Create a
CALM
classroom Sue Cowley The best-selling author of Getting the Buggers to Behave
FOR AGES
4-7
The most effective “ teaching and learning takes place in a calm environment� (Child Education)
Create a
CALM
classroom Sue Cowley The best-selling author of Getting the Buggers to Behave
FOR AGES
4-7
The most effective “ teaching and learning takes place in a calm environment� (Child Education)
Author
Illustrations
Sue Cowley
Mike Phillips
Editor
Series Designer
Victoria Lee
Catherine Mason
Assistant Editor
Designer
Victoria Paley
Catherine Mason
Cover concept/designer Anna Oliwa Cover illustration © Bananastock Ltd Text © Sue Cowley © 2005 Scholastic Ltd Designed using Adobe InDesign Published by Scholastic Ltd Villiers House Clarendon Avenue Leamington Spa Warwickshire CV32 5PR www.scholastic.co.uk Printed by Bell and Bain Ltd. 123456789 5678901234
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-439-96522-5 ISBN 978-0439-96522-4 The right of Sue Cowley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. This book remains copyright, although permission is granted to copy pages where indicated for classroom distribution and use only in the school which has purchased the book, or by the teacher who has purchased the book, and in accordance with the CLA licensing agreement. Photocopying permission is given only for purchasers and not for borrowers of books from any lending service. Due to the nature of the web, the publisher cannot guarantee the content or links of any of the websites referred to. It is the responsibility of the reader to assess the suitability of websites. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders for the works reproduced in this book, and the publishers apologise for any inadvertent omissions.
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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Chapter 1 – You Can… Be a calm teacher . . . . . . . . . . 6 You Can… Use volume more effectively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 You Can… Use tone more effectively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 You Can… Use language more effectively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 You Can… Use the power of the pause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 You Can… Make the most of your hands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 You Can… Manage your stress levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 You Can… Take care of yourself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 You Can… Keep your temper under control. . . . . . . . . . . . 13 You Can… Achieve a work/life balance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 You Can… Manage your time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
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Chapter 2 – You Can… Have calm children . . . . . . . . You Can… Achieve a calm start to the day . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Use breathing exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Take account of body clocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Build your children’s self-discipline . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Develop better cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Build respect and positive relationships . . . . . . . You Can… Develop your children’s concentration . . . . . . . You Can… Set up a nurture group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Help your children manage their anger. . . . . . . You Can… End the day in a calm way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
16 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
Chapter 3 – You Can… Create a calm classroom. . . . You Can… Explore the link between colour and emotion . . You Can… Make use of all the senses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Create a calm zone in your classroom . . . . . . . . You Can… Make the best use of space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Manage equipment, resources and displays . . . . .
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Chapter 4 – You Can… Build a calm school. . . . . . . . You Can… Have calm in the corridors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Create a calming staffroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Hold calming assemblies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Create a calm playground. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Plan and build a wildlife area . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
31 31 32 33 34 35
Chapter 5 – You Can… Have a calm year . . . . . . . . . You Can… Have a calm first day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Keep it calm at Christmas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Put on a calm school show . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Have a successful sports day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Keep it calm at the end of term . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Contents Chapter 6 – You Can… Plan and deliver calm lessons You Can… Balance your lesson activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Manage noise levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Manage group work effectively. . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Use focus exercises to calm your class . . . . . . . . You Can… Use circle time more effectively. . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Give clear instructions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Use meditation exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Get the children moving calmly around the room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Use the role of the expert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Take a journey into the imagination . . . . . . . . . You Can… Keep it calm at story time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Explore likes and dislikes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Work well with other adults in your classroom . You Can… Build your children’s empathy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can… Teach a sense of responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Photocopiables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ten rules for a calm classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ten top tips for staying calm when dealing with misbehaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Body clocks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The wildlife area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Keeping calm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Things I love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How do I feel? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55
57 58 59 60 61 62
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
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Introduction This book is designed to help you create and maintain a sense of calm in your classroom. It can be done, and there are lots of relatively straightforward ways you can achieve it. Some of the ideas here are about what you can do as an individual teacher or whole school to build calmer classrooms; others are activities to help the children achieve a personal sense of calm. As with all my books, I give you plenty of practical strategies and realistic ideas that you can use. Each activity page gives some ‘Thinking points’ about the subject in question, and some ‘Tips, ideas and activities’ you can employ in your quest for a calm classroom. At the end of the book you will find some photocopiable worksheets. Two of these provide ‘Ten rules’ for the classroom and ‘Ten top tips’ for you, and the rest can be used for specific lessons.
The importance of creating an oasis of calm The children we teach live busy and often chaotic lives. For some, school offers a sanctuary in which rare moments of calm can be enjoyed. Your class can offer the children an oasis of peace and quiet in their pressured lives. Teaching is a very stressful occupation. There are many facets of the job that contribute to this stress – behaviour, curriculum demands, workload, administrative tasks and so on. One of the key skills in being an effective teacher is the ability to balance these demands in a calm and hopefully relaxed way. The word ‘calm’ can mean different things in different situations, and it is worth defining what we mean by this term in the context of the classroom. A calm teacher will be able to face any classroom difficulties in a careful and considered way. He or she will make effective use of voice and body, and deliver lessons that encourage good concentration and focus. When the children are being awkward, the calm teacher will deal with them in a relaxed yet assertive way and remain centred when things go wrong. The calm teacher will also work well with other staff. Calm children will have good self-discipline and a sense of inner peace. They will enjoy their school work, approaching it in a relaxed, yet fully focused way. They will relate to each other in a positive manner and will have a healthy level of self-esteem. Of course, I fully understand that there will be times when your calm deserts you, and when you find it impossible to stay positive and relaxed. The challenges of being a teacher can sometimes overwhelm us, and we must never be too hard on ourselves when we cannot maintain perfection all the time. I do hope this book will help you find lots of ways in which to create, build and maintain a calm and peaceful atmosphere in your own classroom, and in your school as a whole. And that this helps you to enjoy the wonderful job that you do.
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Use volume more effectively Your voice has a powerful impact on your children’s behaviour and on their perceptions of you as a teacher. Using your voice effectively will help you maintain a relaxed and purposeful atmosphere in your classroom. Teachers often struggle to make the best use of volume: aim to achieve a quieter teaching style.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Teachers often talk more loudly than is necessary for the children to hear – it can become a bad habit that you do not notice.
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● Noise breeds noise. Your children follow the role model that you set for them: if you talk loudly, they will learn to talk loudly too. ● It is hard for both teacher and children to concentrate on lessons if noise levels in the room are too high. Working in a noisy atmosphere heightens the stress levels for both teacher and children.
When we talk loudly, it is harder to make our voices sound interesting and engaging through the use of tone, pace and pitch. ●
● In the long term, excessive volume is likely to damage your voice. Shouting rarely works as a control strategy, but it does show your children that they can make you lose your temper!
Analyse the way you use your voice, and the effect on your children. Ask yourself: ● Do I often talk more loudly than is necessary? ● In what circumstances do I raise my voice? ● How do my children respond to me when I talk loudly? ● How often do I shout at or over the class? ● What effect does my shouting have on my children? ● What are the acoustics like in my room? A quiet volume encourages your children to listen more carefully. As you teach, aim to lower the volume of your voice by about half.
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Rather than raising your voice to get your children’s attention, agree a non-verbal ‘signal’ with them. Try: ● raising your hand in the air ● holding up an item, for example, a magic wand ● sitting in a designated ‘silent seat’.
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Take care of your vocal ‘instrument’: maintain proper posture. Stand tall and keep your shoulders relaxed ● check that you use the right muscles to talk: when speaking your neck should stay relaxed, with the sound being produced by your diaphragm ● keep well hydrated – drink water throughout the day and try to limit your tea and coffee intake. ●
● A forced whisper is as damaging for your voice as shouting.
A recent study showed that teachers talk for up to 60 per cent of lesson time! Let your children do the talking, learning in an active not passive way.
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For more ideas on effective use of your voice, look at the following websites: ● www.voicecare.org.uk – The Voice Care Network ● www.cssd.ac.uk – The Central School of Speech and Drama run a course on Personal Voice Power for Teachers ● www.stat.org.uk – The Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (a technique that teaches good posture).
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Use tone more effectively The teacher’s use of tone can be very effective in encouraging the children to stay calm and focused. You may have noticed that your children seem calm and able to concentrate well when you are reading a story to them. This is partly because you are putting lots of interest into your voice.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Young children are particularly responsive to the sound of our voices. The younger your children, the more enthusiastic you can be in the use of tone in your voice to encourage good behaviour and positive attitudes to learning.
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● For children whose grasp of English is not yet well developed, the sound of what you say will be more important than the content. This is especially so when you talk quite quickly, as the children may find it hard to understand what you are saying. They will, however, be picking up a lot of clues and cues from the sound of your voice. ● The more tone you put into your voice, the more use you will make of your eyes, face, hands and body. You will also tend to make more interesting use of different speeds in your speaking.
This is a good exercise to examine how tone impacts on your non-verbal communication. You might like to try it with some other staff on an INSET day, or working with another member of staff. Start at one and count up to 20. Begin by speaking in a very deadpan way, gradually putting more tone into your voice. When you have finished, ask your colleague to talk to you about the impact that a building level of tone had on your face and body. You will find that, as you incorporate more tone, your eyes light up, your face comes to life and your body begins to move. Imagine that you are on holiday overseas, in a country where you do not speak the language. Someone comes up to you in the street and starts to talk to you. Although you cannot understand what the person is saying, you will probably be able to get at least a sense of his or her mood and what this person wants through the sound of the voice. You might like to try this as an exercise with your children, working in pairs with one child speaking in ‘gobbledegook’ and the other trying to understand what the partner is saying.
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Experiment with different types of tone to communicate your feelings to the class. For instance, try sounding sad or disappointed when a child misbehaves. This tends to work much more effectively than getting angry. ●
To calm down an overexcited class, try taking all the tone out of your voice and slowing down the way you speak. Put emphasis on the key words, but keep what you are saying very simple. For instance, you might say: I want you all to calm down now. This works particularly well if you normally use lots of interest in the way that you speak, as the children are surprised by the difference in the sound of your voice. ●
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Use language more effectively The way that you use language has an impact on your children’s reactions, and can be used to help keep your class calm. In comparison to adults, children do, of course, have a limited vocabulary. Keeping our language clear, simple and positive gives us the best chance of creating a controlled and peaceful atmosphere.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
It is tempting for us to assume that our children understand everything we say, but this is not necessarily the case. This assumption can lead us to believe that a child is misbehaving deliberately, when in fact there is actually a misunderstanding of some kind.
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● Clarity is particularly important when you are giving instructions – if you want them to be followed, the children first need to understand them. Those children who appear not to listen to your instructions might actually be having difficulty understanding what you are saying. ● When we are trying to put across lots of information, we will sometimes talk for extended periods of time, beyond the actual concentration levels of our children. If you talk for too long, many children will ‘switch off’ halfway through what you are saying. ● As a rough guide, children can concentrate for their age plus two. So, a five-year-old will be able to concentrate for periods of approximately seven minutes. ● Teachers often use rhetorical questions (Why haven’t you done the work?) rather than statements (I want you to finish this work quickly please.).
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Avoid rhetorical questions: do not ask a question unless you actually want an answer. Use positive statements of what you do want, rather than questions about what you do not. Look for and focus on those children who are behaving as you want, or use your positive statements to refocus a child on the correct behaviour. Here are some examples: ● Carl! Are you looking this way? becomes, Carl! That’s great, you’re looking and listening brilliantly. ● What on earth are you doing with that pencil? becomes, Let’s see if you can draw me a lovely house. ● Why are you all being so noisy today? becomes, Let’s see who’s being quiet and wants to go to break on time. Use simple language, short sentences and short words. Make your vocabulary specific to explain exactly what you want, for instance, specifying silence rather than quiet.
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For the very youngest children, you might use pictures to accompany your instructions, particularly for those who have difficulty understanding English (for instance, pupils with English as a second language). Try giving these children an ‘instruction board’ for times of the day when they must remember to do various tasks. For example, in the mornings you might have a board by the classroom door that has images to indicate: Hang your coat and bag on the hook, Choose a picture book, Sit down on the carpet.
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Consider the sound of words, as well as their meaning. Some words have a more calming effect than others, simply because of the way they sound. Words such as calm, soft and still will all help encourage your children to stay relaxed. Stress the gentle sounds – letters such as s, m and f.
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Use the power of the pause Classrooms can be very busy and noisy places, and many teachers spend a lot of time communicating verbally with their classes. A sudden pause in the middle of a period of talking offers a great way to get your children’s attention. Those who are already listening will wait for you to continue; those who are not listening will suddenly realise that the room has gone quiet.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
It is easy to get sucked into a constant state of ‘busyness’, especially when you are working with young children who have a great deal of energy. Pausing for a period of stillness and quiet allows us time to reflect and to calm ourselves down. Consider the impact that a minute of silence has when held at the start of a football game.
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Experiment with using your ‘pause’, particularly when talking to the whole class. If you hear some low-level noise, simply pause and wait for silence. It may take a little while at first, but persevere and your children will start to recognise this as a cue that you are waiting for silence.
● Pausing as a whole class gives a sense of unity and a feeling of working together towards a common goal (we all calm ourselves down together). ● When we pause and become silent, this helps us to focus. We might be focusing in on ourselves – listening to our breathing and slowing it down. We could be focusing on the noise and activity that is going on around the school. ● Children who live in a city are subjected to constant activity and noise outside of the school environment. This can create a heightened state of tension, so that they find it hard to maintain a still and calm attitude in lessons.
Try combining a pause with a freeze, so that you go completely still – eyes, face, body. You might also experiment with removing eye contact from the class – looking up at the ceiling until there is silence. This surprises the children into becoming quiet, as teachers normally make continuous eye contact with their classes.
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Encourage your children to use pauses throughout the day. You might agree a signal (raising a magic wand in the air) to indicate that everyone should pause in what they are doing and take a few deep breaths. This is a great way of quietening down a class when the level of noise is too high. It also allows the children to centre themselves and refocus in on their work.
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Try this focus exercise, perhaps at a time when the class needs to calm down. Ask the children to close their eyes and listen for a minute, to see what sounds they can hear. They should start by listening to any noises in the room, and then move their focus outwards to see what sounds they can hear in the corridors and beyond.
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Make the most of your hands Non-verbal communication is very powerful in the classroom. It appears almost as though the teacher is performing magic – he or she can get a class to listen and behave, apparently without doing anything at all! Your hands are a particularly expressive part of your body, and young children seem to respond to hand signals especially well. Make the most of your hands to help you create a calm atmosphere.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Non-verbal communication helps keep noise levels down, and encourages you to control your temper. Communicating nonverbally helps you resist the temptation to talk loudly or shout over the class.
