9 behaviour management strategies for the classroom

Dealing with disruptive behaviour can be frustrating and exhausting, but it doesn't have to be that way. With the right behaviour management strategies, you can create a positive and productive classroom environment where your students feel engaged, motivated, and eager to learn. In this blog post, we've put together a list of 9 tried-and-true strategies that will help you maintain control of your classroom, improve your teaching experience, and make your lessons more enjoyable for everyone involved.

This blog and the strategies mentioned are based on a webinar LbQ hosted in 2022 called ‘Outstanding Engagement and Behaviour Management’ where experienced teachers discussed the techniques that have worked for them.

Why is behaviour management a challenge?

Why is behaviour management a challenge? It doesn’t matter if you’ve been teaching two months or twenty years, behaviour management can become a challenge at any moment in your teaching career.

There are a few reasons why behaviour management may become more of a challenge including:

• Lack of behaviour management policy at the school - or a lack of consistency across the school

• Classroom environment - if your class gets moved or you have multiple classrooms to teach in, layout, access to resources and changing seating plans can be challenging.

• Time constraints pose a difficulty for teachers

• Teacher burnout can make behaviour management emotionally taxing.

• Being a new teacher and learning on the job!

Where to begin with behaviour management

The best place to start with behaviour management, particularly if you are new to teaching or new to a school is the school behaviour policy. Once term starts, the challenges of behaviour management can make it difficult to see the wood for the trees. But the school behaviour policy can and should be your go-to handbook for ensuring engagement and good behaviour in your lessons.

Consistency is key to good behaviour management, and if all teachers stick to the school behaviour policy, children are quick to learn the boundaries and know what to expect no matter what classroom they enter. This can become more difficult if a behaviour management policy is non-existent or if it is implemented inconsistently across the school. So, what then?

What is the most effective behaviour management strategy?

For any individual teacher, the best behaviour management strategy is relationships. Building positive and meaningful relationships with your students will help create strong foundations for teaching and learning.

Tips for building strong relationships with students

1. Find out your students’ interests. Children will appreciate you demonstrating an interest in their passions.

2. Speak to children on duty and in the corridors between lessons.

3. Take opportunities to speak to children outside of the classroom like on school trips or during extra-curricular clubs.

4. Greet students positively when the lesson starts, no matter what happened in the previous lesson.

9 positive behaviour management strategies for the classroom

Here is a list of strategies you can try with your classes. Try different strategies and never be afraid to ask for help from colleagues.

1. Have high expectations

Having high expectations helps students know what is expected of them. It helps you recognise positive behaviours and builds confidence and self-esteem in your students. Win-win!

2. Embed routines and stick to them

Again, routines help children know what is expected of them. Routines can be a huge comfort to students, particularly neurodiverse children.

3. Positive reinforcement

Praise and reward good behaviour. This encourages children to repeat the behaviour in the future. Describe the behaviour that you are praising loudly enough for the class to hear and congratulate the child/children for choosing that behaviour. That will help guide others to follow the good behaviour.

Related content:

7 easy ways to improve pupil progress that you can use in your classroom today

Two fantastic ways for teacher feedback to improve pupil learning

Collecting classroom data: why and how we do it

4. Be fair

We’ve all experienced the wrath of a pupil who feels they haven’t been treated fairly. It can sometimes be difficult to remember the school rules, especially when you yourself are new. Don’t be afraid to apologise if you have got it wrong.

5. Class agreement

If you have a particularly challenging class, why not try coming up with a class agreement that they have some say in. Work with the students to outline expected behaviours, consequences and rewards.

6. Deal with low-level disruption in a low-level way

Low-level disruption is quite often the biggest killer of progress and positive learning in a classroom - plus, it’s really annoying.

One of the best ways to deal with low-level disruption is to do it in a low-level, almost imperceptible way. Here, wireless tools are your friend. Invest in a wireless presenter remote, and free yourself from the front of the classroom. This way, if a child is off-task or distracting the class, you can move closer to them and provide them with non-verbal instruction that their behaviour is not acceptable. For some, even just moving toward them will be enough for them to correct themselves.

7. De-escalate

Bad behaviour can be a real test of one’s patience. But it helps enormously to keep your calm, no matter how much the bad behaviour might be getting to you.

