
the fourth behaviour management strategy in this list.
Behaviour Management Strategies With a High Impact

3.Structure Your Teaching

There are many aspects to good teaching, but some of
them have more impact on classroom behaviour than
others.
When teaching a new class, or struggling to gain control of
a tough class the following aspects of teaching are
absolutely critical: clear lesson goals, never asking students
to do something they don’t know how to do, judicious use of
group work and holding them accountable for the work they
have done (either as an individual or in a group).
Tactic #1: Be Prepared
Being unprepared is a common cause of poor student behaviour. Therefore, it is important that you
are well prepared. Focus on your planning and your resources.
Having plans is essential, but they must also be good plans. And, good plans start with a clear
understanding of what your students need to learn. More specifically, they describe what you want
your students to:
•Know and understand
•Be able to do
This clarity comes from
•Year Level Standards
•Unit Goals
•Lesson Goals
Being prepared involves both planning and organisation. When dealing with a new or challenging
class, always have your day planned and your resources ready before you start the next day.
Structuring Your Teaching Tactic #2: Explain &
Demonstrate First
Asking students to do something that you haven’t shown them what to
do is a recipe for both frustration and mis behaviour.

Always start your lessons by clearly:

Explaining anything that your students need to know

Demonstrating anything you want your students to be able to do
Do this in a clear, step by step manner. And use:

Visuals to support your explanations

Thinking aloud, while demonstrating how to do something
Tactic #3: Individual Learning First
After you have:

Explained what your students needed to know

Demonstrated what they must be able to do
You need to get them to individually engage with the material.

The specific strategies you use to engage them will vary depending upon what you want them to learn. For example:

Summarising, taking notes, making connections to prior knowledge and rehearsing are ways to engage students in
learning surface knowledge
Practising is a good way to master specific skills or procedures
Reflective writing and reorganising material are good ways to promote deeper learning
But what matters in terms of managing the behaviour of a new or challenging class, is that:

The students work individually

Doing so well becomes a routine before you start taking your eyes off the class and helping individual students
This allows you to keep an eye on the class as a whole, and use on-the-spot techniques to nip small problems in the
bud.
Structuring Your Teaching Tactic #4: Judicious Use
of Group Work
Do not use group work with a new or difficult class until they can work
well on their own (over several lessons).

Even then, you still need to use group work judiciously. This involves
ensuring that each student has a sufficient understanding of the:

Material the group will work on (enough individual mastery first – then
group work)
Steps or strategies you want the group to use (have you
explained/demonstrated it first)
Tactic #5: Hold Your Students Accountable
Students are more likely to behave well when they know
you will check:

They have produced enough work

That this has led to adequate learning
Asking students to show what they have done, and
marking work as a class are 2 quick ways to do this.
Organising & Structuring Your Teaching Minimizes
Misbehaviour
To organise and structure your teaching use these 5 tactics:

Being prepared
Explaining and demonstrating things first
Getting students to work on their own – and watch them
Making timely and careful use of groupwork
Holding your students accountable
These 5 tactics are not all there is to good teaching, let alone great
teaching. Nor are they all you need to do to manage your students’
behaviour. But they are an important foundation.
4.Nip Small Problems in the Bud
Most misbehaviour can be dealt with quickly and
easily. You can do this by correcting minor
infringements on the spot and then moving on with
the lesson.
On-the-spot corrective actions include things such
as: making eye contact with a student, moving closer to a
student or group, reminding them of a relevant
rule or simply telling them to get back to work.
There are also some subtle but important tricks to the
way you go about such corrections.
Dr Bill Rogers work on behaviour managemen
Bill’s advice cover’s everything from preventative behaviour
management techniques, to consequences and one-on-one
programs with particularly disruptive students.

Positive correction refers to the on-the-spot techniques you use to

manage students while teaching. It assumes you have already
established things such as rules, routines and relationships with
your students.

In short, it is a set of strategies that help you nip small problems

in the bud and keep everyone’s focus on the lesson at hand.

Here are five on-the-spot strategies for nipping small problems in

the bud.
Bill Rogers Strategy #1 Direction With Tactical Pausing
Giving a direction involves stating what you want the student/s to do. Examples of directions
could include statements such as, face this way and listen please … Troy, work silently
please … Sam, pop that in the bin thanks. Pretty simple really. There are only three tricks to doing
it well.
•Gain attention, and then pause before giving the direction
•State what you want them to do, not what you want them to stop doing
•Speak in a firm but friendly way
Strategy #2 No Why Questions

This strategy by Bill Rogers is even easier. Don’t ask questions such as Why are
you doing that? Or, Why would you do that?