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● From our earliest days, we use our hands to touch and to interact with the environment. ● Your hands are one of the most expressive parts of your body: they are vital for communicating with others. ● Watch what you do with them – they can cause friction if used in the wrong way. Pointing at individuals is generally interpreted as an aggressive action, so try to avoid doing this.
Train yourself to talk less and communicate more in a nonverbal way. Explore a variety of ways of talking to your class with your hands. You might: ● put your finger to your lips to get silence ● tug on an ear lobe to signal please listen ● push both hands palms downwards to calm the class or to signal sit down ● put one hand up, palm outwards, as a Stop! signal ● give a ‘thumbs up’ sign to show your approval. Use clicks and claps to gain the children’s attention: for instance three short sharp claps to silence the class. Tell the children that they should stop work and join in when you click in a rhythm, then gradually slow down the speed until you all stop together. Children find it hard to click/clap and talk at the same time, so this is a good way to get the class silent.
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Use a series of hand movements to ‘talk’ with the class. Although not all the children will understand fully, usually enough of the class will know what you are ‘saying’ and the rest will follow. Here is a series of hand signals to get the children standing silently and lining up by the door: ● fingers tug ear to indicate listen ● index finger to lips to say be silent ● three, two, one countdown on fingers to prepare them to move ● both palms lifting upwards to indicate stand up ● palm facing class to show stop and wait for my next instruction ● point to the door to show the direction ● arm held out straight to show line, two fingers of other hand moving down the arm to show single file ● three, two, one countdown on fingers, then thumbs up to say off you go.
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I have had great fun teaching my students sign language, and this can be combined with introducing the alphabet. For a series of animated pictures showing the British Sign Language alphabet, see www.british-sign.co.uk.
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Manage your stress levels Teaching is a profession with high stress levels, whether this is because of behaviour issues, workload or just the time demands of the job. A certain level of stress is important to keep us happy: we need to feel challenged at work. There comes a point, though, at which stress gets out of hand. Managing your personal stress levels is an important skill to learn.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Primary teaching can be particularly stressful because of the constant contact with children during the day. There are few chances to relax while you are in the classroom: it is therefore doubly important to find ways to manage stress.
Consider all the aspects of your work that cause you stress. Are there times of the day or week when you feel particularly harassed? Can you adapt your timetable to take account of this?
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● The organisational aspects of teaching can also cause stress, whether dealing with large groups of young people, or with equipment and resources. Getting 30 small children to clear up after a painting session will probably leave you feeling frazzled! ● Managing difficult behaviour causes your ‘fight or flight’ instinct to kick into action, giving you a rush of adrenaline to deal with the situation. Because teachers must react in a calm way, this adrenaline does not get used up, and this can lead to high stress levels. ● Don’t forget that your children can get stressed too. This might be because of the pressures of school work, a busy classroom environment, or ‘baggage’ from outside of school.
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It is tempting to work through your breaks, because there is always work that you could be doing. Break times serve a very important purpose though – they ensure that you are calm enough and have enough energy to teach effectively. They also offer a chance for social contact, which can really help you relax. Teaching is a job with limited opportunity for adult contact during the day. Your colleagues offer a wonderful source of support and also friendship. Try to be strict with yourself about taking your breaks, and ensure that you find ways to relax when you arrive at the staffroom.
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When your children mess around, consider why it is happening as this will help you stay calm. It is tempting to ascribe complex motivations to children’s misbehaviour, but the reality is often much more mundane. Boredom, tiredness, misunderstandings, bad moods – children are just as subject to random emotions as their teachers!
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Learn not to take your children’s behaviour personally – difficult behaviour is rarely aimed directly at the teacher. Learn to feel pity rather than anger when children mess you around or are rude. Any child who feels that this is acceptable in the classroom probably has a very difficult home life.
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Don’t feel that you must react instantly to tricky classroom situations. Take a few deep breaths before you respond, to help you control your temper.
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Take up a physical activity outside of school to get rid of stress: depending on your preferences, you might try swimming, gardening, kick-boxing or pottery.
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Spend some time talking to your children about the things in school that cause them stress, and try to minimise the impact that these things have on them.
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Take care of yourself Teaching is a physically and mentally demanding occupation. You need to be in peak condition if you are going to stay calm and maintain a positive learning environment. Taking good care of yourself will help you manage difficult situations more easily, and will help you enjoy your job more fully.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
As teachers we spend our working lives caring for and helping others, but we often lose sight of ourselves. You can only do your best for your children if you look after yourself as well.
● Schools are a hotbed of germs. Teachers need to be in tiptop condition to resist the run of colds and viruses that can plague a school, particularly over the winter months. It is a very good idea to wash your hands regularly during the school day, particularly before you eat and before you go home for the day.
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● Find a way to divide your professional self from the ‘you’ outside of school. This is vital if you wish to stay in the profession for the long-term. ● Teachers and school staff are constantly exposed to children’s germs and infections. When a teacher is off sick for long periods of time, this can have a negative impact on the children’s learning: it can unsettle a class and make them difficult to handle. Keeping yourself in peak physical condition has many positive benefits for your children.
Try to get enough sleep – at least seven hours a night. When we are sleep deprived, we tend to get wound up more easily. If you find that you toss and turn and worry about school at bedtime, then take time to calm yourself down before you try to get to sleep. Leave at least an hour between doing any school work and going to bed. Have a bubble bath, a hot milky drink or read a book. Wearing earplugs can also help you sleep better.
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When your mind is full of thoughts about what you need to get done at school, this can keep you awake. You might put a notebook beside your bed for those ‘To do’ items that pop into your head as you try to go off to sleep. Writing them down stops you worrying about forgetting something important.
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If your blood-sugar levels drop, you will tend to lose your temper more easily. Have a good breakfast, and eat properly during the day. Stick to good quality foods, rather than sweets. In the winter, keep up your vitamin C levels by drinking orange juice.
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Watch your tea and coffee intake at school. Excessive caffeine will make you feel nervous and irritable. Have a bottle of water on your desk and sip from it throughout the day. This keeps you hydrated and is good for your voice and concentration levels.
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If you feel sick, take time off to recover, rather than coming into school and spreading your germs around. The school can run without you!
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Be a big kid at times, and make sure you have fun with your class. Aim to stay positive about your work and your children. Despite some downsides, teaching really is one of the best professions in the world.
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Keep your temper under control Working with children teaches you how much (or how little) patience you have! To have any chance of controlling our children, and keeping them calm, we must learn to control ourselves. There are many situations during the course of a typical school day when you might get irritated or angry. Keeping your temper in check is one of the most important skills for teachers to learn.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
When you are faced with a difficult child or class, the adrenaline rush you get is designed to help you deal with the situation. Unfortunately, your instinctive reaction may be irritation, and managing this can prove difficult.
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● We act as a role model for our children. If we want them to learn to stay calm, it is essential that we model this behaviour ourselves. ● When faced with an angry teacher, children will have a variety of reactions. Some will be scared, some embarrassed, and some might find it funny. Always remember those quieter children who might get very upset. ● Anger feeds on anger – it is almost impossible to maintain a confrontational attitude if you are not getting a response.
Learn what your trigger situations are, and find ways to deal with them. Consider what really gets on your nerves during the course of the school day: a messy classroom, defiant children, the class not listening. Develop a range of strategies to use, and visualise yourself responding in a calm and rational manner. Learn to recognise the signs that show you are getting wound up. When you feel your temper rising, if it is safe, leave the room for a moment. If you have a classroom assistant ask him or her to watch the class. Go and stand outside the room, breathe deeply and calm yourself down before you return.
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Pre-empt any sources of stress, working out how you can overcome these issues before they arise. For instance, if you find it tricky to stay calm when the lesson has overrun and the children are slow to clear away, make sure that you leave plenty of tidying-up time.
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We know how useful distraction is in handling children, but we somehow lose sight of the technique for ourselves. Remember to distract yourself from an angry response: learn to laugh when things go wrong.
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Create a structured environment to help you feel in control. Although building routines with a class takes time, it is worth doing in the long run. Find lots of ways to incorporate structure into your classroom.
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When you have to deal with emotive situations, aim to act like a robot. Remove all emotion from your mind and deal with the children in a dispassionate way.
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Accept that there will be some days when things go wrong. Don’t take this out on your children. If your children are likely to be sympathetic, you might confess your bad mood. Alternatively, pretend you feel fine.
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Achieve a work/life balance Teaching is a job that expands to meet the amount of time you are willing to devote to it. There is always that little bit more that you can do to help the children or to improve the quality of your lessons. There comes a point, though, at which excessive dedication starts to have a negative impact on your life. If you are not happy, this is bound to filter into your classroom.
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It can be hard to cut off from school, and you might find yourself doing lots of little bits and pieces (plus all that planning and marking!) in your free time.
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● These bits of work quickly add up, and teaching can start to take over your life. The typical working week is around 40 hours: don’t make yourself a martyr to the job by doing too much more than this. ● If your role as a teacher impacts too much on your life outside of school, you will probably feel stressed and find it hard to relax. This in turn makes it more difficult to stay calm with your children.
Learn to prioritise – it is easy to say, but hard to do. It is tempting to devote plenty of time to jobs you enjoy doing (for example, devising fun lessons), while putting off important stuff that you do not necessarily like (for example, filling in boring forms). Try doing one task that you are not looking forward to, then reward yourself with a fun one. Accept that you will sometimes indulge in a bit of work avoidance, but have a think about when this happens and why. Sometimes, a task can take on mammoth proportions in your mind. However, once you actually get started, it might take less time and be less difficult than anticipated.
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It is hard, but try not to take your children’s problems home with you. Although teaching is a caring profession, and one in which you can make a substantial difference to children’s lives, you cannot change the world single-handedly. Do your professional duty, refer any serious concerns, but leave work worries behind at the end of the working day.
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If your commitments allow, try staying on at school until you have finished your planning, marking and administration work. The fact that you want to get home makes you focus much more fully on ploughing through the work.
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Spend at least one day of your weekend completely free from work. There will inevitably be things that you could be doing, but whether you should be doing them is another matter! Nominate one evening a week when you do not do any school work at all. ●
Teachers are notorious for reinventing the wheel. Unless it is essential, don’t spend your time redoing work that others have already done. Whenever possible, nick ideas and resources from other teachers.
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Make the most of your holidays to relax and recover from the hard physical slog of teaching. Inevitably, you will have catch-up work and preparation that needs doing. Spend a little bit of time on work-related matters, then focus on relaxation.
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Manage your time When we are, or feel that we are, short of time, this can make us feel rushed, stressed and overworked. One of the keys to staying calm is to feel that you have your working life under control, and that there is plenty of time to do all those jobs that you must get done. Effective time management will help you become a calmer teacher.
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Tips, ideas and activities
One of the biggest problems for teachers is the way in which issues crop up that need to be dealt with immediately. Even when you have organised your time efficiently, distractions can mean you do not get to focus on the task at hand.
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● We tend to make the best use of our time when we are feeling fresh and full of energy, and to get the least done when we are tired and stale. A task might take you twice as long when you are not in the mood to work. ● As well as managing our own time, one of the keys to effective teaching is the good management of lesson time. Finishing a lesson early with plenty of time to clear up is far better than having to rush when the bell goes for break.
Consider when you tend to get most work done. If it is early in the morning, then arrive at school an hour before the school day starts, to get lots of jobs out of the way. Learn to delegate. The children will benefit from helping you out with any number of jobs, whether this is doing a bit of peer-group marking, tidying up equipment, sharpening pencils and so on. You can also delegate to other adults who help in your classroom.
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Watch out for ‘To do’ lists. They make you feel you have achieved something, but often the jobs never get done and are simply moved on to the next ‘To do’ list! Divide your ‘To do’ list up into order of priority: urgent jobs (in chronological order with details of deadlines), those jobs that can wait a while, and those you would love to do if you could only find the time.
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Don’t be a perfectionist – we often put off doing a task for fear that we will not be able to do it properly. Better to do something reasonably well, and get it done, than put it off endlessly and have it hanging over your head.
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Don’t say yes to every demand on your time. Although you might love to join the PTA, produce the school play and run a computer club, these are time-intensive activities that will eat into that vital work/life balance.
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Find somewhere to hide when you want to work. If you sit in your classroom or in the staffroom, you will probably get disturbed. If there is a workroom in your school, use this and place a Do not disturb sign beside you.
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Develop a ‘clear desk’ policy. There is nothing like the sight of a clear desk to make you feel better the next day. To be honest, my clear desk policy involves sweeping everything up into one big pile and putting it in the corner. It does not actually solve anything, but it sure makes me feel better!
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Have calm children Achieve a calm start to the day The start of the day sets the tone for the way it continues. Encourage your children to begin the morning with a calm frame of mind. This is often a busy time, with lots of people coming in and out of your room. Find ways to settle your class and get them in the right mood to work, before you begin to teach.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Some teachers are happy for parents to pop into the classroom in the morning for a quick chat about a child’s progress. Some schools prefer more formal meetings.
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Consider having a specific time for parent/teacher talks, rather than always being available for ‘quick chats’, which often develop into longer discussions. You need time to get ready for work, and too many distractions can increase your stress levels before you start.
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● The way you manage the start of the day depends on your school. If a large number of children are going to be late, there is little point registering the class early. Instead you might adapt your timings so that the children do a settling activity for the first 15 minutes, before you take the register. ● By the time they arrive at school, some of your children may be stressed already. Broken alarm clocks, traffic jams and family quarrels can all have an affect on your children’s moods first thing in the day.
Make a decision about your morning routine, and stick to it. Have high expectations, but don’t set yourself up for failure. Devise a clear routine, and share this with the children and their parents. Consider: ● where the children put their coats and bags ● what time they can come into the classroom ● where they sit when they first arrive ● which activities they can or should do ● the time your official working day starts, when the register is taken ● the routine for children who arrive after you have taken the register.
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Find a calming activity for children to do if they are early, perhaps asking them to pick a book and look at it on the carpet. Allow time for any resources to be put away before taking the register.
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Play calming music as the children enter, to help you create a relaxed atmosphere. Encourage your class to get in the mood for work, and to leave any home ‘baggage’ behind them.
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At your official ‘start of day’ time, use the register as a focus to pull the whole class together. Find low-key methods to get the children sitting silently and attentively. Don’t call out for silence. Instead, agree a signal with the class to indicate that you are about to start. This might be clapping three times, raising your hand in the air, sitting down in your chair, or something more unusual.
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Use an especially quiet, soft voice to create that initial calm atmosphere. Focus on getting the children to become still and silent, using lots of individual eye contact.
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Use breathing exercises Anyone who has studied dance or yoga will know that breathing is an essential part of feeling ‘centred’, calm and in control. Although breathing is a natural process, many of us pick up poor breathing habits over time. The cause of these poor habits is typically stress and tension. Showing your children how to breathe properly will help them stay calm and build their concentration.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Breathing properly ensures that you have the right mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide in your blood. Too much oxygen can make you feel tense or twitchy; too much carbon dioxide can make you feel tired and drained.
