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A fundamental skill in the teacher’s arsenal, and one that seems effortless to the casual observer, is in fact the result of various iterations of trial and error. I’ve seen and practised a few variations which I explain below. These are from the ICT point of view which assumes students are facing away from you which obviously makes it slightly more challenging. I’ll update the post if I come across any new ones.

Request and named follow-up

• Issue a polite request for quiet: “Thanks everyone”, perhaps accompanied by a clap if particularly noisy
• Identify a few usual noisy students and add: “Thanks James… Thanks Simon… Thanks Sarah…”
• The students addressed will stop talking and the class will hopefully follow suit to avoid being named

I first saw this done by a teacher with a great deal of respect and presence, which are beneficial to the technique working. The downsides are it takes a bit longer than the others but it’s very low key and controlled and if you can master it you will probably save your heart and voice a fair bit of damage!

Three calls

• “First call for quiet”, “Second call for quiet”, “Third and final call for quiet”

A fairly simple technique which works pretty well. Designed to be used with a strike system (as below). After a while, students will get used to paying attention from the first request.

Shout and wait

• “Quiet please!”
• Stand, wait and stare

This usually only works if you have either an exceptionally loud voice or a massive presence, if students don’t respond to the first request, you run the risk of begging for quiet.

Three Strikes

• <Student continues talking>
• “Okay Joe, you’re talking after I’ve requested you stop, that’s your first strike; three and it’s a detention”

Whilst not a method in itself, it’s pretty effective when used in conjunction with others. Detention can be replaced with a smaller sanction such as loss of privileges, extra minutes after the lesson etc. Students tend to work well when on their second strike, for obvious reasons!

Yet another large gap since the last PGCE post, oh dear. Easter break came and went; it was split equally between doing absolutely nothing and panic-working after doing nothing. The following graphic (shamefully stolen from a Uni presentation) shows the “pressure points” of the PGCE year, the second trough being the Easter break.

PGCE Presure Points

I wish I had a better memory to enable me to remember things which would actually be useful to write about, the only thing that springs to mind recently is behaviour management.

As a teacher, behaviour management is a massive – some might say primary – area of learning and practise. As a trainee, it’s no less important, and probably more difficult. The infamous “don’t smile before Christmas” piece of advice for trainees/NQTs has its foundations in reality but obviously needs to be taken with a JCB-load full of salt.

No trainee wants to be a strict teacher, we all remember that teacher at school: always yelling and popping veins, dead poet’s society they were not. What we also forget is the teachers we thought were cool and fun, probably were also firm when they needed to be; there’s being strict and there’s being fair and consistent.

As a trainee, you’re (probably) young, you’re new to the school and if the students have their wits about them, they probably realise the fact another teacher is in the room means you’re not a proper teacher. For all of these reasons, it’s important that you aren’t identified as a pushover. It’s important to separate your personality (e.g. happy, serious, loud, quiet) from your behaviour management.

Now I’m not professing any great skill in this area, indeed the fact that the topic is fresh in my mind is it’s my main area of development right now, but it seems to me that you have to be clear about your expectations and be consistent in the application of those. If I ever discover the magic method I’ll be sure to let everyone know!