If you do ask a question, it is much better to use ones that focus directly on the
behaviour:
• What are you doing?
• What should you be doing?
• Do that please
Bill Rogers Strategy #3 Blocking With Partial Agreement

It involves blocking secondary arguments and focusing exclusively on what you want the
student to do.

Partial agreement is one (particularly useful) way to block tangent-arguments from

taking over. It involves using two words to sidestep the tangent – maybe and but.
Strategy #4 Conditional Permission
There is a time and place for everything, and Bill Rogers recommends that you
use conditional permission to reinforce this.
The when-then structure offers you an easy way to use conditional permission.

You can also use the yes-when structure to answer students as they ask for
permission.

There are other words that you can use (e.g. after-then), but the principle remains
the same.
Bill Rogers’ Strategy #5 Forced Choices
Students choose how they behave. The forced-choice technique is a way of
highlighting this while clarifying what the choices are. You often use it after, or in
combination with other strategies.
For example, you may direct Sarah to work silently. Soon after, she starts chatting
again. You then force her choice.

Tony provides another opportunity to force a choice when he is playing with his
music player in the class. You can force the choice by saying something such as, Tony,
you can put that away or on my desk – you choose.
There are various ways you can force a choice, but the keyword is always or.

Forced choices work well, but only if you consistently follow through when
needed. When forcing a choice:

 Only give options that you can realistically follow-through on

 Start with small consequences
 Talk in a calm but confident manner
 Don’t wait for an answer, move on with the lesson
 Only intervene further if needed
5 Strategies In A Nutshell

To recap, 5 favourite Bill Rogers’ strategies for dealing with misbehaviour on-
the-spot are:

1.Gain attention, pause and then give a direction

2.Don’t ask ‘why questions‘ – when dealing with small misbehaviours

3.Use partial agreement (maybe-but) to stop conversations going off on a
tangent

4.Use conditional permission (when-then) when students ask to do

something
5.Group Reinforcement
Reinforcement involves rewarding good behaviour while discouraging undesirable behaviour.
Group reinforcement involves rewarding or penalising whole groups. These may be small
groups within the class, or the ‘entire class group’.

For an example of small group reinforcement, you may reward one small group for being the first
to be ready for the lesson with a point beside their group name, or you may penalise a small group
for not focusing on their work by taking a point off them. A

s an example of ‘whole class’ reinforcement, you may elect to supervise the whole class for 5
minutes of extra play if they are lined up well and ready to go after their lunch break for 5 days in
a row.

Group reinforcement works well because of the pervasive power of peers. Yet, to be fair to
individuals, penalties should either be tokens (e.g. taking a point off the group) or involve not
receiving a reward.
Behaviour Management Strategies With a Moderate-High
Impact

6.Individual Reinforcement
Individual reinforcement involves rewarding the desirable behaviour
and penalising the misbehaviour of individual students.
Rewards can include tokens, such as points, stickers and alike. Yet,
rewards can be as simple as good marks, comments to parents and
praise. In a similar vein, students view penalties such as informing
parents and discussions about their behaviour as being effective.
Penalties are really a form of consequence (strategy 1) but tend to be
less severe.
Research shows there is no ‘best’ ratio of positive to negative
reinforcement. However, the same research also shows that the
more genuine positive reinforcement you use, the better your
students behave
7.Routines
On average, students spend 15% of their class time following
routine procedures. These procedures include things such as
entering the classroom, getting books out and stopping work to pay
attention to the teacher. You establish these routines at the start of
the year, and in the words of behaviour management guru Bill
Rogers, you establish, what you establish (i.e. it’s hard to change
later).

Your students are far less likely to misbehave during these routine
actions when you have clarified your expectations and turned them
into habitual ways of acting. Research shows most teachers state
such expectations, but it is the teachers who get students to practice
them (while correcting along the way) that succeed in turning them
Routines
On average, students spend 15% of their class time following routine
procedures. These procedures include things such as entering the
classroom, getting books out and stopping work to pay attention to the
teacher. You establish these routines at the start of the year, and in the
words of behaviour management guru Bill Rogers, you establish, what you
establish (i.e. it’s hard to change later).

Your students are far less likely to misbehave during these routine
actions when you have clarified your expectations and turned them into
habitual ways of acting. Research shows most teachers state such
expectations, but it is the teachers who get students to practice them
(while correcting along the way) that succeed in turning them into habits.