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School can be a stressful environment: breathing exercises are useful for calming and relaxing both teacher and children. ●
We might develop poor breathing habits when we are in stressful situations, when we do not have much time, or when our lives are chaotic and unstructured.
Ask your children to spend a few moments simply becoming aware of their breathing. They can use their hands to check how their breathing actually works. Proper breathing starts in the diaphragm, then moves upwards into the middle and upper chest.
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A few minutes spent on some breathing exercises, whether by yourself or with your children, will help relax and calm you in preparation for the school day. You might use these exercises as a way to create focus in the morning, or perhaps incorporate them during the day. ●
● Poor breathing habits are often about over, rather than under, breathing. If you focus on getting rid of the stale air from your lungs, your body will naturally fill them up again.
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Use some ‘sigh breaths’ to relax your class. Ask the children
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take a fairly short in-breath through the nose pause for a moment take a long out-breath on the out-breath, relax their bodies letting all the tension flow out.
To help your children relax their breathing, ask them to focus on their sensory responses to the world around them. Ask them to close their eyes and see what they can hear – first close by in the classroom, then gradually moving out into the corridors and outside the school.
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Please note: warn your children that, if they feel dizzy or unwell at any time, they should discontinue the breathing exercises. Ensure that you are aware of any pupils with medical conditions before you do these exercises.
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Take account of body clocks You are probably well aware of your own body clock. Perhaps you are a ‘night owl’, finding it impossible to wake in the mornings, but on top form late in the evening? Maybe you are a ‘lark’, leaping out of bed when the alarm goes, but asleep well before midnight? There are certain times of day when people typically feel lethargic or energetic. Adapting your planning and teaching to suit these patterns will help you keep your class calm.
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Tips, ideas and activities
There is a natural dip in concentration levels around lunchtime. Before lunch, bloodsugar levels can dive, leaving us tired and irritable. After lunch, the blood goes to the stomach to aid digestion, and this can leave us feeling sluggish. Not for nothing is the hour after lunch known as the ‘graveyard slot’!
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Look at the photocopiable on page 58 – ‘Body clocks’. This sheet asks the children to analyse their body clocks. It also helps develop some mathematics and PSHE skills. Start first thing in the morning, so that you can follow the body clocks over the course of a day.
● Some countries in Southern Europe counteract this post-lunch dip (and hot afternoon weather) by taking a siesta. At a school in Portugal where I worked, the youngest pupils (Reception age) still had a nap after lunch. The school had adapted the timetable to take body clocks into account.
Some children experience unnatural bursts of energy after break times, because they consume sugary drinks or eat coloured sweets. These give a sudden rush of energy that quickly dissipates, leaving them feeling low and moody.
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● Complex carbohydrates and proteins release energy to the body more slowly. These are the foods that give sustained concentration. ● Towards the end of the week, our body clocks run down because we are tired. By the last lesson on a Friday, both children and teacher will probably have that ‘can’t be bothered’ feeling.
Some children’s lethargy is caused by sleep deprivation – they are simply not going to bed early enough. These children will probably seem especially tired first thing in the morning. ●
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First help the children to match the words to the faces. This will help them understand the ‘emotions’ that they are going to use on the worksheet. There are six different emotions: three that cover emotional state (happy, angry, sad) and three that explore attitudes and energy levels (lively, bored, tired).
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Now ask the children to put the time on the first clock face. Working with a partner, they should then discuss which two of the six words given best fit their current state of mind. They might be sad and bored, or perhaps happy and lively.
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Complete the rest of the worksheet over the course of the day. You might like to include the times just before and after lunch, the last lesson of the day, or any times at which the class seems particularly difficult to handle.
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When the children have completed the worksheets, you might do a body-clock bar chart for the whole class, to see whether any similar patterns emerge.
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Experiment with the structure of your days to take advantage of your children’s body-clock peaks and troughs.
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Build your children’s selfdiscipline Self-discipline plays an important part in knowing how and when to stay calm. It helps us learn how to cooperate with others, and to approach our work with a sense of inner focus. It is infinitely preferable if our children are able to control themselves and their own behaviour, attitudes and approaches, rather than the school having to impose these through external disciplinary measures.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Understanding that I want does not always mean I get is an important lesson for children. Where parents have repeatedly given in at the first sign of a tantrum, this can mean a child is unable to manage his or her anger.
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● Some children will not have learned the skill of waiting early on in their lives. At home they might be used to getting what they want the instant they ask. ● Learning to wait for what we want – to delay gratification – is a vital part of children’s development. It is a hard lesson to learn: that sometimes we have to put off getting what we want right now, in order to gain greater benefits in the long-term. ● Using rewards to manage behaviour is all about delaying gratification. For instance, you might say: I want 15 minutes of silent work so that you can concentrate, then you can have three minutes to talk and relax. ● Those children who can delay gratification will tend to be more successful at school. Some school work is, inevitably, a bit boring or difficult. Pupils need to understand that current discomfort will result in a greater reward later on. ● For children to be willing to delay gratification, they must perceive the reward as being worth the wait.
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When introducing a new activity that requires self-discipline, gradually increase the amount of time on the task. Challenge the class or individuals to beat their previous best. You can use a ‘Statues’ exercise to build self-discipline. This exercise is great for calming down a class, and is particularly useful to finish a lesson or at the end of the school day. When you say to the class, Three, two, one, freeze, they must all freeze completely still for a set period of time. Start with about one minute and gradually increase the length of time.
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Use ‘golden time’ to teach the benefits of waiting for what we want. Golden time is an hour or so of free time at the end of the school week, when the children may do as they wish (within reason). The class is given a range of choices of ‘free play’. During the week the children can hang on to, or throw away, their golden time through the way that they behave and work.
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Try this exercise. Put a small bowl of a few sweets on each table. Tell the children that they can have one sweet immediately, but that, if they can wait for three minutes, they can eat the whole bowl. Talk with the children about their reasons for waiting (or not waiting!), and how it requires selfdiscipline to suffer a little for a longer-term reward. (Remember to check for any dietary requirements/allergies beforehand.)
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Develop better cooperation Learning to cooperate with others is an important, but tricky, skill for our children to master. There are any number of times when you will need your children to behave in a cooperative way. They might be working in pairs or small groups to complete a task or playing a game together in PE. You will also rely on your children’s willingness to cooperate with you as their teacher, and with the rules of the school.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Learning to cooperate helps build empathy: it helps us understand that we can make other people feel good or bad. It also helps the children learn that other people might feel or think differently to them, but that their opinions deserve equal respect.
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● Cooperation is vital for building friendships. Those children who can share and play well together will be successful socially.
Some children are natural ‘leaders’ who find it hard to cooperate with their classmates. You might have noticed how, in group situations, ‘leaders’ create tension by insisting that things run exactly to their own plan. Many natural leaders are intelligent, but lack empathy, and consequently find it hard to see why they should take other people’s opinions into account.
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● There will probably be some children who tend to get left out of group situations. These pupils can become isolated from the main social groups, and this can be the starting point for bullying. ● Disputes and disagreements between the children can lead to a tense and stressful atmosphere in the classroom. Learning to cooperate with each other plays a key part in building a calm feeling in your classroom. ● Similarly, a school at which the staff work together in a cooperative manner will tend to be a more relaxed, friendly and successful place.
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If given free choice, children will probably want to work with their friends, and may get distracted by social chatter. Set the ground rules for group work right from the start, so that these issues do not arise. The message is that we work with anyone and everyone in our classroom. ‘Puppets’ is an excellent exercise for building cooperation. Here’s how it works: ● get the children into pairs ● one person is the puppet, the other is the puppet master ● the puppet has invisible strings on the hands, elbows, shoulders, knees and feet ● the puppet master can move the puppet by pulling on these strings ● as the strings are pulled, the person playing the puppet must move to create the illusion.
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Now ask the children to walk the puppet about, clap its hands, greet other puppets and so on. Swap over so that the other person gets a try. At first, some children might try to catch their partners out. Explain that the aim is to work together to achieve the impression of strings. Talk about how the exercise works best when they work together and cooperate.
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Find exercises where the children must work together to succeed, such as ‘Rafts’. Split the children up into groups of about five or six. Put large pieces of paper on the classroom floor (the rafts). Now give the children a minute to balance as many people on the raft as they can.
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Build respect and positive relationships A key part of being an effective teacher is the ability to build positive relationships with the children in your class. You will also want the children to treat each other with respect. These positive relationships can take some time to create, and a good deal of effort to maintain. If you can achieve this, though, it will help you create a calm atmosphere in your classroom.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Young children might be blunt about their feelings towards each other, because they have not yet learned the subtlety that comes with age and experience.
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● Children with low self-esteem can find it hard to be respectful towards others, because they have little respect for themselves. ● All school staff should provide a model of the behaviour that is expected from the children. ● Of course, we don’t always get it right. Much of the time we must overcome our first, instinctive reactions to children and to classroom situations. There are some key areas where we typically make mistakes, for instance, letting negative comments slip out when we are tired or stressed. ● The children and the teacher spend most of every day together, and it is important to feel good about each other. Remember to treat all children the same, despite any preferences you might have about one child over another. ● Children need to be taught to respect those who are different to themselves, whether through race, gender, religion and so on. This is especially important if you teach pupils with obvious disabilities, as children can be unforgiving of those whom they perceive as ‘different’.
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Insist on total respect at all times, and model respectful behaviour for your children. Be careful about the subconscious signals that you might send when you find a child particularly likeable or disagreeable.
Discuss with your class what the word ‘respect’ means. A useful definition is, Treat others as you want them to treat you. Make a poster with some key words on it, such as: polite, fair, kind and so on. ●
Encourage the children to feel that we all work together. Use group and whole-class activities that create this feeling of unity. Here are some suggestions. ● Find a large piece of light material and ask the class to hold it around the edges. The children must lift it together, as two class members swap places by running underneath. ● Give groups a rope tied in a circle, and ask them to lean backwards simultaneously. The group must apply equal pull to maintain the tension. ● Get the class to stand in a circle, and place a chair in the middle. The class must work together to keep control of the chair, and prevent the teacher from sitting down. They keep control by using the chair as an object (for example, a throne, a car seat, a horse and so on). ● Build some circle stories as a whole class: going around the circle, each person must add one word or sentence to the story in turn. ● Standing in a circle, ask the class to hit a balloon to each other, keeping it in the air for as long as possible.
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Develop your children’s concentration We often complain that some children ‘just can’t seem to concentrate’. It is rare, though, that we actually teach the skill of concentration in a direct way. Just like any other skill, concentration can be learned and developed. Some of your children may never have learned how to concentrate, or may have poor habits ingrained. The better they can concentrate, the more able they will be to sustain lengthy focus on their work.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Building focus and concentration is all about learning how to focus on one thing or activity to the exclusion of all others. Our lives are generally busy and full of stimulation, and it can be hard to find the time to simply stop and pause.
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● Children who are used to constant and overt stimulation from computer games or the television can find it hard to concentrate on some of the more mundane aspects of schoolwork. ● Similarly, those children who have large numbers of toys, but who rarely play with one thing at a time, might find it hard to concentrate on a single activity. ● The problems caused by some special needs, such as ADHD, can include great difficulty in concentrating. ● Our environment can have a powerful impact on our ability to concentrate. If we are working in a noisy or chaotic environment, it can be harder to focus on a task.
Use a focus exercise at the start of the day, and after any break times, to settle your class for their lessons. Many focus exercises require the children to close their eyes, thus shutting out the external sensory stimulation that comes through their eyes. You might find the following suggestions helpful. ● Ask the children to close their eyes and count in their heads. Depending on their age and ability, they might count from one to ten, backwards from twenty to zero, and so on. When they finish doing this, they should open their eyes, ready to work. ● The same exercise can be used with spelling words, for instance: the children’s names or some key terms from the lesson. ● Give each child a simple object (for instance, a pebble) and ask them to look closely at it for a minute or so. ● Using a large egg-timer, ask the children to sit still and watch the sand run through. Research has shown that some children find it easier to listen if they are allowed to fiddle with something. These are the kinaesthetic learners who love to learn in an active way. You might offer them some Plasticine or play dough (so long as they are not simply going to throw it around). Pipe-cleaners offer a cleaner and less tempting alternative!
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Minimise distractions as far as possible. Insist that pupils ask permission before they leave their seats, and limit the number of children moving around at any one time. Do not let the class get too noisy, as excessive volume can hamper concentration.
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Set clear ground rules for how the children must behave when they are sitting on the carpet. Talk to them about how we behave when we are concentrating properly. Use lots of eye contact and keep scanning the group to ensure focus.
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Set up a nurture group It is a sad fact of life that some children start school with a very limited range of social experiences. For these children, being thrown into a class with a large number of others can be confusing and even frightening. Having the confidence to take part, and knowing how to behave in the appropriate manner, may prove very difficult for them.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Where children are socially inexperienced, they might become anxious, overexcited or uncontrollable. They simply do not have the range of experiences that other children have, and they are unaware of the appropriate social skills to use in different situations.
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● Routines and clear structures are especially helpful for these children, as this is typically the element that has been missing from their home lives. ● Children with limited early socialisation can find it especially hard to manage when normal routines are interrupted. If the class teacher is off sick, these children might find coping with a supply teacher particularly difficult.
If you are interested in setting up a nurture group in your school, there are lots of issues to consider. The best starting point for exploring the possibilities is the Nurture Group Network. You can find their website, with information and contact details, at www.nurturegroups.org If a fully staffed nurture group is not an option for your school, you might try creating a smaller-scale project, such as a breakfast or lunch club. You could choose to focus on a small group of pre-selected children who you think would particularly benefit. Alternatively, you might throw the chance open to whoever wishes to attend.
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On an even smaller scale, you might simply hold a picnic in your classroom once a week and invite any members of your class to attend (and, of course, to help clean up afterwards!).
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● Nurture groups can improve key social skills and help a child develop a secure sense of self. These groups can build a child’s self-esteem and self-worth, and also a sense of self-confidence. ● Nurture groups offer a safe, calm and structured small-group setting for learning. Children can also be introduced to social experiences that they might not have had before (for instance, eating with others at a dining table). They can be taught how to behave appropriately in a range of different circumstances. ● Nurture groups are intended to be like a home from home, with comfy furniture and lots of routines. The children are typically linked to their own class (for example, for registration), but placed into this small-group setting for most of the day.
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Help your children manage their anger Schools both expect and need their children to show reasonable levels of self-control, self-discipline and calm behaviour. With large numbers of pupils to consider, we cannot allow the behaviour of individual children to put other pupils’ learning or safety at risk. We can help all our children by teaching them how to manage their angry impulses more effectively. If we teach them this at an early age, they will find the whole process of formal education easier.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Some children find it hard to control their tempers, perhaps because of negative influences from the home or because of a medical or psychological problem.
