Smart Classroom Management » Teacher Modeling

How To Improve Classroom Behavior In One Lesson

Michael Linsin — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:15:26 +0000

I’d like to share with you a uniquely powerful classroom management strategy, one that, when used correctly, stands above the rest. This particular strategy never fails to make an impression and can be used as often as you wish.

And the best part is, you will see immediate improvement in your students.

I call it the “how not” strategy. It’s a close but rebellious cousin of detailed modeling. If you’re not familiar with detailed modeling, read the linked article. If you’re interested in a complete explanation, I’ve devoted an entire chapter to it in my book, Dream Class.

The “How Not” Strategy

The “how not” strategy is so powerful because it clarifies for students exactly what unacceptable behavior looks like, and they’ll immediately recognize it. In fact, when you use this strategy, you’ll find your students laughing and nodding their heads knowingly.

Some of its power comes from its entertaining qualities. When you use the “how not” strategy, your students will be fully engaged. They may even clamor for you to teach it again.

How It Works

After using detailed modeling to demonstrate a specific part of your plan, or a certain classroom procedure, model how not to do it. For example, let’s say you’re teaching your students how to line up for lunch. After showing them how to do it properly, you would then model for them how not to do it.

If you’ve been teaching even for a short time, you can predict the most common ways students line up incorrectly. For example:

Leaving chair out
Talking in line
Cutting in line
Pushing

To use this method, you would pretend to be a student lining up while engaging in one or more of these behaviors. Choose a few students to be extras in your mini-sketch and have them waiting in line the correct way. Choose another student to play the part of the teacher, giving you the signal to line up.

Start the modeling session by sitting at a student’s desk, waiting for the line-up signal. When the teacher—acting student—gives the signal, line up how you’ve seen your students doing it improperly. Except, ham it up and have fun with it.

The more you exaggerate the unwanted behavior, the more memorable it will be for your students.

In fact, they’ll never forget it. And few will behave in the way you modeled ever again. They’ll be embarrassed to. The “how not” strategy works so well because it points out the absurdity of poor behavior.

Poor Behavior Is Absurd

As much as possible, create a classroom environment where poor behavior is looked upon as absurd.

I was at a museum in Europe several years ago, waiting in line to see an exhibit, and a man and a woman cut in line, positioning themselves near the front. Those of us behind were astounded at their rudeness and demanded they go to the end of the line. Given the environment, their behavior was absurd.

The reverence toward learning in your classroom must be held in the same regard as art is viewed in a museum. That isn’t to say that students must always be silent or speak in hushed tones. Fun, after all, is an important element of a successful classroom. But learning must always be held in the highest regard.

The “how not” strategy effectively gets this message across to students.

Seeing things from a different perspective changes the way students view their world. Allow your students to see what their poor behavior looks like and how it affects others, and it will hit home like no other classroom management strategy.

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The Effective Teaching Secrets Of A Master

Michael Linsin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:09:57 +0000

John Wooden is considered the greatest coach in college basketball history. His UCLA teams of the 50s, 60s, and 70s produced 10 national championships, 38 consecutive NCAA tournament wins, and a remarkable 88-game winning streak.

No other coach comes close to these accomplishments. Mr. Wooden set the standard for excellence and is revered for the class and dignity he brought to coaching.

Ironically, however, he didn’t consider coaching to be his profession. He thought of himself as a teacher. Writer Steve Jamison, who co-authored Mr. Wooden’s 1997 book, Wooden, calls him “the legendary teacher of basketball.”

In fact, Mr. Wooden started his career as a high school English teacher and never found marked differences between the way he taught in classroom and on the basketball court.

Highly Detailed Teaching

Before the start of every season, during the first meeting with his players, Mr. Wooden would teach a very peculiar lesson.

Here is Mr. Wooden in his own words:

I personally demonstrated how I wanted players to put on their socks each and every time. Carefully roll the socks down over the toes, ball of the foot, arch, and around the heel, then pull the sock up snug so there will be no wrinkles of any kind.

I would then have the players carefully check with their fingers for any folds or creases in the sock, starting at the toes and sliding the hand along the side of and under the foot, smoothing the sock out as the fingers passed over it. I paid special attention to the heel because that is where wrinkles are most likely.

I would watch as the player smoothed the sock under and along the heel. I wanted it done conscientiously, not quickly or casually. I wanted absolutely no folds, wrinkles, or creases of any kind on the sock.

Then we would proceed to the other foot and do the same.

Coach Wooden would explain every detail as he modeled for his players how he expected them to put on their socks. Then he would have his players demonstrate for him, and he would watch as they practiced, offering suggestions along the way.

Although Mr. Wooden had a practical reason for doing this—socks that have creases in them tend to cause blisters—a lesson regarding such a mundane procedure, especially one aimed at grown men, seems ridiculous. But to anyone who has experienced the power of detailed modeling, it makes perfect sense.

Mr. Wooden was sending a message to his players that he expected them to strive for excellence in everything they did. A seemingly unimportant exercise like this transfers to other, more important things.

If his expectations are high for putting on sweat socks, think of what they are for using proper shooting form or for encouraging teammates?

