3 minute read
How to Use This Book
from Classroom Dynamics
can be implemented immediately with your students. Moreover, it is a single-volume resource that you can use to survey the best research about how to create engaged and independent learners so that you can quickly get to the heart of issues that might be affecting your students’ learning.
The book’s structure reflects this emphasis on practical, quick-to-learn, and easy-toapply strategies. After an overview of how to use the book’s contents, I’ll then discuss how to apply them in your own classroom and school.
Classroom Dynamics is divided into three parts. The first part is a collection of strategies for dealing with off-task behavior when you encounter it. The second part delves more deeply to examine entrenched off-task behavior and how to understand what might be driving it. And the third part discusses how to avoid off-task behavior in the first place.
Part 1: Dealing With Off-Task Behavior— Practice Strategies
If you are having difficulty managing the behavior of a student, a group of students, or even an entire class, start here. This part explores a series of practical responses to students who are, for whatever reason, struggling to stay on task. They are loosely organized according to the intensity of the teacher intervention required to implement them, from subtle and low-key reminders to more overt directives, and finally to (the often time-intensive) strategies for addressing student resistance, resolving conflict, and establishing a whole-school response to these behaviors. • Chapter 1: Using Low-Key Interventions—I focus on quick techniques for subtly encouraging students to get back on task. • Chapter 2: Giving Explicit Instructions—I explore the use of brief verbal interventions for reminding students of your expectations. • Chapter 3: Pivoting—I dive deeper into scripts for avoiding arguments and redirecting students back to their learning. • Chapter 4: Talking It Out—I discuss strategies for resolving emerging issues and de-escalating conflict. • Chapter 5: Seeking Support—I focus on advice for how to effectively elicit support from colleagues and school leaders.
For new teachers, this part offers a detailed road map for how to steer students back to their learning with as little fuss as possible. For more experienced teachers, these chapters might serve as a reminder of overlooked strategies or subtle refinements you can make to established techniques.
No strategy works in every situation. You need to develop ways to understand and respond to deep-seated behavioral issues that are hard to shift. If the strategies featured in part 1 of this resource are ineffective, you must look deeper at what is driving the entrenched behavior. This part offers ways to both get a better sense of what might be driving the challenging behavior of specific students and tailor an individual response to these needs.
• Chapter 6: Discerning the Purpose of Off-Task Behavior—I delve into the use of functional behavior analysis to better understand and respond to patterns of challenging and “rusted on” behaviors. • Chapter 7: Tailoring Interventions for Individual Student Needs—
I walk through how to differentiate interventions for students who generally can’t rather than won’t behave appropriately.
Part 3: Avoiding Off-Task Behavior
The best way to deal with off-task behavior is to stop it from occurring in the first place. Inevitably, the parts of this book that explore strategies are somewhat reactive— they suggest what to do when off-task behavior is taking place.
However, this part goes back a step and asks you to consider what you can do to avoid having to implement these strategies at all. It opens with a discussion of classroom procedures you can employ to ensure your classroom is an orderly space for learning. It then explores the underlying factors that drive student engagement and what you can do to enhance and maintain this engagement. • Chapter 8: Setting Up Transitions and Procedures—I discuss how to establish routines to set high expectations and minimize disruptions. • Chapter 9: Establishing Student Engagement—I explore the reasons behind students’ need for lessons that offer challenge, choice, and purpose. • Chapter 10: Enhancing Student Engagement—I identify strategies for maintaining and maximizing engagement by building relationships, sparking curiosity, and establishing a culture of feedback.