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● If a child’s parents react with anger to every small problem, or constantly quarrel amongst themselves, the child will often follow this model at school. ● Most young children go through a period of having tantrums (the ‘terrible twos’), but with effective parenting these tantrums soon stop. Where parents repeatedly give in to any outbursts, this teaches the child that a tantrum is a good way to get results. These ‘spoiled’ children can be a real difficulty for the teacher. ● Tantrums are very wearing for children (and teachers!) and leave them riding a roller-coaster of high emotion. Huge bursts of anger are followed by periods of exhaustion. ● The policy of inclusion means that we are increasingly asked to teach some children who have serious emotional and behavioural problems. We must try to both include them in the learning, and also prevent any negative impact on the learning of others.
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Encourage your children to take a pause before reacting instinctively to a stressful situation. They might do this by counting to ten, or by taking a few deep breaths. Talk to the children about some of the things that make them angry, what their initial reaction might be, and why it might be a mistake to react in this way. Try some role-play exercises, to give your children practice at holding in their tempers. Divide the class up into pairs, and ask the children to nominate one person as ‘A’ and the other as ‘B’. When you say Go, child A must try as hard as possible to irritate child B. No physical contact or inappropriate language is allowed. Child B must stay calm and refuse to get wound up.
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A variation on this exercise is ‘Nonsense insults’. Again, with the children working in pairs, ask them to throw nonsense insults at each other (for instance, You’re a purple-faced, greenspotted fliggerteboo!, Well, you’re a pingy-pongy orange-striped blibbertebob!).
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Find ways for your children to get out some of their excess energy and stress, before it turns into a problem. Divide longer periods of concentrated work up with short brain-gym exercises or brief physical activities.
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Stepping away from a tricky situation gives the children (and teacher) time to calm down. If you have a specific individual who regularly loses self-control, try giving the child a personal ‘time out’ card. This card can be handed to the teacher, allowing the child to go to a pre-designated area to calm down for a few minutes. You might ask a teaching or support assistant to go and supervise the child.
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End the day in a calm way By the end of the school day your children will probably be tired and irritable. This can also be quite a chaotic time, with books and papers being handed out, and lots of people milling around. Aim to send the children away with positive thoughts about what they have achieved during the day, and in a calm and happy frame of mind.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
The last minutes of the school day will be foremost in your children’s minds overnight, and first thing the next day. If the end of the day is disorganised, this will leave a negative impression, even if the rest of the day has been very successful and well structured.
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● Bear in mind that your children’s concentration levels will be low by this point in the day. This means that there is little point in asking them to do tasks that require sustained focus. ● Of course, you will also be feeling tired and you should take your own needs into account.
It is a great idea to end your day with a fun and positive whole-class activity. This helps to build a sense of community within the class, and offers a way to reflect on all the things that you have achieved together during the day. You might: ● ask the children to review what they have learned during the day, asking which activities they enjoyed the most ● get volunteers to say one positive thing that a classmate has done that day, whether personal or work related ● have a quick quiz to see who can remember some of the key words or key learning objectives from the day ● ask the children to spend a few minutes in quiet contemplation about their own achievements ● read a calming and relaxing story to the class, or talk about a saying or quotation ● give out rewards for hard work and good behaviour, and praise any individuals who have made particular progress. Just as a drama might end with a ‘cliffhanger’ to hook the audience for the next episode, so you might end your day by posing a question for the class to ponder overnight. Alternatively, ask them to think about or prepare something for the next day’s lessons.
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We will often hassle a class to fall silent, rather than relaxing and simply waiting for them to become quiet of their own accord. Make use of the fact that it is the end of the day to wait for silence (your children will be keen to leave on time).
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I’m a great believer in getting my pupils to do as much as possible of the day-to-day work of the classroom. This helps teach the children a sense of responsibility, and to feel a strong connection with their classroom. After a messy lesson, it is only right that the children help clear up. Leave lots of time for tidying up, so that your children can play their own part in this important job.
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Create a calm classroom Explore the link between colour and emotion Colours have very strong psychological and symbolic associations. We instantly link red with danger or with a signal to ‘Stop’, and black with sorrow or the night. Colours can also have a powerful effect on our emotional state – consider your own feelings about spending time in an all-white room, and then a bright orange one.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
We tend to find natural colours calming, and artificial ones more exciting. Bright colours will raise the pulse rate, while softer ones slow it down. These reactions seem to be a result of primitive responses to danger – for instance, red might be associated with blood.
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● The shade or tone of a colour can also have an impact – consider your responses to a pastel pink against those to a vivid neon pink. ● Although you might not be able to change the colour of your classroom, much of the time the walls will be covered with displays. Consider the overall impact of the colours that you use in your display work, stepping back to view your room as an outsider might see it.
Use some activities to get the children exploring their emotional responses to different colours. You might: ● show a selection of coloured cards to the class, and discuss the variety of mental and emotional links that we make with these different colours ● talk about the feelings that each colour evokes ● talk about the images, places, objects and people that we might associate with different colours ● play word-association games for each colour, asking the children to say the first word that comes into their heads ● create collages of different tones of a single colour, perhaps including a variety of textures as well ● link colours to sounds by making some music around a colour theme. Have a number of coloured cards and show the class a colour that tells them how you are feeling at various points during the day. For example, red could indicate that you are reaching the end of your tether, and that the children need to settle down quickly. These non-verbal signals are easier for young children to ‘read’ and understand than when the teacher uses language. You might also ask the children to pick out a colour that describes their current emotional state.
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Think about the colours in your classroom, both the wall colour (which you may not be able to change), and also the colour of any displays (which you can). You might like to designate some areas of the room for bright and exciting colours, and others for calmer, more natural, ones.
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Use the ‘Thinking Hats’ approach to encourage a range of thinking skills, particularly during group work. This technique uses a range of colours to indicate the type of thinking that is taking place. For instance, green is associated with creative thinking and white with facts and figures. For more information, see Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono (Penguin Books). ●
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Make use of all the senses Our senses play a key part in our relationship with the world around us. Tiny babies use touch and smell to identify their parents, even before their sight is fully developed. Much of the time in school, we ask children to use only their sight and hearing. Incorporate a range of sensory responses into your lessons to help your children engage with their work and feel more relaxed.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Research into learning styles shows that some children favour a kinaesthetic, rather than a visual or auditory, way of learning. These children will find it helpful if you incorporate touch, smell and taste into your teaching.
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Relaxation is often associated with touch and smell. In a spa or bath, warm water helps to relax the muscles; aromatherapy uses the calming nature of different scents; stroking a cat or dog can lower the heart rate. ●
Taste and smell have a powerful link to memory. A smell that we associate with a particular place or experience can bring a memory vividly to mind. ●
● In an increasingly technological world, we are cut off from nature much of the time. Connecting with our environment through our senses helps to ‘ground’ us, reminding us of our instinctive, animalistic side. ● We are exposed to many artificial smells: cleaners, air fresheners and deodorants. Research has suggested that these can have a depressant effect on some people.
Ask the children to brainstorm smells associated with various places (home, a hospital, the school canteen, a shopping centre). Ask the class to talk about the feelings that these smells evoke, perhaps doing some word associations exercises around a circle. Bring some plants into your classroom: they are great for your voice because they raise humidity levels. Choose plants with interesting scents (herbs or fragrant flowers) or interesting textures (try Stachys byzantina, also known as ‘Lambs’ ears’ because of its soft leaves).
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When we block out one of the senses, this helps us to focus on the information that our other senses are receiving. You might: ● blindfold some volunteers, giving them a range of objects and asking them to talk about what they are touching ● put some objects in a bag and ask the children to describe their sensory properties to a partner (for example, cold, hard, furry), without actually naming them ● ask the children to close their eyes and then smell some different substances (earth, coffee, herbs, washing powder), discussing the places or experiences that they associate with these scents ● place a picture on an easel so that the class cannot see it. Ask a volunteer to describe the picture to the class, and the class to draw it just using this description.
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Use music at various points during the day (for instance, first thing in the morning as the children arrive, and directly after breaks). Lower the volume gradually to indicate that you want the class to gather on the carpet.
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Create a ‘senses wall’ in your classroom, asking the children to bring in items with interesting textures to stick up on the wall. Get small groups of children to go to the wall and talk about their sensory responses to various textures.
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When the sun shines, open the windows and let some fresh air into your room!
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Create a calm zone in your classroom A lot of the time we want our children to be active and enthusiastic participants in their lessons. From time to time, though, they will need some calm and quiet ‘me’ time, so that they can rebuild their energy reserves for the next bout of hard work. One way to give them the space to do this is to create a ‘calm zone’ in your classroom.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
The flip side of excitement about and engagement with the work is that your children can get over stimulated or overtired. This can lead to behavioural problems.
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● Many young children (especially those who do not get a good night’s sleep at home) will benefit from a short period of rest or quiet activity in the afternoon. ● Classrooms are often busy and crowded places, with lots of stimulating resources. Leaving a small part of your room free of ‘stuff’ allows the children to escape from over stimulation when they need a break. ● Some children with special needs will benefit from a place where they can take some ‘time out’ during lessons.
Create a calm area in your classroom: a place where the children can go to rest and relax. Here are some thoughts and ideas about what you might put in your ‘calm zone’: ● cushions or beanbags, so that the children can sit comfortably; sitting on hard plastic chairs all day can cause muscle tension, because they are not ergonomically designed ● soft textures, such as fake fur or velvet, for the children to feel and stroke; the action of stroking can help slow the pulse and reduce stress ● classical music or calming sounds on CD; if possible, supply some headphones so that the children can listen without disturbing, or being disturbed by, others ● paper and pens or pencils for doodling; the act of scribbling or doodling can be a useful way of letting the mind wander, and of encouraging creative thinking ● interesting objects for close observation and meditation; keep it simple – a few pebbles, or some silver relaxation balls, rather than any overly stimulating objects ● favourite calming books to browse through; talk with your children about which books they find relaxing (don’t put the focus on learning to read, just have some nice picture books to flick through) ● simple displays linked to calm thoughts, or perhaps a block of a single calming colour such as green or blue. Consider how the children will use the calm zone, and talk with them about this. Think about how you are going to ensure that all the children have a chance to use the zone (for instance, with a chart that logs usage). It could be that you use your calm zone for: ● quiet, low-key discussion activities ● individual, paired or small-group work ● a reward for children who work particularly hard ● an option for golden time.
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Make the best use of space Feeling cramped can increase our stress levels, and can make us feel irritated with the people around us. Consider how you feel about being trapped in a constrained space, such as a crowded train. Of course, you cannot change the size of your classroom. However, you can certainly find ways to maximise the space.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Many of the niggles and lowlevel disruptions in a classroom are to do with the children making unwanted physical contacts with each other – bashing elbows, pushing and shoving.
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● When they are working, your children will benefit from having sufficient space to spread out, particularly if the task needs a range of materials or resources. ● Classrooms often retain the same layout simply because no one thinks (or has the confidence) to change them around. ● Rearranging the space helps the children take a fresh perspective on their learning. It is particularly useful when you wish to re-establish rules and routines.
Find ways to maximise the general feeling of space in your classroom, but incorporate some more enclosed areas where the children can go for a feeling of safety and privacy. Train your children in how you wish the space to be used. For instance: ● how they should move between different areas ● the appropriate behaviour for sitting on the carpet ● the maximum number of children who can be in one area at any one time.
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If your classroom is very small, use tips gleaned from TV makeover shows to make the space appear bigger than it is. For instance, add lots of reflective surfaces to bounce light around the space, or use horizontal or vertical stripes in your displays to give a sense of extra width or height.
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Watch out for bottlenecks, and think about how you are going to overcome them. For example, use the corridor if there is not sufficient space in your room to line the children up.
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Ask your class to complete a space audit to establish how they feel about the classroom space. Draw an outline of your classroom and ask the children to mark those areas where they feel calm and those where they feel tense or stressed. You might also do this for the whole of the school building.
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Rearranging a classroom is quite a big operation, so plan carefully in advance. Here is some advice on getting it right. ● First create a paper plan of the walls and any fixed features in your classroom. Cut out shapes to represent the furniture, to experiment with different layouts. ● You might like to involve your children in this process, holding a vote on which layout to use. ● Enlist the help of friendly volunteers rather than doing all the work yourself. ● Once you have set up desks and chairs, sit in various positions, checking all the children can see the board. ● Tie in your furniture rearrangement with a spring clean, clearing out any resources that you do not use any more.
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Manage equipment, resources and displays Primary school teachers often have a huge range of equipment and resources in their classrooms. Managing these properly will avoid unnecessary stress, and have a positive impact on your teaching. Displays play a particularly key role at primary level and can have a significant impact on the classroom atmosphere.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Accessibility is vital: both for the teacher and for the children. If a resource is not easy to get hold of, you probably will not use it.
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● Try to keep drawers, shelves and cupboards tidy. Once mess starts to take hold, it can quickly spiral out of control. A tidy classroom encourages the children to respect the equipment and to play their own part to keep it tidy. ● Many schools have out-of-date resources that are never used, but which take up lots of space.
Although support staff might be putting displays up, you can act as ‘artistic director’. To have any purpose, displays must work effectively to enhance the children’s learning. ●
Take your children on a ‘tour’ of the equipment and resources at the start of the year, and set clear ground rules and routines as to how these are used. Involve your children in tidying up tasks. This is great for developing responsibility and self-discipline.
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Encourage your children to respect their resources, and to take responsibility for the materials and equipment that they use. If you have the space, give each child his or her own drawer for storing books, paper and pencils.
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Label anything and everything in your room with large, clearly printed signs. This makes it easier to find and access resources, and helps your children develop their vocabulary.
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Use colour coding, so that children who cannot read the labels can still work out where to find equipment. Your colour coding might denote different types of equipment or it could relate to the curriculum.
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Get hold of some large, plastic see-through boxes. These are great for storing larger toys and equipment.
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Displays are a key resource in the primary classroom. Here are some top tips to get them working well. ● Don’t let your walls get too ‘busy’, by sticking up everything and anything. ● Any important information (for instance, on classroom rules) should be eye-catching and easy to understand. Leave space around important displays so that the children can see them without any distractions. ● Encourage interaction with displays by creating 3-D pictures. ● Change displays regularly: link them to the work that is going on in your classroom, and refer to them during lesson time.
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Have calm in the corridors Although primary school children typically stay in their classroom most of the day, there will be times when they need to move around the school. Maintaining a sense of order in the corridors will contribute to an overall feeling of calm.
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Tips, ideas and activities
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Children can become unsettled by changes in routine, even if this is simply moving out of the normal classroom space. This is particularly the case for those who have behavioural issues, because they need lots of structure.
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● Some children will stretch the boundaries a bit when they move away from their desks and into a less confined space.
