What is it that’s so difficult about walking in a line? Is there some genetic abnormality that appeared about the same time as public education that makes it all but impossible to walk in a single-file line 100 feet to the media center?
I have to preteach each and every class before heading down the hall to the library or to the computer lab, or anywhere for that matter, and of my four classes, only one manages to do it consistently well. Another manages most of the time. The other two are just disasters.
Time for Natural Consequences.
What is the natural consequence of people walking down the hallway disruptively? Kids in the classrooms they pass lose learning time. The cost is time; the consequence, then, should be time. And that’s why our sixth period spent some portion of the twenty minutes of pre-lunch outside time practicing walking in a straight line. But I really didn’t want to belabor the point, and as always, I didn’t want to make it seem vindictive. Time for classroom management technique number two: provide choices, not threats.
“So, folks, we have a choice before us: either we’re going to walk down the hall in a manner befitting mature eighth graders and then we’ll go outside, or we’ll continue to try it until we do get it right.”
Of course they nailed it the first time, which is for them both good and bad. It’s good because they got to go outside immediately; it’s “bad” because they’ve once again shown that they’re capable of it and that there’s no reason for them to do otherwise.
That’s just it, man. THEY KNOW HOW TO BEHAVE. They’ve been in school for how many years, so they know the drill. In spite of their slack-jawed, put-on looks of confusion, they really do know. I’ve done the “practice the walk” thing many a time. If possible, I do it on the way to lunch, so they’re losing lunch time as we practice. It’s a pretty powerful motivator. That only works with the class I take to lunch, of course. Natural consequences are a beautiful thing.
They do indeed know, and most of them will even admit, eventually, that they are making a choice to behave that way. But, as you said, natural consequences — which is why it’s always a consequence applied the day after, because I don’t think it would bring many tears to spend class time practicing this stuff.
This was with my sixth period class, which I also have 5th period for lunch — that outside time is a precious carrot I have for that class. If only I had the equivalent for my second period class.