6 minute read
1 Using Low-Key Interventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Nudging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Refocusing
from Classroom Dynamics
Watch the Student’s Reaction
Take careful note of how the student responds to cross praise. It is a subtle technique, and sometimes teachers underestimate its effectiveness. This is less likely to happen if you teach students in grades K–2, who are more likely to respond to cross praise in an obvious way. (“I’m sitting up straight too!”) If you are watching carefully, though, you will see that older students respond just as readily—just not as overtly. Watch to see if they turn their heads or bodies slightly in your direction or toward the student you are praising. Be on the lookout for a change in their eyelines—a glance up from what they were doing or down to their work. These minor movements are often a good indication that they have heard you and may get back to their learning.
I really like using cross praise because it draws on students’ awareness of their peers. Many classroom-management strategies rest on the idea that students will change their behavior because they respect teachers’ authority or strong relationships with them. However, many students are much more responsive to their classmates. (“They are way more loyal to each other than to me,” an experienced teacher who taught me this technique once told me. “So why not use that?”) Cross praise gives you a way to use this connectedness to shape the communal behavior of the group.
Don’t expect these techniques to work instantaneously. After using each of these nudges, I like to give my students some time before I see if they have worked. Typically, after using a nudge, I move to another part of the room to give the student a chance to resettle; from there, I can monitor unobtrusively whether this strategy was effective or whether I need to use a more overt intervention.
Refocusing
Refocusing strategies represent your next level of intervention. While usually subtle, they nonetheless represent an escalation of response because students know you are guiding them to get back to their learning. Here are some examples of refocusing that, if you use with care, can encourage students to get back to their work. In this section, I discuss check-ins and nonverbal commands.
Check-Ins
You can encourage students to get back to what they were doing in a number of ways, including a collective progress check, an individual progress check, and a word of encouragement.
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Collective Progress Check
Probably the simplest way to touch base with students in this way is a collective check-in, where you aim your inquiries toward a group that includes the student whose off-task behavior you are trying to address.
At first, you might do this nonverbally. Approach the group of students, and make a show of scanning their work. Make sure your demeanor is friendly—you want to seem curious, not disapproving. Try to peruse every student’s efforts, but don’t dwell on any one response.
Some teachers like to begin a group check-in by announcing that they are now going to check on everyone’s progress. Often, just the announcement is enough to change students’ behavior before you even get to scanning their work. This works particularly well if you have previously reviewed your students’ work because they know that you have a benchmark against which to measure their progress. For example, if your students are working on a paper assignment, you can sign each student’s work at the point they are up to in their notebooks and check their progress ten or fifteen minutes later to see how much they have done in that time.
If a nonverbal check doesn’t work or suit the context, do this as a verbal inquiry. Again, the key here is addressing a group of students rather than an individual:
How are we going here? Is everyone able to get started? Does anyone have questions about the work?
This is often enough to remind an off-task student what you expect everyone to be doing.
Occasionally, the off-task student will see this as an opportunity for some attentionseeking behavior. Anticipate that some students will respond this way. Bold assertions of success on behalf of the group (“We are all over this, Mr. Pearsall!”), often accompanied by duper’s delight—the subtle smile that people display when telling a pleasing lie—are not uncommon. You can deal with this by just refocusing your attention on the individual. (“Great, Stephen, let me have a look at what you are working on.”)
Individual Progress Check
When checking on individual students, you ask similar questions but target them directly at the off-task student alone:
How is it going? What are you working on? Do you think you can meet all the success criteria?
All rights reserved. Copyright © 2023 by Solution Tree Press and Hawker Brownlow Education.
The big difference here from the collective check is that you have to pay extra attention to how you deliver the question. You don’t want students to act defensive, so signal to them that you are offering assistance, not judgment. Make sure you adopt a warm expression and friendly tone. Concentrate on using open body language and relaxed gestures. (“What are you working on?” is a very different question when delivered with crossed arms and a sharp tone.)
Encouragement
Another way to check in on off-task students is to offer them some brief words of encouragement:
You can do it. This exercise gets easier with practice. You’ve shown good persistence. Keep going. Five minutes to go. You are nearly done.
Encouragement in this context is a form of on-task praise that focuses on persistence. You want to reassure off-task students that with effort, they have the capacity to do what you are asking of them. This, of course, isn’t always effective (I once had a student respond, “I know I can do it; it’s just that I don’t want to!”), but encouragement does often work well as a check-in—particularly if students’ behavior is generated by low confidence or if they are feeling a lack of support or attention. A little targeted praise here can go a long way.
Nonverbal Commands
Most teachers already use wordless glances or gestures to direct students back to what they should be doing. The appeal of these strategies is that you don’t have to interrupt your teaching to employ them. You might be working one on one with a student who is reading a response while at the same time you are looking on silently at a group that is distracted. You don’t interrupt the student who you are working with by doing this, but the unruly group gets a clear reminder of your expectations. A raised eyebrow, pausing and looking toward an off-task student, pointing to what students should be doing, or raising an open palm to indicate they need to halt what they are doing are popular examples of nonverbal reminders. What follows are some things to keep in mind when using them: precision, microsignals, and table tapping.
Precision
Using unambiguous expressions and clear, direct gestures is at the heart of effective nonverbal communication. When coaching, I often find myself using the adjective crisp to describe the manner of teachers who are good nonverbal communicators.