7 Teaching Standards, Rules, and Procedures You will begin teaching your classroom rules one way or another from the opening minute of the school year.Your choice is not whether rules will be taught but rather whether your rules will be taught. 46) Fred Jones’s quotation is exactly right. If you expect students to successfully meet your expectations, they need to know precisely what those expectations are. Standards, rules, and procedures may be taught in a variety of ways.
One is by modeling your expectations. Picture yourself as a student on the first day of school. You arrive at the classroom door just as the bell rings. The teacher is busy sorting through papers at her desk.
She motions you in, but barely looks up from her work. Everyone is trying to find the place where coats should be stored and where they should sit. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of system, so some stu- dents throw their book bags in the corner and take a seat. Others just walk around looking at things, eventually dropping into a seat by a friend.
The teacher is very preoccupied so you begin chatting with your friends. No books are in sight. Looks like this will be one easy year! This teacher’s first standard has been taught: Come into class any way you want and begin to socialize. Contrast that with a different teacher on the first day.
You arrive at your class- room. The teacher is standing in the doorway and, as you arrive, he shakes your hand, introduces himself, and welcomes you to his class. He announces, “Your nametag is on your desk. Please put your things in the closet to your right, and find your desk.
Paper and pencil are ready for you, and there are directions to fol- low on the board.” Sure enough, there are instructions on the board! The teacher quickly takes the roll, while you finish your assignment, and then he is ready to go 84 Teaching Standards, Rules, and Procedures 85 with a “getting to know you” activity. Looks like this will be a great year. This teacher has taught his first rule, too, but his message is quite different. You have a good sense of the teacher’s expectations already, and the school year is only five minutes old.
You know where to put your coat; you have an assigned seat; you are expected to begin some kind of assignment right away; and you’ve learned there won’t be a lot of wasted time. This teacher also cares about his stu- dents! He greeted each of you as you entered the classroom. The morning proce- dure is modeled and taught, and you have a clear idea of what your year with him will be. He has a structure in place, and you know what it is! Why and When Do We Teach Standards, Rules, and Procedures? Teaching standards, rules, and procedures is the most important aspect of class- room management.
It is also the most frequently overlooked. Kids are not mind readers. They want to do well in school, and they want to meet the behavior stan- dards in the classroom. To do that, they must know more than what the standards are.
They must be taught how to meet them. They need to see the appropriate behaviors modeled, to practice the behaviors, and to receive feedback on their per- formance. Management is an established structure that allows learning to occur. Either you teach that structure, or you abdicate it (Jones, 1987).
Effective teachers spend the first two to three weeks teaching the structure. Of course, the students have work to do, but your objective is to get the management system in place. They may be doing math, but you will be teaching how to head a paper. Your instruction, questions, and feedback are all about heading the paper, not about math.
You teach standards as you establish them. You teach procedures as needed. When it is time to leave the room for recess on the first day, you teach recess proce- dures. When it is time for the cafeteria at lunch, you teach cafeteria procedures.
As Jones says, “the willingness and capacity of the teacher to prevent discipline prob- lems proactively through structure will determine how many discipline problems will need to be remedied reactively after they’ve occurred” (Jones, 1987, p. How Do We Teach Standards? Standards are very broad because they must be generalized to all situations. They consist of many behaviors and procedures. In order to make them operational, a great deal of teaching is required.
One way of doing this is through specific feed- back, especially by labeling behaviors that meet the standards. If being polite is a standard, then every time the students are polite, you label it. Statements such as “When you pushed your chair in so nobody would trip over it, you were polite,” 86 The Key Elements of Classroom Management or, “When you remembered to walk behind the speaker instead of in front of him, you were behaving politely,” give students information they need about politeness. For standards that have so many components, this specific feedback on instances of the behavior that you observe is often the best way to ensure appropriate behav- ior.
Given enough specific examples, the students begin to generalize about the kind of behaviors that make up the quality of “politeness.” You also teach standards explicitly using many different activities. When teach- ing students to be polite, have them identify examples of polite and impolite behavior at school and at home, role-play polite and impolite, write about polite- ness, or make a class book of different ways to be polite. The key is: If you want students to be polite, you must teach them! How Do We Teach Rules and Procedures? Rules are absolute; they are not negotiated. They are generally for issues of health and safety.
Rules are often broken down into procedures to make them operational. Procedures are specific and apply to just one situation. The process for teaching rules and procedures requires the same four steps: • Step 1. Identify a need and write an objective.