Avoid “Big Idea” Teaching

Excellence starts with the little things, the details. If you don’t have specific expectations for how your students walk into the classroom and hang up their backpacks, then you’re going to have a more difficult time teaching them how to treat one another with respect.

“Details win championships” and “Success is in the details” are maxims that have great value in teaching. Unfocused, “big idea” teaching produces confusion. And confusion always produces misbehavior and poor performance.

Furthermore, details are inherently interesting and lend themselves to being taught with clarity. Big idea teaching tends to be ambiguous and is difficult to convey clearly and without bias. It’s also preemptive.

Big ideas should come from students, not you. Teaching big ideas or overarching themes removes the opportunity for students to think for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

Giving students the big idea (“We need to respect each other because we’re a family.”) means nothing to them. Sure, they can repeat this statement, but in order for it to resonate, they have to come to this conclusion on their own through real, experiential, and highly specific teaching. Only then will it stick. Only then will it mean something to them.

John Wooden didn’t tell his players, “Men, we need to win a championship because it would be a great accomplishment.” No, he told them how to put their socks on. He started with the building blocks necessary for being successful.

If the greatest college basketball coach in history, who first and foremost considers himself a teacher, chooses as his first lesson the finer points of putting on a sock, then we would do well to follow his example.

Here’s what Mr. Wooden has to say about highly detailed teaching:

These seemingly trivial matters, taken together and added to many, many other so-called trivial matters build into something very big: namely, your success.

Do you want a well-behaved class, one that you love to teach, one that makes you excited to come to work every day? Then stop telling your students what your hopes for them are, and start teaching them the nitty-gritty details.

Supercharge Your Classroom Management Plan With Detailed Modeling

Michael Linsin — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:26:54 +0000

Modeling is so effective that it should be among your most often used teaching strategies.

When most people think of modeling, they envision a teacher standing in the front her class performing a task she expects from her students. For example, if she were modeling an art project, she would most likely make the project herself in front of her students using the same materials they would be using.

There is nothing wrong with modeling in this way. It can be effective, especially if the students are attentive and the project is interesting. However, you can supercharge the effectiveness of what you’re modeling, regardless of what it is, by adding an important element: explicit detail.

Adding detail to your modeling exercises is easy to do, doesn’t take any extra work or planning, and happens to be a lot of fun. Let me explain how it works and then show how it can make your classroom management plan more effective.

Adding detail simply means taking modeling to a more exact degree than you or your students are accustomed to, making it highly specific and realistic. To use the example of the art project, instead of making the project in the front of the classroom, the teacher would do the art project at a student’s desk with the students circled around in close proximity.

Instead of merely constructing the art project, the modeling session might include clearing off one’s desk, lining up to pick up the art materials, and acting out common scenarios, including what not to do. In other words, the teacher would put herself in her students’ shoes, from start to finish, and model everything they would need to do, including eventualities, in order to complete the project successfully.

Though important, modeling the actual making of the project is the least important aspect of this example. It’s the peripheral stuff–the stuff that teachers typically don’t model–that is the most important and will make the greatest difference to your teaching.

Detailed modeling won’t take the creativity out of art or any other subject. On the contrary, when you use detailed modeling, you eliminate distractions, allowing your students to focus on learning, as well as their individual creativity. Furthermore, students love this way of teaching. It’s fun and participatory, and they always know exactly what is expected of them–a comforting thought indeed.

Students’ knowing what is expected of them is a critical part of any successful classroom management plan, and detailed modeling does just that. Too many teachers are vague in this regard. It’s unfair and breeds contempt to hold students accountable for something they don’t fully understand.

But the real power of detailed modeling comes from the ability to cover eventualities. More specifically, it allows you to model the most common behavioral scenarios and what happens as a result.

Take something as simple as calling out in class. I choose calling out because it can be a real showstopper. Nothing breaks up the momentum of a lesson quite like a student calling out. I’ve been in many classrooms where this isn’t a priority, which is beyond my comprehension. How do they get anything done?

To model calling out, the teacher might sit at a student’s desk while a student plays the part of the teacher. This gives the teacher the opportunity to demonstrate the rudeness, and even absurdity, of interrupting someone who is speaking in front of a group of people. By allowing the students to fully understand why raising their hand is important, it becomes less likely that they’re going to call out in class.

Your students must also be clear about what exactly will happen if a rule like calling out is broken. This should also be modeled and, taking it one step farther, practiced by your students. You can have volunteers act out the roles of students misbehaving.

For example, choose students to purposely interrupt you as you’re speaking, and then administer your consequences to them. Go through the whole process, including what happens when they call out a second and even a third time.

Merely explaining classroom rules, or anything else for that matter, is minimally effective. Students must actively participate in and experience what it means to break rules and how doing so negatively affects the learning and enjoyment of everyone in order to understand why rules are important.

When your students unequivocally understand your classroom management plan, they’re much less likely to break classroom rules. Nothing is as effective as detailed modeling in communicating anything important to your students… nothing. Try it and let me know what you think. I know you’ll be pleased.

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