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● Finding ways to encourage a calm atmosphere in the corridors and around the school is especially important in an open-plan school. ● Learning to have self-discipline outside the classroom will help teach your children consideration for others. ● Moving calmly through the corridors is important in maintaining a positive school ethos. It also helps ensure that the children arrive at lessons in the appropriate frame of mind.
Create a ‘one-way traffic system’, particularly if your school is crowded or has narrow corridors. Talk through any new movement system for the corridors before it starts, perhaps in an assembly. The usual system is for the children to stay on the left – this eases the flow and stops people bumping into each other. You could also put markings on the floor: arrows to indicate the direction of flow, and a line down the middle of the corridor to keep the children on one side. When the children line up, you might have noticed how the trickiest members of the class congregate at the back. There are a few easy ways to overcome the potential for mischief: ● walk up and down the line as it forms, ensuring that the children are behaving appropriately, rather than waiting at the front ● place a couple of trustworthy children at the start of the line, and then position yourself towards the back ● form the line as normal, and then ask the child at the back to move first, turning the line completely around. Be very clear with your class about how they must behave as they move around the school. Set your ground rules before they line up, rather than trying to talk to them once they are standing. Use positive commands (I want you to walk slowly and in silence) rather than negative ones (I don’t want any talking or running).
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Incorporate some creativity and imagination into your movements around the school. For instance, you might ask the children to imagine that they are walking over a sleeping giant’s back, and they do not want to wake him.
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As a whole school, analyse the ways in which your corridors are used, and consider whether these can be improved. If there are any foyer areas, why not display some artwork or sculptures, and encourage the children to look and linger by adding some seating?
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Create a calming staffroom The staffroom should be a place where teachers and other school staff can relax at break times. The reality, though, is often very different. Take a long, hard look at your own staffroom: is it full of papers, piles of exercise books, unwashed coffee cups and harassed looking teachers? Primary school teachers often have little noncontact time during the day, and it is therefore doubly important that you can relax when the opportunity arises.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Many of the changes needed to create a more calming staffroom will be the responsibility of senior managers. If these managers do not realise the importance of a quality staffroom environment, then gather up your courage and let them know. Alternatively, mark this page and drop this book into the relevant pigeon-hole.
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● Teachers often find it incredibly difficult to take their breaks – other concerns seem far more pressing. However, teachers who have not had a proper rest between lessons will not do their best when they are in front of the children. ● Repeated interruptions from pupils can inhibit any feelings of relaxation. Make sure that the children know the circumstances in which it is appropriate to knock on the staffroom door. Encourage them to see this as a private space for the staff – one that should be treated with respect.
Use your staffroom! I know how hard it is to spare time during the average school day, but breaks are vital for you to do your best as a teacher. Treat the space with respect, and encourage others to do likewise. Work out how you are going to deal fairly and realistically with all those ‘niggly’ issues such as washing up, buying milk, tea and coffee and so on. Buy a dishwasher, or set up a rota so that the staff take it in turns to tidy up.
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● Consider having a water-cooler installed. This will encourage staff to stay well hydrated during the day – vital for taking care of the voice, and for maximising concentration. It might also prove a popular spot for those informal ‘water-cooler’ discussions about what was on the television the previous night.
If possible, keep paperwork and working areas out of your staffroom. This is meant to be a space for staff to relax, and it is much harder to relax if surrounded by piles of unmarked exercise books. If you have the space, designate a separate room where staff can go to focus on work.
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Incorporate some sensory stimuli into the room to improve the overall environment. A few plants and some soft cushions, can make all the difference in helping staff feel valued.
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● A few forward-thinking schools offer staff other services that help free up relaxation time. This might include an ironing service or a weekly head massage. Alternatively, you might offer school membership of a local swimming pool or a discounted weekend away at a spa.
Consider holding meetings in an alternative space, rather than in the staffroom. This will help ensure that the staffroom does not take on the aura of ‘just another place of work’.
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Hold calming assemblies Assemblies are great for building a sense of community and establishing a calm and purposeful whole-school ethos.They play an important part in whole-school communication – giving out messages and letting the younger children meet the older pupils.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
School halls are often used for a range of other occasions, including mealtimes, PE, school fetes, drama productions, discos and so on. This can make it difficult for the children to view it as a ‘special’ assemblytime space.
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● Some staff (and children) might lack confidence in their ability to communicate with a large audience.
Those children right at the back may have trouble seeing what is going on at the front. A good tip is to sit in various spots in the room before you make a presentation, so that you gain a sense of what your audience will see. ●
● Watch that you do not squash the children too closely together. Banging elbows is not conducive to a feeling of calm.
Create a calm and relaxing atmosphere in your assembly hall, making assembly time feel special and different from other times in the hall. You might: ● dim the lighting ● incorporate some props ● light some candles ● put some flowers at the front ● pass around an item related to the assembly topic ● use a thought-provoking quote. Think carefully about how the children come in and out of the hall, and communicate these expectations regularly to staff and pupils. Set high standards and challenge the children to exceed their previous best.
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Have fun with moving in and out of the assembly hall, for instance, asking each class to enter in the style of a particular person, animal, emotion, and so on. To create a sense of calm, choose a slow-motion style or the style of a tortoise.
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If you are given the task of holding an assembly, consider how you can give the best performance. ● Use visual aids, props and theatrical openings to engage the interest of your audience. I once saw a deputy head ride into the hall on a bicycle! ● Structure your presentation carefully like a good quality lesson. Don’t ask the children to listen for long periods of time, without any other stimulus. ● Watch how you use your voice – typical hall acoustics mean that there is often no need to talk loudly. A quiet voice encourages the children to listen carefully.
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Hold an assembly based on the idea of being and staying calm. Talk with the children about what the word calm means, and what prevents them from being calm.
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For more ideas, see www.assemblies.org.uk. You might also find the ‘Count me in’ charity calendar useful – it details charity events throughout the year. This can be found at www.countmeincalendar.info.
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Create a calm playground Dealing with tensions and disagreements brought in from the playground can really eat into lesson time. On the other hand, if we can teach our children how to play well in an informal setting, this should feed into positive and cooperative attitudes in the classroom. Where children play in a rough and even dangerous manner, there are clearly safety issues for the school to consider.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Consider how your playground is currently used, and whether some of the children have ‘taken over’ at the expense of others. This will often be the case where space is limited, and large-scale games such as football take centre stage.
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It really is worth the investment in training supervisory staff, particularly in basic behaviour management skills. They are likely to be dealing with disagreements between children, and they need to know the best approaches to resolve conflict.
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● Think about whether some age groups are getting more than their fair share of playground use. Older children can become quite territorial, and this might prevent the smaller ones from having equal access to play areas. ● Rainy days are a perennial problem in the UK – with no chance to let off steam, the children can become much more difficult to handle in lesson time. The sensible school considers how to deal with wet playtimes in an organised and child-friendly fashion.
Perform an audit of your playground. Ask yourself: Are there any specific games which are taking up more than their fair share of the playground space? ● Is there a gender imbalance in the way that the playground is used? ● What play equipment do we have, and how much use is it getting? ● Is there any additional play equipment that we might like to buy, and how can we fund this? ● What happens when children get into disputes? Are these dealt with fairly and effectively by the supervisory staff? ●
Introduce the children to lots of different games and activities. A useful book is Primary Playground Games by Cat Weatherill (Scholastic). Choose games that focus on creating a sense of cooperation and consideration.
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Encourage play between children of different ages, for instance, showing the older children how to supervise some games for their younger schoolmates. This will help build a sense of responsibility and community.
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Make provision for the quieter children who might not wish to join in with the rough and tumble of typical childhood games. For instance, you might provide some seating in a wildlife area or a designated quiet area.
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You might divide up your playground into different ‘zones’, so that no single game takes over the space at the expense of the others. In a large school, consider staggered break times, so the younger children have the space to play safely.
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Consider some indoor options for break times. Although fresh air is important, there will be many rainy days during the school year when indoor activities will come in handy.
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Plan and build a wildlife area Learning to respect the natural world, and to gain an appreciation of nature, is a wonderful way of helping us feel tranquil and calm. When children interact with the natural world, they develop a range of useful skills and positive attitudes: a sense of empathy with other creatures, an awareness of how important it is to care for their environment. They are also encouraged to slow down and tune back in with nature and the world around them.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Nature pushes us into behaving calmly – when watching or interacting with animals, the children must be quiet and still or they will scare them away.
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● Similarly, it forces the children to notice their surroundings and take care of their school environment. ● A nature area is a wonderful resource for teaching and learning, for instance, linking in with a minibeasts topic. ● Building a wildlife area at your school is also a great way to get your children involved in physical activity.
Natural areas can add immeasurably to the overall atmosphere at a school. You might set up a wildlife area, a nature trail, or a sculpture park. Some schools even have a working farm on the premises! If you already have a nature or wildlife area at your school, spend some time with the class doing close observations to see what is there. Encourage your children to sit still, to take their time and to look and listen.
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If you do not yet have a wildlife area, you might like to use the photocopiable on page 59 – ‘The wildlife area’ to help you plan and build a natural space of your own. You will need to identify a suitable spot in your playground and obviously ask permission from your headteacher before you start to dig it up! This worksheet also links to science work on habitat.
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It is always worth approaching local garden centres and other businesses to see whether they are willing to donate materials and plants. Bear in mind that many of the plants you need are traditionally viewed as weeds.
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You might like to work in conjunction with a class in Key Stage 2. For instance, the older children could do some research into the types of plants that should be grown to encourage animals to visit.
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Have a calm first day The first day of school is inevitably quite a stressful time for both teachers and children. This is especially so for those children who are just starting school. Even if you are an experienced teacher, it is likely that you will be feeling a little bit nervous and unsure about meeting your new class. The same applies for your children, who may be in a formal school setting, or with an unknown teacher, for the first time.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Consider how the first day of school feels from your children’s perspective, particularly if you teach a Reception class. For some of these children, it might be their first full day away from parents.
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● Think back to when you started school, and the kind of concerns you had – finding your way around, making friends and so on. ● Teachers sometimes worry about establishing control and teaching classroom rules on the first day. The very youngest children will probably not be able to retain much of this information. ● Aim to learn as many names as possible in the first few days. Being able to address a child by name helps you establish good relationships, and consequently build a calm and positive atmosphere.
Use a low-key teaching style – aim for a firm but fair approach. Keep your voice quiet and, if you need to deal with any misbehaviour, do so in a calm and gentle way. Don’t worry too much about the curriculum on the first day. Focus instead on the 5 ‘F’s: ● feeling welcome: talk to your children about being part of a school community, one in which everyone plays an important part ● familiar things: these help us feel safe and secure, so read some stories that the children will probably know already, or get them playing with some dolls or cuddly toys ● finding friends: incorporate some group activities and name games, so that the children start to get to know each other ● familiarisation: talk to the children about where the really important things are around the school and in your classroom – the toilets, the lunch hall, the playground, the reading books ● fun: last, but by no means least, have a bit of fun with your children, showing them that school will be a positive experience. You might play some games with them or read them a funny story.
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Name games are a great way of having some fun and getting to grips with learning a set of new names. Here is a simple game which can be used with children of any age. ● Get the children to stand in a circle and say their names in turn. Do this several times to get them warmed up, asking the children to remember at least one name. ● Now ask the children to say their name and then ‘throw’ to someone else in the circle (Louis to Fay). The child who has ‘caught’ their name then takes the next turn (Fay to Amelia).
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Keep it calm at Christmas The end of the first term will be a fun-filled and exciting time. At this time of year, there are lots of events going on outside of lesson time. The children will naturally be looking forward to the holidays, and to Christmas Day itself. A certain amount of excitement is, of course, completely normal at Christmas time. What teachers want to avoid, though, is the frenzied overexcitement that can lead to classroom management problems.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Christmas is a great time for children to learn the skill of delayed gratification. The long build up, and the wait to open presents, helps them build their patience.
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● Dark nights and cold weather mean that the children are not getting to play outside after school as much as they might do at other times of year. This inevitably means that they have lots of physical energy that needs expending. ● Towards the end of term, behaviour and work standards can slip a little. The children start to get tired, and teachers might be tempted to relax the boundaries a little. ● Increasing commercialisation and high levels of advertising can mean that the messages behind Christmas festivities are lost.
Talk with your children about the messages behind the Christmas period, for Christians and for people from a range of world religions. Think about ways in which the children can help others less fortunate than themselves at this time. Take advantage of the darkness at this time of year, and the atmospheric, calming nature of Christmas lights. String some fairy lights around the room, turn out the main classroom lights and read some stories to the class. You might also like to talk about different light sources with your children – torches, reflective surfaces, candles, and so on.
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Use some calming and restful Christmas carols – in particular those with a calming theme or tune, such as ‘Silent Night’. Teach the words and tune to your class, and sing these songs as a way of creating a peaceful atmosphere.
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For some children the festive period will have different religious and cultural meanings. Start the build up with the Diwali festival in mid-November. Talk with your children about the traditions that have built up around this time of year. Explore the history surrounding symbols such as holly, mistletoe, the use of candles and lights, and also the foods that we eat at this time of year.
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For lots of useful lesson ideas, linked to the Early Learning Goals, see www.underfives.co.uk/ xmas.html
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Put on a calm school show There is nothing quite like a school show for building a sense of fun and camaraderie. Unfortunately, there is also nothing quite like a school show for resulting in overexcited children and frazzled teachers. Maintaining a calm atmosphere takes a bit of forward planning, but is well worth it when things come together and you see the smiles on the children’s and parents’ faces.
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Tips, ideas and activities
A school production is a great way of developing some vital skills – confidence, cooperation, speaking and listening.
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● Think carefully about how and when you are going to hold rehearsals. Typically you will need more rehearsal time than you might think. ● Although it is great fun for the children to stand side stage during the show, it is a recipe for disaster. There is never enough room for everyone, and you get little faces peaking out to wave to parents.
Ask for parent volunteers to help out – great for building positive home/school relationships. You might also enlist the help of non-teaching staff in the school, such as the caretaker, office and catering staff. Acknowledge the contribution that they all make to ensuring a successful show. School shows are a great vehicle for cross-curricular work. Drama and music skills will be developed, but you might also incorporate art and design (set and programme design), mathematics (ticket sales), food technology (refreshments).
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Organisation is the key: costumes, props, sets and front of house will all need forward planning. Even if you have a keen drama specialist, do not expect one person to cope with all the different aspects of a production.
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If you have large numbers of children in the show, contain them in a room away from the stage. Recruit a supervising adult and use runners to fetch the performers at the appropriate moment. Set clear ground rules about the behaviour that you expect from the children when they are not on-stage.
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Have a technical rehearsal, as well as a dress rehearsal, to check sound levels, position lights, ensure that props are in place, and so on. During a technical rehearsal, the actors mark their performances – checking positions on stage rather than saying the lines.
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Think carefully before the event about how you can manage costumes, props, sets and any furniture. Here are some tips: ● Ask the performers to label coat-hangers with their names, and to take responsibility for their own costumes. ● Make a separate box for each scene or act, so that props can be easily stored and accessed. ● Recruit a stage manager to take responsibility for organising the technical side of the show.