The following help to de-escalate bad behaviour:

• allow the student a cooling-off period - this might mean removing them from the classroom

• active listening shows you acknowledge the feelings of the student and demonstrates mutual respect

• provide the student with positive options for behaviour. This helps students feel less powerless.

• try to use non-threatening body language; you could sit in a chair or bend down to their height when talking.

8. Try restorative practice

Restorative practice encourages students to consider and take ownership of their behaviour by thinking about the causes and consequences of that behaviour. Relationships are pretty central to restorative practice but incorporating them into your practice will lead to a more empathetic cohort of students who can use these skills well beyond the classroom. You can read more about restorative practice on the Restorative Justice Council website where the concept was coined.

9. Go and observe good behaviour management

If we’re struggling with a class, we’re commonly told to go and see a colleague who deals with the class really well. But, the timing for doing this is everything. Try to go and see said colleague at the beginning of the academic year, when they will be embedding a routine. This is the bit that’s worth seeing because it’s the hard bit, not later in the year when the teacher has everything sorted.

6 strategies for engagement in the classroom

Bad behaviour can sometimes stem from a lack of engagement with learning. We’ve gathered some top tips for engagement to halt bad behaviour before it even begins.

1. Get the pitch right

Pitch is something we can all get horribly wrong in our training, but as the years roll by, you begin to get a sixth sense (also known as experience!) for pitch. That being said, it’s good to sometimes attempt to stretch a little further than you might normally, just to see if students can rise to the challenge. It could also help engage them a little more, especially with some positive reinforcement for the extra they are achieving.

2. Be flexible

This, again, comes with experience. As a new teacher, it is very tempting to use our lesson plans as security blankets. We know that what’s on the lesson plan is what we planned to do. But sometimes, you’ve got to roll with the punches. If your lesson isn’t working, perhaps your pitch was off (see above) then acknowledge that and pivot.

3. Have a clear, shared goal

Share the lesson objective with the class. They don’t have to write it down, but a shared goal for the class provides a structure for students and generates community spirit in the classroom.

4. Mix it up

Providing children with a mix of approaches and activities helps to keep everyone engaged and enthused about their learning. Whilst there is comfort in routine and expectations, engagement can be encouraged by incorporating paired or group activities as a way of mixing up interactions across the class and curriculum.

5. Give feedback

Feedback isn’t just about progress - although that’s also very important. Feedback gives students ownership of their own learning and provides them with the opportunity to grow for themselves. Feedback for every student in every lesson is quite tough, but even the slightest bit of feedback can help to develop self-confidence and that all-important growth mindset.

6. Cheer the outcome

We can become very entrenched in keeping the train of progress steaming ahead. But it’s good to stop and smell the roses every now and again. If you’ve had a good lesson, tell the students that. Cheer on students who have worked particularly hard; compliment those who commonly struggle with behaviour and who have shown concerted efforts; praise and reward anyone who has stood out. Try hard to focus on the positives, because there will be some if you look, even in those lessons we wish we could forget.

Tools for outstanding engagement and behaviour management

Our top tools for excellent behaviour management are:

Wireless presenter remote

Untie yourself from the board and get in amongst it with a wireless presenter remote. With one of these, you can change slides without needing to be near a mouse or keyboard - perfect for those times when you need to chalk-and-talk a class through something.

Noise app to measure noise levels

As much for you as it is for your students. Healthy levels of noise in a classroom, according to the World Health Organisation, should not go beyond 35dB. Unfortunately, classrooms commonly exceed 65dB. Keep an eye on this using a noise app to monitor noise levels in your classroom and use it as a reminder to students to keep the noise down.

Learning by Questions

We would be remiss not to mention our platform when it comes to behaviour and engagement. Learning by Questions helps engage even the most reluctant of learners.

How does LbQ help with engagement and behaviour?

• Students get to work with a medium they like and are comfortable with: tech.

• Children can work at their own pace and can attempt a question as many times as they need.

• Each question gives children individualised feedback, helping them to crack on and take ownership of their own learning.

• You can see how pupils are progressing without unnecessary interruption.

• You can set further tasks to challenge/support.

• Live data gives you lots of insight to use to monitor behaviour and engagement, including an indicator to show children have come off the task.

Trial Learning by Questions for free for up to 6 weeks.