In terms of proce- dures, especially, you teach what is needed when it is needed. If, on the first day of school, you open the door and the students are standing in a straight quiet line, you can discard the carefully planned lesson you designed for lining up. They don’t need it. On the other hand, if they are milling around and talking loudly, you make a mental note to begin getting ready for recess 20 minutes early so you can teach, model, and practice lining up.
You will undoubtedly have several les- sons already planned and ready to go the first week, but if you don’t, once a need is identified, write a specific learning objective and then plan and teach the lesson so students meet it. Break down the task into component parts. This is an important part of most lessons in content areas and behavior. The task needs to be broken down into the teachable parts.
For lining up, the sub-objectives might be to teach 1. Walking to the line. Standing one behind the other. Standing an arm’s length apart.
Keeping arms at sides. Waiting quietly until everyone is ready to go. Teaching Standards, Rules, and Procedures 87 • Step 3. Plan the lesson.
The lesson in behavior should be as carefully planned as any lesson you teach. The elements of instruction that you feel are important for your class should be included.1 lists and describes each of the elements that may be included in a lesson.1 Elements of an Effective Lesson Anticipatory set Accesses prior knowledge or experience that helps students to master new learning. Objective What students should know and be able to do by the end of the lesson. Should be stated in students’ terms.
Purpose* What the lesson has to offer students, not the teacher.This is the “sales pitch.” Input* Information the students need to understand and perform the task.Teacher must be sure to provide all essential information. Modeling* Teacher’s demonstration and verbal description of expected behavior. Includes labeling of critical attributes of the behavior so that students have no doubt about which ones are essential to mastery. Check for understanding* Allows the teacher to be sure students heard the information and understand what to do.
Guided practice* Practice under the direction of the teacher, who gives feedback on performance. Closure Student summary of the steps of the procedure or the main idea of the standard. Independent practice* Opportunities given by the teacher for the stu- dents to practice the procedure until they attain automaticity. * Particularly important elements.
Teach the lesson. Use the same strategies to teach this lesson as you use for a lesson in any content area. It is often easier to learn by example.2 describes the process that Katie Fisher, a teacher in Hawaii, follows in order to identify a need of her students, 88 The Key Elements of Classroom Management determine an objective, task analyze, plan, and teach a lesson for a procedure. Her process can be modified for any grade or subject area.2 Process for Teaching Standards, Rules, and Procedures Analyze Student Need On the first day of school, Katie had difficulty get- ting the students’ attention when she needed it.
First she tried holding up her hand and blinking the lights.Then she resorted to loudly saying, “Quiet!” Neither strategy worked; too much time was wasted. Katie and her students needed a lesson that established a signal for attention. Formulate Objective Katie’s objective was to have students respond to the signal “May I have your attention please” by 1. Looking at the teacher.
Listening until the teacher says, “Start work.” The objective needs to be specific. Katie began with the end in mind. Analyze Task Katie broke her objective down into the following component objectives: 1. Learner will know and understand the signal 2.
Learner will know and understand teacher behaviors 3. Learner will demonstrate the three behaviors specified in the main objective Plan Lesson Katie used the template in Figure 7.1 to plan her lesson on responding to a signal for attention. It is up to the teacher to decide which elements to include. Teach Lesson (See main text for Katie’s lesson.) Sample Lesson Lessons to teach procedures are as different as lessons in any content area.
The script, which is included below, contains the exact words that educator Katie Fisher used to teach her students to respond to a signal. This is a directed lesson, and it is a very effective and efficient way to teach students rules and procedures. Teaching Standards, Rules, and Procedures 89 But, it is not the only way! Katie planned this lesson by using the steps of lesson design (see Figure 7. Anticipatory Set “Imagine that you are driving along a street and just approaching a corner.
You thought there was a stop sign there, but it was not visible. A tree branch was cov- ering it. What might happen?” [Wait time] “If you were thinking, ‘I’d be really con- fused about whether or not to stop,’ you’d be exactly right. The stop sign is your signal to stop your car.
You don’t see it, so you don’t know what to do. “Remember yesterday when I tried to get your attention to give you directions? I flashed the lights, I waved my arm, I finally yelled out, ‘Quiet!’ It took much too long to get your attention, and you were late to recess. What was the problem?” [Wait time] “Raise your hand if you think it had something to do with confusion over the signal.” [Teacher checks hands and asks some students to share their thoughts] “You are right. You did not recognize all my actions as signals.
Like the stop sign, it is hard to obey the signal if you don’t know what the signal is.