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Get everyone involved – even if some children do not take part in the show itself, they can still lend a hand in giving out programmes or guiding the audience to their seats.
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Have a successful sports day A school sports day should be an extremely positive experience. It is always gratifying to see some of the children who struggle in lessons, excelling on the sports field. It is also a great opportunity to promote physical health and well-being through sport. Organising a sports day effectively can be quite an undertaking, but it is well worth the effort involved.
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Tips, ideas and activities
As with the school show, a sports day can also be a potential recipe for overexcitement. The normal routine is broken, and some children find this difficult to deal with.
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● The competitive nature of sport does not always sit well with teachers – our daily work involves encouraging everyone to do their own personal best, rather than to focus on beating others. ● Some children will feel negatively about physical activity. A successful sports day will show them that exercise can be a positive experience.
Don’t overemphasise the competitive elements of sporting events. Encourage the children to aim at beating their own personal best performance, rather than to focus on beating their schoolmates. Reward effort as well as attainment, just as you do in lesson time. For instance, you might give a prize for the child who participates in the most events, regardless of how well they actually do. Set very clear rules beforehand about how the children must behave on the day. Know what you will do if any children do misbehave in a serious fashion, for instance, having a member of staff on standby to supervise them in a classroom.
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Consider what will happen with children when they are not actually involved in the events. Make sure that everyone has a role, and makes a positive contribution, throughout the day. Some non-sporting roles might include: ● blowing a whistle to start a race ● handing out oranges to the competitors ● jotting down the results of races ● helping organise equipment.
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Before the event, spend some time training the children in how to be a good audience. Encourage them to: ● watch the events with focus, looking closely to see what makes a successful performance ● support those taking part, in an appropriate fashion ● applaud everyone after each event, not just the winners, but everyone who has taken part ● practise short bursts of ‘good’ applause in the classroom.
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Get parents, other school staff and even local businesses and organisations involved, so that the sports day becomes a community event.
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Keep the good old UK weather in mind, and have a contingency. If the sports day has to be postponed, consider the effect that this will have on the children. Host some games and activities in the school hall instead.
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Keep it calm at the end of term The last week of term can be a fraught and stressful time: children and teachers are tired, expectations of behaviour start to drop, and tempers fray. The make-up of your class can alter significantly towards the end of term because of illness and family holidays. Keeping it calm right up to the last day of term will help you stay relaxed, and start your break in a positive frame of mind.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Some parents pull their children out of school before the end of term to take advantage of cheaper holiday prices. If you want to set any tasks to be done during the break, give these out well in advance.
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Don’t plan to cover vital parts of the curriculum in the last week. You might instead do some reflective and evaluative activities. ●
● Although it is tempting to relax your boundaries on acceptable behaviour, doing this can result in a stressful end of term. Keep your expectations high, being a little bit flexible when excitement peaks in the last couple of days. ● You might be feeling drained, so find ways to make life easy for yourself in the last week of term.
Have a class countdown to the end of term, using a large calendar and noting how many days are left until school breaks up. This helps the children understand the importance of pacing themselves, and you can designate the point at which the work ethic can be relaxed. See the last week as a time for the class to reflect on what they have achieved that term. You might: ● get each child to decide on three things they have done well this term, and set three targets for further improvement next term ● ask the children to look through a folder of work and pick out some pieces of which they are particularly proud ● present these to the class, talking about why they picked them ● have some small-group discussions to see which lessons the children found most memorable, which ones they enjoyed, and any areas that they think need further focus (this will help you with your future planning) ● talk about those children who have displayed positive attitudes beyond the curriculum, for instance, nominating a child who has been most caring to others.
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Structure your last day, but be aware that whole-school assemblies, presentations and so on can be dropped in at the last minute. Some schools will finish early, so don’t plan to get through too much with your class. Have a bank of fun games that you might play with the children.
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As a whole school, why not take advantage of the relaxed end-of-term feeling to run a ‘break out’ or ‘collapse’ day. This is a day on which normal lessons are suspended, and the school comes together to do activities around a central theme. These ‘break out’ days are a great way of developing cross-curricular work, and of getting the children to work together across the year groups.
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Balance your lesson activities To help our children stay calm, we need to give them a chance to blow off steam and excess energy during lessons. This is particularly so when they are doing work that requires extended periods of concentration. A balanced lesson will incorporate a range of varied activities that appeal to children who learn in different ways: some listening, some discussion, some active participation and some drawing or writing.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Children inevitably find it hard to sit down and work silently for long periods. This is particularly so for those children who have problems with concentration, or who have learning difficulties.
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● Although the ‘starter, middle, plenary’ model is fine as a basic outline, most lesson structures are far more complex than this suggests. For instance, the ‘middle’ section in an hour’s lesson might include a number of different exercises around a central theme. ● Research has suggested that children have a concentration span of their age plus two. So, if you are teaching five-year-olds, this means a maximum time on a single activity of only seven minutes. ● Using a mixture of shorter activities within a lesson gives you the opportunity to incorporate plenty of structure, set lots of targets and give lots of rewards.
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Learn to respond to the mood of the class, rather than sticking religiously to a lesson plan. If you see that an activity is not working as you had hoped, be flexible enough to adapt the lesson on the spot. Be willing to stop and give up on an exercise if it is not going well. Use active, practical exercises to break up longer periods of concentrated work. Short physical activities are a great way of doing this, as they relax the children. Here are a few examples. ● Touch the little finger of one hand to the thumb on the other hand. Now swap over, gradually increasing the speed. ● Draw some ‘lazy eights’ (like an eight on its side) in the air. Start by using the dominant hand, then bring in the other hand, moving in the opposite direction. ● Write some letters or words in the air, perhaps focusing on key terms from the lesson. ● Put your right hand on the left side of your nose, and the left hand on the right cheek. Now swap over, gradually increasing the speed.
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When you finish writing a lesson plan, look it over to check for balance. Check that you have: ● incorporated a range of different activities, involving as many of the senses as possible ● thought about how long it will take you to introduce the lesson, so that the children will not have to sit and listen for too long ● included some active exercises that require physical participation from the class ● appealed to a range of different learning styles – visual, auditory and kinaesthetic ● incorporated structures (write ten words, in three minutes) that ensure focus and on-task behaviour.
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Manage noise levels Sometimes children will get increasingly noisier and noisier, particularly when they are excited by an activity. Of course there is nothing wrong with some noise and excitement – it is an important part of the way that children learn. But too much noise can mean that the calm atmosphere disintegrates, and standards of work drop.
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Tips, ideas and activities
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When we live or work in an excessively noisy environment, this can heighten our stress levels. Children who live in cities are often subject to lots of noise pollution, for example, from airports and busy roads. The typical home is full of noise as well – televisions blaring, washing machines spinning and so on.
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● It is hard to concentrate and stay calm when there is lots of noise going on around you. Ensuring reasonable noise levels will help your children to focus on their work in a peaceful and relaxing atmosphere.
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● When the teacher talks loudly, the children will often do the same. If you address your class quietly, you set a good example and encourage good listening skills. ● It can be hard for children to manage their own levels of noise, particularly during discussion activities. As soon as one group gets louder, the others get louder too, so that they can hear what is being said.
Loud noises can make us feel tense and irritable. Get your children to talk about how they feel when the class is too noisy, and how it impacts on the quality of their work. Ask them to consider their emotional responses to: ● a pneumatic drill ● an aeroplane taking off ● a baby crying ● a teacher shouting. Use a ‘noise-o-meter’ to help your children become aware of, and control, the overall level of noise in their classroom. ● Draw an X and Y axis on a large sheet of paper, label your diagram ‘Noise-o-meter’ and stick it up on the wall. ● Make a ‘noise level’ card, using a symbol such as a megaphone or a volume knob. Add some Blu-Tack to the back of the card, so that you can move it around on your ‘noise-o-meter’. ● Explain to the class that you will be reviewing the noise levels at various points during lessons. ● Draw a line across your ‘noise-o-meter’ to indicate an acceptable level of noise. Warn the class that, if the noise rises above this level, you will have to stop them. ● When you set an activity that involves discussion work, encourage the children to keep an eye on where you are placing the level of noise on the ‘noise-o-meter’. ● Once the children have got the hang of this, ask for volunteers to evaluate noise levels during each potentially noisy activity. ● Use sanctions and rewards to reinforce your requirements. A suitable sanction might be insisting that the children work in complete silence for a while. Focus on rewards as much as you can, praising the class when they keep the noise levels down for a period of time. Incorporate periods of ‘quiet time’ into your day to give you and your children a break from constant noise. These quiet times might be used for looking at books, mediation exercises and so on.
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Manage group work effectively Group work offers a great format for many learning experiences. However, there is much more to managing group work than meets the eye. It might seem a simple case of saying ‘get into groups and do the work’, but in fact it is a complex and tricky technique to get right. The potential for disruption and disputes is never far away, and it can prove hard to keep the children calm and on task.
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Tips, ideas and activities
An important consideration is the way in which groupings are decided. If allowed to choose for themselves, the children will inevitably split into friendship- and gender-based groups.
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● Where free choice of grouping is allowed, this can lead to more social chat than work. It can also mean that the quieter, less popular children get left out. ● When group work is taking place, noise levels can become an issue, with each group talking louder and louder in order to hear each other.
I favour random methods of picking groups: that way it is likely that over time the children will get to work with everyone in the class. Here is a useful way of selecting random groups: ● count how many children you have (twenty four) ● decide how many children you want in each group (four) ● divide the class by the number required in each group (24 ÷ 4 = 6) – if the number does not divide exactly, just round it down ● ask the children to count around the class up to this number (six) ● get all the children numbered one to raise their hands, then all the children numbered two and so on; all the same numbered children will work in the same group. Establish a pattern of boys working with girls right from the start. When you simply expect the children to work with anyone and everyone, they often do not even think to complain about it.
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Think carefully about how the children are going to move into their groups. If you let a whole class get into groups simultaneously, this could lead to a period of chaos. Instead, ask the children to move into their groups a few at a time.
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Before they set off to work, have a moment of stillness with all the groups giving you their silent attention. This allows you to clarify any instructions.
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Set clear targets and structures to keep the children on task during the course of the activity.
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Agree a non-verbal ‘attention signal’ when group work is taking place. That way you will not have to shout over the class to get them to listen.
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Pause and regroup the class several times during a task, to ensure that everyone understands what to do and that the children are making satisfactory progress.
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Use focus exercises to calm your class Focus exercises are a great way of developing concentration, cooperation and consideration. Some children will find it hard to concentrate in the school environment; others will never have really learned how to focus on one activity for an extended period of time. As with any other skill or technique, concentration can be learned – it just takes lots of practice.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Classrooms are busy places, with lots of activities going on and lots of people in the one space. There are also many different sensory stimuli to take in – displays on walls, writing on the board, noises inside and outside the room.
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● Exercises where the children close their eyes help them to achieve inner focus, blocking out any distractions. ● Focus work is great for building trust, mutual respect and cooperation, all skills that feed into teaching and learning in your classroom.
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Try this ‘driving cars’ exercise to develop focus skills. It is also great fun! Here is how it works. ● Split the class up into pairs. One person is the ‘car’, the other person is the ‘driver’. ● The car should close his or her eyes; the driver stands directly behind the car, ready to drive. ● The driver guides his or her partner around the space by using a series of different touch commands. Warn the children not to push their partners, but simply make a light touch and let the cars go as fast as they wish. ● Teach the stop signal first: both hands on the car’s shoulders. ● To go straight forward place both hands in the small of the car’s back. ● To make a quarter turn left or right tap one hand on either the left or right shoulder. For a half turn, tap twice; for a full turn, tap four times. ● The idea is to take great care of your car and to ensure that you steer clear of all the other drivers. Ask the children to start very slowly. ● Warn the children that if anyone deliberately crashes the car, they will sit out the rest of the exercise. ● Encourage the cars to shut their eyes properly. ● If you take your class into a large open space, all the children can do this exercise together. ● Alternatively, split the class into half, or even quarters, with one group driving and the rest of the class watching to see who is working well. ● At the end of the exercise, talk about your children’s experience and how it felt to be the car. Swap over so that the other child gets a go.
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Use circle time more effectively Circle time should be a positive, inclusive and team-building experience. It is a great way of introducing a sense of community into a class, and it is also very useful for tackling discussion on PSHE-related issues. For circle-time activities to be effective, you need to create a strong sense of purpose and structure.
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Tips, ideas and activities
The circle offers a wonderfully democratic format for whole-class activities. Everyone can see everyone else, and all members of the circle play an equal part.
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The fact that the teacher also stands in the circle with the children creates a sense of partnership between teacher and pupils. ●
● Using a circle will help develop lots of important skills and attitudes: creating confidence, encouraging respect, and building a sense of empathy.
Insist that your children are supportive of each and every member of the class. Set a standard of total silence when any one person in the circle is making a verbal contribution. Use circle time for physical as well as discussion activities. Physical exercises around a circle are great for warming up and relaxing the children.
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When teaching drama, I use the format of a circle throughout my lessons. Here are some top tips for using circles as a teaching format. ● Be very fussy about the shape of the circle. A well formed circle shows that the teacher has high standards. ● Your natural instinct will be to go clockwise around the circle, starting with the child on your left. Try starting from the middle of the circle instead, or going anticlockwise rather than clockwise. ● You will probably find that the children stand in a similar spot in the circle each time, and this means that the activities can become very predictable. Find ways to overcome this, for instance, using the game ‘Fruit salad’ to mix up the class. Go round the circle, naming each child apple, banana, pear (or similar) in turn. When you call out a fruit (for example, apple), all the children with that name must swap places. When you call, Fruit salad, everyone must swap around. ● Adapt this game, perhaps to tie in with a curriculum focus. For instance, make a tropical fruit salad with pineapples, bananas and coconuts when the class is doing work about Asia.
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Here are a couple of useful circle-time exercises, designed to encourage cooperation and focus. ● Pass an invisible item around the circle, one that has to be handled very carefully or which requires the children to be silent, for instance, a frightened hamster, a fragile bird’s egg or a sleeping baby. ● Build a story around the circle, with each child adding one word or one sentence at a time.
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Give clear instructions One of the key skills of an effective teacher is the ability to give clear and accurate instructions. All the planning in the world is not much use if the children do not actually understand what you want them to do. Some children will find it harder than others to grasp verbal instructions, so back up spoken explanations with visual cues.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Often misbehaviour is due to a lack of understanding, for example, where children go off task or talk during quiet work.
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● There are few things more annoying than explaining a task in detail and then having a flurry of hands going up and children complaining, ‘I don’t understand what I’m meant to do.’ Overcome this before you set the class off to work by giving effective instructions. ● Repeated lack of understanding from a class might indicate that the work you are setting is too hard. ● Because we plan lessons in detail, we become familiar with the material we are going to deliver. This can make it harder to explain in a clear and simple way.
