APIE Education for Positive Peace course...

Behaviour Management - Rewards and Consequences

Activity #2

Consider the following scenarios. 

As a teacher, what would you do if the following things happened in your class? Write down your ideas. You could also share them on the WhatsApp group. 

1. A learner forgets their homework.
2. A learner is disrupting the class.
3. A learner gets 0 / 10 in a quiz.
4. A learner always shouts out the correct answers in class, without giving others the chance to respond or waiting for the teacher to ask them to share the answer.

The key to successful discipline is having a consistent and fair approach. 

It is important to develop a step-by-step behaviour management strategy with our learners. Each step gives the teacher another action to use when dealing with inappropriate and bad behaviour. An example follows where a learner continues to talk at the inappropriate time  in class: 

1. First response - Give the learner a verbal warning: Tell them gently, but firmly, what they have done wrong, what they need to do and what will happen if they do it again.  e.g. “You are talking. You need to stop talking. If you talk again, you will be moved.”
2. The learner continues to talk at an inappropriate time in class - Move the learner to sit somewhere else for the remainder of the lesson, either on their own or with a well-behaved member of the class. Explain that this is a consequence: “You have not stopped talking. Now you have to move and sit here. If you keep talking, you will have to leave the class.”
3. The learner repeats the same unacceptable behaviour - Move the learner to another classroom (this must be agreed upon as a behaviour management strategy in your school before you do this) with work to complete on their own (e.g. a textbook exercise). The teacher receiving the learner should tell them to sit on their own. When they have time during the lesson, they should talk to the learner to find out what happened and explain to them why what they did was wrong. Then they can send them back to class.
4. If the learner behaves badly again, after returning to the class, they should miss 10 minutes of their break time. This time could be spent doing a classroom chore, like cleaning the boards, doing some extra work or writing lines e.g. writing out the rules of the classroom contract. 
5. If there is repeated bad behaviour, the Head Teacher or another appropriate member of the school leadership team, should be informed. In a situation where a learner is continually behaving in unacceptable ways, the parents should be informed. All teachers should write down the names of learners who miss their break due to bad behaviour. Learners who miss break three times should be reported to the Head Teacher.