Reminding

They are decisive in their movements, conveying what they want the students to do in a precise manner. Body language experts describe those with this kind of precise manner as having great phrasing (Bradley, 2008; Gladwell, 2009). These teachers deliver nonverbal instructions as short, sharp signals and then pivot immediately back to their teaching. When you do this, it gives the sense that you are used to students complying with your instructions and is a good way to fake it till you make it.

Microsignals

Once students respond to your nonverbal reminders, make them smaller: blocking a behavior with your palm held at arm’s length might become a raised index finger close to the body. Shaking your head with a stern expression might become a raised eyebrow. Making your movements more economical encourages students to watch you more closely and, over time, allows you to shape student behavior with fewer interruptions from them or extra effort from you.

Table Tapping

Table tapping is a good example of a simple nonverbal strategy that is more effective if you keep these pieces of advice in mind.

Approach off-task students from the side, and tap on their desks as a cue for them to get back to work. Make your movements deliberate: remain to the side of the student (withholding eye contact), bend from the waist, and, making sure your hand is well away from the student’s work, tap twice. If this doesn’t refocus students’ attention, you might try tapping slightly closer to them or even adjusting their work by turning the corner of their notebook or device to get a better view of their work. Once students are used to this cue, you can make it smaller by just briefly resting a finger on the table as you pass by.

This might seem like a minor adjustment of practice, but it is precisely this sort of subtle use of technique that is the hallmark of highly effective teachers.

If nudging and refocusing aren’t effective or appropriate for altering a student’s behavior, you might try a reminder. Reminders are strategies that you use to reiterate your expectations to students and to remind them of their commitment to agreed-on class behaviors. These include class reminders, anonymous individual reminders, and observation prompts.

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Class Reminders

At first, reminders are usually addressed to the wider class rather than a specific student. School management expert and author Doug Lemov (2015), for example, calls this type of reminder a positive group correction to distinguish it from a private individual correction. Of course, teachers issue general reminders to their classes all the time. (“Quiet please”; “Eyes this way”) This is not what I am referring to. In this technique, the idea is that by reminding the whole class about your expectations, you can, in a nonconfrontational way, encourage individual students to get back to the task. It is for this reason that classroom behavior researcher Ramon Lewis (2008) labels this type of intervention a hint.

Isn’t this the same as on-task praise? On-task praise is similar to class reminders. There are some differences, though. With on-task praise, you deliver a running commentary— what Lemov (2015) calls narration—that acknowledges individual students who are meeting that lesson’s goals:

I can see Sam has started. Grayson and Kyle are underway.

Whereas class reminders address the whole class and comment on communal and personal responsibilities—with the clear implication that some students are not meeting these goals:

Nearly everyone has started responsibly by immediately getting underway.

These reminders might talk about the gap between behavior and expectation in a general way or by specifically naming an aspect of student practice. Here are two representative examples of a general hint offered by Lewis (2008): “Just about everyone appears to be respecting their classmates’ rights. Some students aren’t encouraging their friends to behave responsibly” (p. 46).

Or you might talk about student behavior in less generic terms:

I can see a number of students following our spiderweb conversation protocol. Not all students are handling the archery equipment in the way we talked about in our safety briefing.

Note that one of these examples frames the behavior positively and the other negatively, but they both follow a similar structure. Teachers using reminders like this describe what they are seeing but don’t present any specific demand about what they want the students to do. The required action is implied. You make the class aware

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that a problem exists and trust the individual students involved to self-regulate their behavior.

Lewis (2008) also recommends a third variation of reminder, one in which you reiterate “the understanding shared within the class about what is responsible behavior” (p. 48). The best way to do this is to remind students explicitly that these are shared norms:

We agreed that we wouldn’t talk over each other. We said that we would all speak respectfully.

A good deal of the decisions people make are heavily influenced by what those around them do (Pentland, 2014). Referring to collective expectations about behavior adds weight to this style of reminder—this is not just your expectation but their peers’ too—and I have found it particularly effective for guiding students back to their work. (For further discussion of this, see Rights and Responsibilities Reminders in chapter 2, page 29.)

Anonymous Individual Reminders

If a class reminder doesn’t work, you could switch to issuing a directive (see chapter 2, page 25), but targeting the students involved with some anonymous feedback is worth a try first. You do this by alluding to specific students without naming them, implying that they need to change their behavior in some way:

I am still waiting on one student. I can see that all but two of you have followed the instruction. I am waiting for one group to put their equipment down safely.

This isn’t very different from just naming students and giving them a directive, but its anonymous nature tends to elicit less resistance—especially from those students who feel like you are singling them out because you have to name them constantly to get them back on task.

Observation Prompts

If issuing reminders to the whole class hasn’t succeeded, I often try to remind offtask students of my expectations by quietly noting evidence to them that their actions don’t meet my expectations. To initiate an observation prompt, approach the student and flag some aspect of behavior:

I noticed you closed your book. I can see you didn’t put your phone away yet. I noticed you were not at your desk.