Start each lesson by giving a clear outline of what is going to happen, and what the children are going to learn. This map helps get them on the right track. Introduce activities with the class grouped on the carpet, rather than sitting at desks. It is easier to ensure that the children are listening in a confined area.
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Ensure silent attention when you are explaining a task: check regularly for eye contact and pause if any children are not fully focused.
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Have a cue to indicate when the children will actually start the task. I tend to use When I say go …. This guards against those keen children who start even before you have finished explaining. It also shows that you expect all the children to start immediately once you do say Go.
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Use lots of repetition of key words, important targets and so on. Back this up with visual aids, for instance, holding up a hand to indicate that you want five ideas.
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Use clear, simple language to explain the activity and go through a few examples with the class.
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Specify the length of time to be spent on a task, and how much work you want done in that time. Keep reminding the children how much time is left. Do a countdown towards the end – You have one minute left, Ten seconds, and so on.
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Check for understanding before you send the class off. You might ask for hands up from everyone who definitely understands the task, or get the children to turn to a partner and talk through the activity together.
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Watch out for the clarity of instructions on worksheets. Put activities in bold so that they are easily differentiated.
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Use meditation exercises Meditative exercises are very useful in encouraging your children to develop a more relaxed attitude to school and to life in general. These exercises will help your children cope with the pressures of school life, and teach them how to achieve a sense of inner focus and calm. They can also help to lower the heart rate, slow the breathing and relax tension in the body.
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Tips, ideas and activities
The children that we teach lead busy lives, and for some there will be little opportunity for quiet time in the home environment. Setting aside a brief period of the school day for meditation offers them time in which to relax.
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● Research has suggested that meditation in schools can lead directly to a decrease in difficult behaviour, to increased levels of concentration and to better academic results. ● Although meditation is traditionally linked to increasing spiritual awareness, it can be used outside a religious context.
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For meditation to have value, it needs to be done on a regular basis. A good approach would be to use these exercises once or twice a day, for around five to ten minutes. It is a great idea for you to meditate along with your children. This will encourage your class to take the exercises seriously; it will help you understand how the experience of meditation feels, and it should also help to calm and relax you. The basic idea behind any meditation is to clear the mind of all the thoughts and worries that clutter the inside of our heads. At first, you may find this difficult, and be amazed at how much stuff there is going on in your head.
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There are a variety of ways in which meditation can be performed. Experiment with some of the approaches below, to see which ones work best for your children. ● Give each child a simple object on which to focus, such as a pebble, a leaf, a piece of wood and so on. Now ask the class to look closely at the object for a period of time, clearing their minds of all thoughts. ● Ask the children to close their eyes and imagine a clear blue sky. Encourage them to focus on the sky and try to clear their minds of any words, ideas or worries. If a thought does enter their heads, they should imagine this as a cloud that floats gently away. ● Ask the children to sit with their eyes shut, and to focus on tensing and relaxing the different muscles in their bodies. Start at the top with the facial muscles, moving down to the shoulders, arms and so on. ● Choose a word for the class to chant – find one that sounds gentle and which evokes relaxing feelings, such as soft or calm. Ask the children to chant the word slowly, over and over again, while trying to clear all thoughts from their minds. Chanting can feel a bit silly at first, but do stick with it! ● Try some ‘walking meditations’, in which a repetitive physical activity is used to still the mind. Choose activities that do not require much intellectual input, such as cutting and sticking, colouring in, or gardening.
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Get the children moving calmly around the room One of the key ‘flashpoints’ for overexcitement and silly behaviour is when the children are moving from one part of the room to another. Where you have worked to build a calm atmosphere with the whole class sitting on the carpet, it is a great shame if this feeling is lost as they move to sit at their desks. Building up your children’s self-control and self-discipline will help with classroom management and also with pupil attitudes to work.
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Tips, ideas and activities
If your classroom is cramped, this can make it hard for the children to move around without bumping into each other.
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● There may be some safety considerations when the children are moving around the room. Think ahead of time about potential hazards, and keep a close eye on those pupils who have behavioural difficulties. ● Think about how easy it is for you to move around the room. If you are forever bumping into things, this will cause you unnecessary stress. Consider rearranging your classroom layout for better ease of movement.
Set the standards for class movement right from the start of the day. Think carefully about how the children will enter the room and leave it at break times. Give the children a specific target when you want them to move from one place to another, as this will help keep them calm and focused. You might: ● give a time limit, for instance: You have ten seconds to move carefully to your seats ● use an imaginative focus, for example: Move as though you are walking across the moon, Move in slow motion, Walk across glue, Walk like a mouse ● be clear about exactly what they should do once they reach their seats (sit in silence, get pens and paper ready, and so on) ● praise those children who do move quickly but carefully to their seats, perhaps highlighting some individuals for specific rewards.
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With a large class, or if your room is particularly small, get the children to move a few at a time. Use ‘being first to move’ as a reward for good behaviour.
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Set up some clear and firm rules with your class about when they are allowed to leave their seats and how they should move around the room. When setting these rules, discuss with the class why these things are important, rather than simply imposing your rules without discussion. If children do need or wish to move around, insist that they put hands up first and get your permission.
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Consider how you are going to deal with those very kinaesthetic children who find it almost impossible to sit still, and who like to wander the room during lessons. Think about how you can give these children some positive opportunities to move around the room during the lesson, for instance, handing out worksheets or pencils.
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Use the role of the expert When using the ‘role of the expert’, the children take on a character who is an expert in a particular field. This drama technique can be used across the curriculum and is especially beneficial for developing mature and responsible attitudes. The children ‘become’ a different person, and subsequently are encouraged to take on the attributes of this character as they approach the work.
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Tips, ideas and activities
When using the ‘role of the expert’, you can encourage your children to behave appropriately, by pointing out that this person ‘wouldn’t behave like that’.
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● This technique also helps develop the children’s empathy – they gain a greater understanding of what it means and how it feels to another person, or to be someone facing a particular problem.
To help your children develop a calm and patient attitude, use in role exercises that demand these attributes. Rather than always asking the children to plan polished performances, you might: ● use unplanned improvisations where the children are thrown into a situation as a character and they respond as that person might react ● ask the children to create some ‘freeze frames’ – these are frozen moments that sum up a character or situation ● ask for volunteers to show their improvisations to the class, talking about the performances to see whether they were realistic ● talk about the different ways in which people can stay calm, for instance focusing on breathing and the use of voice and body language. Here are some suggestions for characters who have to keep someone else calm: ● a nurse calming an anxious patient ● a doctor calming worried relatives ● a vet calming a scared animal ● a parent calming an upset child.
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Use the photocopiable on page 60 – ‘Keeping calm’ as a stimulus for improvising a range of potentially panicky situations. First, get the class to look at the pictures and to discuss how the different characters are feeling. Now talk about how and why they would need to stay calm in these situations. Then, ask the children to improvise as ‘experts’ in these various scenarios. The pictures show: ● cavers trapped in a cave ● rangers facing a wild animal ● firefighters putting out a fire ● lifeboat men and women rescuing people from a sinking boat. ●
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Take a journey into the imagination The power of a child’s imagination is a wonderful thing – it is only as we get older that we start to become embarrassed about entering imaginary worlds and lives. You might have noticed how relaxed your children become when they are working in a role-play area. Taking some journeys into the imagination is a powerful technique for building calm and focus.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Visualisation is a key relaxation technique. It can lower the pulse rate, slow the breathing, and relax muscular tension. It is a really great way for building a sense of calm in your classroom.
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● Using the imagination will allow your children to experience new places and situations. ● Visualisation also helps to build a sense of empathy, as we become more able to understand how other people feel. ● Our imagination is vital in helping us make the mental leap whereby one thing ‘stands for’ another. This ability is essential in understanding symbols such as letters and numbers.
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Taking a journey into the imagination is great for relaxing your children (and yourself). It is also a good way of building listening and imaginative skills. At first you might find it quite tricky to pace the journey, but with experience you will soon master the technique. And once you get started on these journeys, you are likely to find your children begging to do more! Here is an outline of how it is done. ● First, decide on an appropriate setting: a forest, a beach, a palace, the moon. ● Ask your children to make themselves comfortable, preferably lying down on the floor if you have room. Get the children to close their eyes. ● Now start your journey: You’re in a forest. Look around you … what can you see? Take them slowly into the place – there is no need to rush. ● Don’t be too specific – let the children fill in the details for themselves. Encourage them to incorporate sensory responses, by asking: What do you see (hear)? and so on. Give them a few suggestions, for instance, the waves breaking on the shore, but don’t overdo it. ● Once you have built up the initial place, talk the children through a journey. For instance, they might walk through the forest and come across a building. ● Talk slowly and quietly, in an almost hypnotic fashion. Leave plenty of pauses for your children to build up their mental pictures. ● Don’t be tempted to throw in any surprises (a monster leaps out of the woods!). This will break the imaginative spell and may frighten some of your children. ● When the time is up, don’t stop suddenly – this can jolt those children who are deep in the visualisation. Pull them slowly out of the situation, perhaps taking them back to the spot where they started. ● After the journey is completed, ask the children to open their eyes and slowly sit up. Talk with the children about how they feel after taking this imaginative journey.
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Keep it calm at story time Stories are traditionally associated with relaxation: as we read or listen to a story, we enter a world that might be far removed from our own. Stepping into this story world can help us cast off the worries and stresses of normal, everyday life. Helping your children to feel positive towards story time will build interest and confidence in literacy-based activities.
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Tips, ideas and activities
Think about any issues of space and, if your carpet area is small, consider how you will overcome the potential for children banging into each other.
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Story time is often used to finish off the day in a relaxing way. Think about whether you can also incorporate some stories into other times of the day, when the children will not be quite so tired. ●
Get your children as comfy as possible before you start to read, so that they can focus on the story itself. You might give out some cushions or let the children lie down. Read a good mixture of stories to your class, and let the children have some say in which stories you read. Offer the choice of story book as a reward for good behaviour or work. Include stories from a range of different cultures, and some that challenge traditional gender roles.
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Don’t always hold up picture books so that your children can see the pictures. On occasions, ask the children to close their eyes and to picture the story in their heads.
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Your voice plays a key part in creating a calming atmosphere. Here are some of the key considerations. ● Speak quietly, often more quietly than you might imagine, as this will encourage the children to listen carefully and to feel relaxed and calm. ● Make good use of tone, overdoing the sound of wonder, excitement, sorrow, fear and so on, to really pull your children into the story. ● Make interesting use of pace, mixing up a slow and fast pace to create emphasis. Consider where the action builds or the tension increases, and use a quicker pace to create a sense of excitement. Where the story is slower, slow down the pace of your voice to enhance this. ● Articulate the words carefully, to aid understanding and to show your children how interesting language can sound. Put a particular emphasis on any examples of alliteration or onomatopoeic language, as these really help to make a story sound more vivid.
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Familiar stories are particularly relaxing, because there are no surprises and we feel at home with the characters and settings. Try reading a range of versions of a fairy tale, with some modern, updated adaptations alongside the more traditional ones. For instance, try Prince Cinders by Babette Cole (Puffin) alongside the original version of Cinderella.
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Explore likes and dislikes We all have personal preferences – some things that make us feel happy and content, and other things that annoy us. Exploring your children’s individual likes and dislikes is a great way of building their confidence and self-esteem. It shows them that it is fine to have personal opinions, and it helps them understand that other people might not always feel the same way as they do.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Some children will not have been taught to explore and express their emotions in an appropriate way. Examining their own personal likes and dislikes can help them cope with powerful negative and positive emotions.
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● Talking about the things that your children really love is a great way of getting to know your class. ● It can also prove very helpful in working out what rewards might have the most impact on certain individuals.
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Look at the photocopiable on page 61 – ‘Things I love’ with your class. ● First, read the poem through a few times, with the whole class sitting on the carpet. ● Now talk about what is going on in the poem. Identify some of the things that this person does not like. Talk about why these particular things might make the poet feel angry. ● Similarly, discuss the things that this person loves, and why these particular things might be enjoyable. Explore the way in which some things we love (for example, making my sister mad) might not be a good idea. ● Now get the class sitting or standing in a circle. Ask the children to think of one thing that they like and one thing that they dislike. Brainstorm these words around the circle. ● Ask for volunteers to come into the middle of the circle and act out something that they like or dislike. Get the rest of the class to guess what it is. ● Bring the class back to sit down on the carpet, and ask the children to help you write some key vocabulary up on the board. Draw pictures alongside the words to help those children with weaker literacy skills. ● Now ask the children to go to their desks and to draw pictures on the worksheet to show three things that they don’t like, and three things that they love. Ask older or more able children to label their pictures. ● If you have time, swap the worksheets around the room so that the children can share their ideas.
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Work well with other adults in your classroom There will often be a number of different adults working together in the primary classroom: a class teacher alongside a classroom assistant, a learning support assistant, parent helpers and so on. Building positive relationships with other adults in your classroom plays a vital part in maintaining consistent expectations of the children, and in creating a calm and positive working atmosphere.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
The majority of adults in primary school classrooms will get on well together and work in a positive manner. However, as with any relationship, there is always the potential for stresses and strains between you.
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● This might be a matter of different styles and approaches; it could be a personality clash. Keeping personal feelings out of the equation is vital for a positive, long-term working relationship. ● With a large number of children in the class, it can be hard for the teacher to spot individuals who are struggling. Other adults can offer a much clearer perspective on these kinds of issues.
Encourage other adults to take on a variety of interesting roles, making maximum use of their enthusiasm and expertise. Here are some suggestions of roles for your teaching assistant: ● giving an objective overview on what happens in the classroom, for instance, identifying aspects of your teaching style that work well, and those that do not ● giving feedback on whole-class activities that worked well, and those that ‘lost’ some of the students ● monitoring individuals who might be having problems in one or more curriculum areas, and passing this information on to you ● offering ideas and suggestions which inform the planning and teaching that takes place ● working with you to differentiate lesson plans appropriately for children with specific learning difficulties, and for those who need extension tasks ● acting as a scribe for children with literacy difficulties ● working in different settings: with individuals, pairs, small groups, and perhaps some supervised whole-class delivery of parts of the lesson ● Assisting gifted and talented children, and those who are particularly able. If you are experiencing issues with working effectively with an assistant, make sure that you use the same kind of approaches that you might use with a tricky child. Positive, reward-based systems will always be more successful than negative and critical approaches.
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Make sure that your class sees your teaching assistant as an important part of the classroom team. Work together to build consistent expectations of the children’s work and behaviour.
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Consider the range of ways in which parents might help out in your classroom. Some parents might want to do some private reading with individuals, while others might have an area of particular expertise (Indian dancing, folk singing, engineering), which they could share with the children.
