You can decide to like a class. We’ve all been there – that knot in the stomach when you have to face 8S again. The faces which swim into your head, those of the students who need somehow to be ‘managed’, to be cajoled into compliance or manoeuvred quickly through the sanction escalation ladder […]
There are many broad starting points for building positive classroom relationships between teachers and students based on trust and encouragement. 1. Never pretend to be perfect. Don’t pretend to know everything, or to get everything right. Apologise for mistakes. Cultivate an atmosphere where it is not shameful to make mistakes. In fact, I would […]
All students need to be treated equitably. This emphatically does not mean that all students should be treated the same. But all students should feel that they are fairly treated in the classroom, and part of that is that they should all feel that the teacher is including them in the lesson. There […]
1. Be polite: Be polite to everyone, including the most annoying student in the most annoying class, the one which you have come to dread when you see it on your timetable, the class which makes your stomach clench as you see them lining outside the room. If you have a quick wit and a […]
As every teacher knows, your behaviour management starts at the moment in which your students see you. Particularly important are the routines which you set at the classroom door. It goes without saying that every lesson is a clean sheet as far as behaviour management is concerned. Whatever happened in the last lesson, however badly […]
Parents and carers read, listen to, are aware of news. They know that schools are presiding over a rising muddy tide of mental health problems caused by multiple factors. They know that also one of those factors is the relentless (does that word still appear in the OfStEd success criteria?) drive to push students up […]
Merry Christmas everybody! Isn’t it nice to be off work? I hope you’re all feeling as relaxed and refreshed as I am. I’m also feeling reflective. I’m thinking about praise; more precisely I’m thinking abut compliments. Be specific: I have talked about the importance of being specific in your praise of students rather than lavishing […]
Zach is 13. He has an overall CAT score of 133, and he’s bright as a shiny new coin, with a special gift for Maths. He’s a cheeky character with a twinkly smile and a ready answer to anything you care to say. He also has some fairly insoluble problems in his home life and […]
I wish I could remember who it was who said, back in the day when I worked for what was at the time the biggest and most successful corporation in the world “Everyone works for the salesman.” His point was that the salesman, or account manager, as they were actually known by the time I […]
So how does that work in practice? You need to have access to somewhere where you can write names in two lists. Ideally this will be a whiteboard you can write on, and ideally it will somewhere where all your students can see it. You draw a smiley face, or a +, on one side […]
