QUESTION:

What do you do if you have a problem with a child on the second day of school, before you’ve introduced the Hierarchy levels?

RESPONSE:

Don’t forget that Step One of the Teaching Model is Classroom Management. By proactively teaching specific procedures for everything you want your students to do, you will be able to deal with many so called “discipline problems” simply by teaching, re-teaching and practicing procedures. Maintain the mindset that most students will require at least 8 teachings of a procedure in order for it to become habit.

In the case of a true discipline problem that arises on the first days of school, you can employ the Three Principles of DWS:

  • being positive,
  • giving choices to a student who is misbehaving, and;
  • asking questions to encourage a student to think about whether or not what they are doing is actually going to pay off for them or not.

Although not ideal, you can also implement the two last phases of the RRSystem–even before you have taught the Hierarchy. (See: Overview of The RRSystem)

Here’s how:

Phase Two - Checking For Understanding
Even though students wouldn’t know about the levels, you can still ask a child to evaluate whether he/she is operating on a high or low level. I find that even young children instinctively know what you mean by behavior at a high or low level.

For example:

“Is grabbing a toy from someone, a high level thing to do… or is it a low level thing to do?”

Once a student has acknowledged that grabbing a toy is at a low level, that may be the end of it. Often, this type of discussion is all that’s needed. For others, you might need to ask them a few more questions. For a very few children, you may need to ask several increasingly more pointed questions:

  • “You said that grabbing a toy is a low level thing to do. Can you explain to me why you think that?”
  • “How do you think these other kids near you feel when they see you grabbing toys? Will they want to play with someone who might grab their toys?”
  • Look at Andrew’s face…. How does he feel about having his toy grabbed away?
  • What is a teacher’s job if someone is grabbing toys at play time?

Phase Three - Guided Choices
There’s no pat formula for this phase, so depending on the child and type or severity of misbehavior, here are some possibilities:

  • You can help the child to come up with a procedure that will allow them better deal with a similar situation in the future. In this case, procedures for sharing would probably help.
  • You can still go through a process of eliciting choices (or suggesting choices, if necessary.) Remember that this phase is used ONLY with those who continue to act inappropriately, after they have acknowledged a low level.
  • You can ask questions that put the responsibility on the child: “What do you think should happen IF you should do this same kind of thing again?”

It’s certainly possible and worthwhile to build Hierarchy understandings for children, even before you’ve had an opportunity to formally introduce the actual levels. Now that we are more experienced with DWS, my teaching partner and I try to word all our everyday classroom talk in a DWS way. For example, right off the bat, we use the language of the Hierarchy even though we don’t actually refer to the four levels. In this way, we can build some understanding of the levels, even before we have time to focus on the Hierarchy itself.

For example:

  • On the first day when we introduce procedures for sharing and playing appropriately at centers (Level C,) we sometimes contrast them with examples of “unacceptable behavior” such as hoarding toys, running in in the classroom, or talking with outdoor voices (Level B.)
  • We talk about what an “acceptable level of behavior” would look like at lunch time (using eating manners, following lunchtime procedures such as sitting while eating, and remaining in desks until the bell rings etc.) This is Level C.
  • We discuss the importance of learning to “work on your own without waiting for a teacher to direct you” and we talk about how great it feels “to count on yourself to be able to listen well and so know what you need to do next in the lesson”. This is language describing Level D.

After a week or two in school, we hook these understandings to the four levels of the Hierarchy.

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Posted In: B. General Questions, Teaching the Hierarchy
posted On: August 6, 2008: 5:08 pm: By Kerry Weisner
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