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Build your children’s empathy Understanding that other people have feelings, and that our actions can have a positive or negative effect on others, is a key part of early socialisation. Those children who do not understand this will inevitably struggle to fit into the demands of school and of society.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
Learning to read people’s body language and facial expressions plays an important part in being able to empathise with them.
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● Similarly, understanding that people might have different points of view on the same situation will help to build empathy. ● As well as developing empathy, children need to learn how to make other people feel confident and happy.
Look at the photocopiable on page 62 – ‘How do I feel?’ with your class. This worksheet shows pictures of children expressing a range of different emotions: a child who is being bullied, a child with a broken toy, a child who has fallen over in the playground, and a child playing with a friend. ● Ask the children to talk about what is going on in the different pictures and how these children are feeling. ● Brainstorm some key vocabulary on the board – include words such as happy, sad, upset, angry and so on. ● Discuss how we can tell what these children are feeling: what are they doing that shows their different emotions? ● Talk with the class about how they could help the sad children in the pictures to feel happier. Hot-seating different characters is a great way of building empathy, of understanding different emotional responses, and considering various points of view. Here is one approach for using hot-seating in your classroom. ● Choose some characters from a well-known story, such as The Three Little Pigs (Traditional). ● Ask a volunteer to sit in the ‘hot seat’ and play one of the characters, for instance, a little pig. ● Get the class to talk to this character in role, to get a sense of their feelings about the story. ● The children might ask: How did it feel when the wolf blew your house down?, How do you feel about the wolf?.
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Some children find it hard to make friends. Encourage your children to include everyone in friendship groups. Spend some time talking about feeling left out, and how to help other children feel good about themselves.
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Teach a sense of responsibility It is possible to develop a sense of responsibility even from the earliest age. Children who understand responsibility will be better placed to work, behave and socialise well. The children that we teach are given ‘rights’ from an early age, and we need to help them take on the responsibilities that come with being given these rights.
Thinking points
Tips, ideas and activities
As organisations, schools rely on children being able to take responsibility for their own actions.
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● Where this does not happen (for instance, with misbehaviour), we are forced to intervene, often in a negative way. ● Taking responsibility is about considering how our actions have an impact on others. Encourage your children to think about how their actions impact in a wider sense. For instance, recycling contributes to a more positive environment for the entire planet.
When managing a child’s behaviour, use a technique known as ‘the choice’. This technique encourages children to take responsibility for their own behaviour, and for the consequences of choosing not to behave in an appropriate way. Here is how it works. ● When a child misbehaves, state the positive things that will happen if the behaviour stops, and the negative consequences of continuing. ● For instance, you might say: Jimmy, if you start work right now, you could earn one of these great stickers. But if you choose not to work, you will force me to keep you in at break time to catch up. ● Explain to the child that it is his or her own decision whether or not to behave as you ask; your only role is to discipline those who refuse to behave responsibly. ● Give the child a minute or so to make up his or her mind. Often, if you simply walk away, children will make the right decision of their own accord. Encourage your children to play an important part in the way that lessons run. Get them involved as often as possible in small tasks, so that they gain a sense of ownership. Your children might: ● write or draw on the board ● hand out some resources ● help out a classmate who is struggling
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Consider having a class pet – looking after a pet is a great way of developing a sense of responsibility. At holiday times, ask for volunteers to take the pet home, and care for it. On a simpler scale, class plants will help you develop responsible attitudes. The job tending to the plants can become part of the children’s daily routine.
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Finally, here’s a fun activity for teaching children about responsibility. Give each child in your class an egg (hard boil these for the youngest children!). Ask them to treat the eggs as their ‘babies’ for a day.
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PHOTOCOPIABLE
Ten rules for a calm classroom We always listen to other people when they are talking. We do what we are asked the first time we are asked. We always work to the best of our ability. We move around the classroom and the school in a calm and quiet way. We respect each other, our learning, our equipment and our environment. We keep our hands, our feet, and our opinions to ourselves. We take responsibility for the way that we work and behave. We treat others as we would wish to be treated ourselves. We value the skills of cooperation, consideration and concentration. We have fun at school, and we let other people enjoy their learning too. 56
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PHOTOCOPIABLE
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PHOTOCOPIABLE
Name:
Date:
Body clocks Our body clocks mean that we feel different at different times of day. â—? Look at these faces. How are they feeling? â—? Write the words below the faces.
sad
happy
bored
tired
angry
lively
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12
10
4 7
6
5
11
12
1
10
4 7
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3 4 7
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1
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How do you feel?
What time is it? 2
9 How do you feel?
What time is it?
1
8
What time is it?
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How do you feel?
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9
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9
3
8
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What time is it?
1
3
8
4 7
6
5
How do you feel?
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Name:
Date:
The wildlife area We are going to build a wildlife area. First we need to make a plan. Here are some animals and insects who might visit our wildlife area. ame below ea rrect n ch c o c e rea h t tur ir te e. W
s r
t f
b b s
h l
We want them to feel happy. Some of the things they will like are pictured around them. Write the correct name below each one.
w â—? Now
f
s
p
draw a design for our new wildlife area.
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PHOTOCOPIABLE
Keeping calm
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PHOTOCOPIABLE
Name:
Date:
Things I love There are lots of things That make me mad I don’t like swearing It sounds bad I don’t like bullies Who think they’re best I don’t like doing A hard maths test I don’t like toast When it gets burned I don’t like spellings I haven’t learned I don’t like wind I don’t like rain
I hate the smell Of a blocked-up drain I don’t like kids Who push and shove But there are Lots of things I love I love my mum I love my dad I love to make My sister mad I love TV And chocolate too That’s it for me Now how about you? © Sue Cowley
What makes you mad? ●
Draw pictures of three things that you don’t like.
What makes you happy? ●
Draw pictures of three things that you love.
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PHOTOCOPIABLE
How do I feel?
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Index A ADHD p22 adrenaline p11, 13 anger p6, 7, 11, 13, 18, 19, 24, 52, 54, 58 anger management p13, 19, 24 assemblies p31, 33, 40 atmosphere p5, 6, 8, 10, 16, 20, 21, 30, 31, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 42, 48, 51, 53 attention p6, 9, 10, 43, 46, 57 attitude p7, 9, 13, 18, 19, 34, 35, 38, 40, 45, 47, 48, 49, 55 B behaviour p5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 47, 48, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57 behaviour management p11, 19, 34, 55 blood sugar p12, 18 body clocks p18, 58 body language p49, 54, 57 breaks p8, 11, 15, 18, 22, 27, 28, 31, 32, 34, 40, 42, 48, 55 breathing p9, 11, 13, 17, 24, 47, 50 C calm zones p28 chants p47 Christmas p37 circle time p26, 45 collapse days p40 colleagues p7, p11, colours p26, 28, 30 communication p7, 9, 10, 25, 33, 38 community p25, 33, 34, 36, 39, 45 competition p39 computers p15 concentration p5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 17, 18, 19, 22, 25, 32, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 56, confidence p23, 29, 33, 38, 44, 45, 51, 52 consideration p31, 34, 44, 45, 56 control p6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 24, 30, 36, 42, 46 cooperation p19, 20, 34, 38, 44, 45, 56 corridors p9, 17, 29, 31 cues p7, 9, 46 D differentiation 53 discipline p19, 55 displays p26, 28, 29, 30, 44 distractions p13, 15, 16, 22, 30, 44, 57 drama techniques p49 E emotion p6, 11, 13, 18, 24, 26, 33, 42, 52, 54, 58 empathy p20, 35, 45, 49, 50, 54 end of the day p18, 19, 25 energy p8, 9, 11, 15, 18, 24, 28, 37, 41, 57
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English as a second language p8 environment p9, 10, p11, 12, 13, 17, 22, 27, 32, 35, 42, 44, 47, 55, 56 equipment p11, 15, 30, 34, 39, 56 ethos p31, 33 eye contact p9, 16, 22, 46 F focus exercises p9, 22, 44 freeze frames p49 friends p20, 36, 54 friendship p11, 20, 43, 54 G gender p21, 34, 43, 51 golden time p19, 28 group work p20, 26, 28, 43 groups p11, 20, 21, 23, 27, 34, 40, 43, 53, 54 H hall p33, 36, 39 holidays p14, 37, 40, 55 home p11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 38, 42, 47, 51, 55 hot-seating p54 I imagination p31, 50 improvisation p49 inclusion p24 instructions p8, 10, 43, 46 K kinaesthetic learners p22, 27, 41, 48 L language p7, 8, 24, 26, 46, 49, 51 learning styles p27, 41 lesson planning p15, 41, 46, 53 lighting p33, 37, 38 lining up p10, 29, 31 listening p8, 9, 10, 13, 22, 28, 33, 35, 41, 42, 43, 46, 50, 51, 56 M marking p14, 15 meditation p28, 42, 47 memory p27 misbehaviour p7, 8, 11, 36, 39, 46, 55, 57 mood p7, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 39, 41 motivation p11 movement p10, 22, 29, 31, 33, 43, 48, 56 N noise p6, 8, 9, 10, 22, 42, 43, 44 non-verbal communication p6, 7, 10, 26, 43 nurture groups p23 O observation p28, 35 other adults p15, 53
P pace p6, 50, 51 pairs p7, 18, 20, 24, 27, 28, 44, 46, 53 paperwork p14, 32 parents p16, 19, 24, 27, 36, 38, 39, 40, 53 patience p13, 37, 49 PE p20, 31, 33 perfectionism p5, 15 pitch p6 planning p14, 18, 38, 40, 41, 46, 53 playground p34, 35, 36, 54 pointing p10, 49 posture p6 pressure p5, 11, 47 prioritising p14, 15 Q questions p8, 54 quiet p5, 6, 8, 9, 16, 25, 28, 33, 34, 35, 36, 42, 46, 47, 56 R reading p7, 28, 30, 36, 51, 53 Reception class p18, 36 reflection p9, 25, 40 register p16 relationships p21, 36, 53 relaxation p8, 11, 14, 16, 17, 19, 25, 27, 28, 32, 33, 40, 41, 42, 45, 47, 50, 51 repetition p46 respect p20, 21, 30, 32, 35, 44, 45, 56 responsibility p25, 30, 32, 34, 38, 55, 56 rewards p19, 25, 28, 39, 41, 42, 48, 51, 52, 53, 57 rights p55 role models p6, 13, 21, 24 role-play p24, 49, 50 routine p13, 16, 23, 29, 30, 31, 39 rules p5, 20, 22, 29, 30, 31, 36, 38, 39, 48, 56 S safety p13, 24, 29, 34, 48 sanctions p42, 57 school show p38, 39 self-discipline p5, 19, 24, 30, 31, 48 self-esteem p5, 21, 23, 52 senses p27, 41 sensory responses p17, 27, 44, 50 shouting p6, 10, 42, 43 sickness p12, 23, 40 sign language p10 silence p8, 9, 10, 16, 25, 31, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 48 silence signals p6, 10, 16 sitting p6, 16, 21, 22, 28, 29, 41, 46, 48, 52 sleep p12, 18, 28 sleep deprivation p12, 18 smells p27 socialisation p23, 54 sound p6, 7, 8, 9, 17, 26, 28, 38, 45, 47, 51
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space p28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 44, 51 speaking and listening p38 special educational needs p22, 23, 24, 28, 31, 41, 48, 53 spoiled children p24 sports day p39 staff p5, 7, 12, 20, 21, 30, 32, 33, 34, 38, 39 staffroom p11, 15, 32 start of the day p8, 15, 16, 18, 22, 27, 48 statements p8 stimulation p22, 28 stories p7, 21, 36, 37, 45, 51 story time p51 stress p5, 6, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30, 36, 40, 42, 48, 51, 53 structure p13, 18, 23, 25, 31, 33, 40, 41, 43, 45 supervisors p34, 38, 39 T talking p6, 9, 10, 11, 19, 22, 26, 27, 28, 31, 33, 40, 42, 43, 46, 49, 52, 54, 56 tantrums p19, 24 targets p40, 41, 43, 46, 48 tasks p5, 8, 14, 15, 20, 22, 25, 29, 30, 33, 40, 43, 46, 53, 55 teaching assistants p24, 53 teaching styles p36, 53 temper p6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 24, 40 tension p9, 17, 20, 21, 25, 28, 34, 42, 47, 50, 51 thinking p26, 28 tidying up p13, 15, 25, 30, 32 time management p14, 15 time out p24, 28 timetable p11, 18 timing p16 tiredness p11, 15, 17, 18, 21, 25, 37, 40, 51, 58 tone p6, 7, 16, 26, 51 toys p22, 30, 36, 54 training p10, 29, 34, 39 V visualisation p13, 50 vocabulary p8, 30, 52, 54 voice p5, 6, 7, 12, 16, 27, 32, 33, 36, 49, 51, 57 volume p6, 22, 27, 42 volunteers p25, 27, 29, 38, 42, 49, 50, 54, 55 W waiting p9, 19, 25, 31 watching p22, 35, 39, 44 weather p18, 27, 34, 37, 39 whole-class activities p21, 25, 45, 53 writing p12, 41, 44, 55 Y yoga p17
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In this series: You Can: Create a calm classroom Noisy classroom? Stressed children? Don’t worry, You Can: Create a calm classroom offers 50 simple ways to motivate your children and take the stress out of teaching. ISBN 0-439-96522-5 ISBN 978-0439-96522-4
le Availab ary u n a J in 2006:
ISBN 0-439-96523-3 ISBN 978-0439-96523-1
You Can: Survive your early years Ofsted inspection ISBN 0-439-96534-9 ISBN 978-0439-96534-7
Don’t feel overwhelmed by the onset of an Ofsted inspection – we can help you survive it. This book provides straightforward information and practical advice to support your self-evaluation procedures, whatever the setting, and to achieve a successful Ofsted report. le Availab ary ru b e F in 2006:
You Can: Use an interactive whiteboard (ages 4-7) ISBN 0-439-96539-X ISBN 978-0439-96539-2
You Can: Use an interactive whiteboard (ages 7-11) ISBN 0-439-96540-3 ISBN 978-0439-96540-8
This easy-to-follow format provides 50 creative tips on how to get to grips with interactive whiteboards and to use them effectively in the classroom. Whether you are a first-time or experienced user, this book offers a wealth of ideas to make the best use of your interactive whiteboard to teach all the curriculum subjects.
To find out more, call: 0845 603 9091 or visit our website www.scholastic.co.uk
Create a
CALM
classroom YOU CAN…be a great teacher YOU CAN…take the stress out of teaching YOU CAN…do this really easily by following the 50 inspirational ideas in this book.
YOU CAN do it, we can help! This book shows you 50 simple ways to become a calm teacher of a focused and motivated class. It is full of practical tips and suggestions, from how to use your voice, to building children’s concentration and managing noise levels. Sue Cowley is the best-selling author of Getting the Buggers to Behave (Continuum). Sue has taught children of all ages. She now works as a writer, presenter and teacher trainer.
£15.00