CHAPTER 7 Fundamental Hypothesis of Tools for Teaching Discipline problems can be reduced to a minimum if teachers use an efficient classroom seating arrangement, a teaching style that involves all students actively, and effective body language to limit misbehavior.

Jones’s Contributions to Classroom Discipline 􀂉 Renewed emphasis on the importance of classroom structure in maintaining discipline. 􀂉 Used class agreements and backup systems to set limits. 􀂉 Clarified the value and techniques of nonverbal communication and effective body language. 􀂉 Used Say, See, Do Teaching to keep students actively alert and involved in the lesson. 􀂉 Used incentive systems and Preferred Activity Time (PAT) to motivate responsible behavior. 􀂉 Made clear suggestions for providing efficient help to students during independent work. 􀂉 Stressed the importance of teaching students responsibility by never doing for them what they can do for themselves.

Strengths of Jones’s Work • Advocates discipline techniques used by highly successful teachers who are especially good at preventing and supporting discipline. • All the strategies are teachable through specific training and the study guides and videos designed for small groups of teachers who meet regularly to discuss practice the skills. • Teachers can assess their classroom behavior and isolate and practice certain skills and tactics for improvement. They do not have to implement a full-blown system, but instead can practice, perfect, and add techniques in increments. • Online support includes Study Group Activity Guide and message board and PAT ideas from teachers.

Challenges of Jones’s Work • It is unrealistic to expect that teachers can read Jones’s work and be able to apply the techniques the next day. These techniques must be understood and then practiced repeatedly. • While all the strategies are teachable, many teachers do not learn them well within the pressures of day-to-day teaching. • Teachers may see the training and study groups as yet another task that takes time and energy they do not feel they have.

Misbehavior that disrupts teaching and learning mostly consists of talking to neighbors, being out of one’s seat, and generally goofing off. On average, teachers lose approximately 50 percent of their available teaching time to these activities

Skill Cluster #1: Classroom Structure to Discourage Misbehavior • Room arrangement allows teachers to “work the crowd” as they move among students during independent work. • Rules and routines are taught and practiced. General class rules provide broad guidelines, standards, and expectations for work and behavior, and specific rules describe procedures and routines. • Class chores give students “buy-in” and a sense of responsibility. • Opening routines such as bell work promptly focus students to the day’s lessons, and decrease students’ opportunity to waste time, misbehave.

Skill Cluster #2: Limit-Setting Through Class Agreements • Discussions followed by agreements can become the rules of behavior in the class. • Misbehavior will be corrected with body language from the teacher that reminds students what they should be doing, or that may even make them slightly uncomfortable. • Students will receive incentives and social rewards for observing rules and agreements. • Backup systems will be used when students misbehave seriously and refuse to comply with rules or teacher’s requests.

Skill Cluster #3: Limit-Setting Through Body Language • Proper breathing enables teachers to remain calm and in control. • Eye contact, looking directly into the eyes of individual students, also conveys the impression of being in control. • Physical proximity limits the distance between teachers and students; students near the teacher rarely misbehave. • Body carriage presented with good posture and movement can be quite effective in communicating authority. • Facial expressions and gestures communicate a range of messages to students.

Skill Cluster #4: Say, See, Do Teaching • The instructional approach is doing-oriented, with activities occurring at short intervals so students remain alert and involved in the lesson. • Other approaches contribute to student misbehavior because teachers present large amounts of information, creating cognitive overload in students; students sit passively too long; and teachers do not adequately work the crowd or interact with students. • A visual instruction plan (VIP) is a series of picture prompts that represents the process of the activity or thinking, and clearly guides students through the process. • Say See Do teaching, along with VIPs, greatly reduces the amount of fooling around because students are kept busy while the teacher circulates and interacts with students at work. 9

Skills Cluster #5: Responsibility Training Through Incentive Systems • Incentives are things outside of the individual that prompt action. They are promised as the consequence for desired behavior, but held in abeyance to occur or be provided later. • Grandma’s Rule states: “First eat your vegetables, and then you can have your dessert.” In the classroom, this requires students first to do what they are supposed to, and then for a while they can do what they want to do. • Teachers best support student responsibility when they use encouragement and incentives. • Genuine incentives are desired and available to all students, in exchange for making the extra effort to obtain them. • Preferred Activity Time (PAT) is time allotted for any activity that can serve as an incentive, such as learning games or enrichment activities. When selecting PAT, teachers must consider that (1) students want the activity, (2) students will earn time toward PAT through their responsible behaviors, and (3) the teacher is able to live with the PAT. • Educational value can be found in enrichment activities and team learning games. • Group concern motivates all students to keep on task, behave well, and complete assigned work in order to earn the incentive for the entire class. • Ease of implementation is important as teachers consider any incentive system. • Omission training can work when one student repeatedly misbehaves and ruins PAT for the rest of the class. The plan allows the student to earn PAT time for the entire class by omitting a certain misbehavior. Students cannot lose time for the class through their misbehavior. Rather, they deal with the teacher one-on-one. • Backup systems, as a last option, are a hierarchical arrangement of sanctions intended to stop unacceptable student behavior.

Skill Cluster #6: Providing Efficient Help to Individual Students • Typical Concerns • Insufficient time for teacher to reach all students who request help. • Wasted student work time waiting for the teacher. • Misbehavior is likely to occur when students are not working. • Students are overly dependent on the teacher’s help and don’t want to work on their own. • Resolving the Concerns • Organize seating in an interior loop so all students quickly are accessible to the teacher. • Use Visual Instruction Plans and graphic reminders such as models, charts, or series of steps that provide clear examples and instructions and can be consulted by students before they call for teacher help. • When help is requested, provide it in 20 seconds or less: 1. (Optional for initial contact). Quickly note anything the student has done correctly and comment on it favorably, such as “Your work is very neat.” “Good work up to here.” 2. Give a straightforward prompt that will get the student going, such as “Invert here and multiply” or “Follow step 2 on the chart.” 3. Leave immediately. (Jones says, “Be positive, be brief, and be gone.”)