DR. MARSHALL’S RESPONSE:
Revisit the four-part DISCIPLINE without STRESS Teaching Model.

Many so-called “discipline problems” can be avoided altogether by proactively teaching classroom procedures. Go back and pretend it’s the first day of school. Start teaching procedures for everything–don’t assume students know how to do anything. Process precedes product. Teaching procedures comes before attempting to teach anything else.

Teach an attention management signal: Raise a hand, count, give me five, clap once if you can hear me, flick the lights etc. Then practice it. Time how long it takes for the class to become quiet and then say, “That took us __ seconds but I bet we can do it in a shorter period of time!” (Notice that this is a challenge–which kids love–and it‘s positive!)

Be prepared to have more than one attention management approach. It’s wise to train students to respond to three or four different attention management signals so as to keep their interest through variety.

Have patience. Plan on practicing any procedure 10 times if necessary and remember–periodically, procedures need to be reinforced. After each practice, have students evaluate the level of their performance, A, B, or C. (Anarchy, Bothering others, or Cooperating)

Regardless of the age of the students, an important procedure to teach on the first day of school, or a term, is one that allows the teacher to quiet the students and gain their attention in an effective manner.

Below is an eye-opening set of calculations found on the Internet that point to the importance of establishing and teaching an attention management signal in the beginning of each new school year or semester.

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A quiet signal is critical to keep from wasting time and to keep the momentum going during cooperative activities. Suppose that you need to give a quiet signal 5 times each hour and it takes 1 minute to get your class quiet each time. That’s 5 minutes of wasted time each hour, or 30 minutes of wasted time each day. If you multiply that by 180 school days, you end up wasting 90 hours of time (or 15 whole days!), just with waiting for the class to get quiet!

http://home.att.net/~clnetwork/quiet.htm

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