Seven Ways to Get Students to Follow Your Instructions

7/29/2019 Seven Ways to Get Students to Follow Your Instructions

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www.behaviourneeds.com FREE REPORT: Seven Ways to Get Students to Follow Your Instructions

Rob Plevin behaviour Needs Ltd 2013 Take Control of the Noisy Class

FREE REPORT: Seven Ways to Get Students to

Follow Your Instructions

i)Make sure you have their full attention before giving

instructions

Make sure they are looking at you and not fiddling with a pencil, turning

around, looking at a book, etc. One quite ingenious way of getting eye

contact is to hold your pen up in front of you and then move it slowly so

that it is in front of your face. The pen will attract the students gaze and

they will then follow it until their eyes are in line with yours. It works

like magic!

ii)Be congruent

Congruence is the process of making sure that the silent messages we

give through our facial expressions, body language, voice tone, pitch and

volume clearly match the actual words we use. When youre being

congruent, all aspects of communication are in sync. In short, we clearly

mean what we say.

Our students will read everything about our approach, our gestures and

the way we look at them before we actually start to speak and if we get

any of these crucial aspects wrong they will have decided to listen, switch

off or retaliate before we even open our mouths. It is the silent messages

we unconsciously give that are often at the root of students decisions to

behave as they do.

Are we giving them the message that we are tired and worn out? If we do

theres a good chance theyll either ignore us or push a little harder to tip

us over the edge when we ask them to do something theyd rather not.

Are we giving them the message that were angrywith them? If so they

might well turn against us completely. Tougher students might retaliate

there and then while the more timid ones might hold a grudge and seek

retribution at a later date. In either case, they are unlikely to behave as

we would like and at best we will get reluctant compliance.


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The waywe give instructions has a massive impact on how students

respond to them. We can give the impression that we are a pushover, a

threat or a leader depending on the silent messages we give out. Use

assertive body language claim your space in the classroom, adopt anopen stance, use a calm, measured speaking voice and avoid frowning,

scowling or pointing.

iii)Make sure your instructions are clearand unambiguous

Students need to be told exactlyand specificallywhat you want them to

do.

John, you need to stop tapping your pen, stop swinging on your chair

and look this way.

will have more chance of getting the desired outcome than:

John, stop it!

A request like this leaves us open to questions

Stop what, miss?

and then before we know it, were into an argument.

Avoid vague terms like quietly, properly, sensibly and respectfully.

What is sensible to them isnt necessarily so to them. For example:

Get on with your workquietly please.

Straight away we have opened the door to more confrontation. For one

student quietly means whispering while for another it means talking in

their normal speaking voice. Another student might take this as meaning

there is no real rule on noise levels at all. And what you probably meant

was work in silence!

In each case, a student who is challenged for making too much noise or

swinging on their chair will almost certainly protest that they areworking

quietly or sitting properly. Its not surprising that vague instructions

like this dont always result in the behaviour we want to see and are often

a source of arguments. Wherever there are ambiguous instructions there

will be a student breaking the rules.


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To make sure the students keep within the noise levels or sit

appropriately we want we would need to clarify what we mean by quietly

or properly. Younger children might need a tangible representation of the

word they could be shown a ruler and told to use their 30cm voices ortheir partner voices instead of their yard voices (yard being the big

concrete thing they play in, not the imperial measurement). For older

students we might simply clarify our instruction by demonstrating the

volume we are referring to.

To get a student to stop swinging on a chair more explicit instructions are

required:

John, sit on your chair like everyone else so that all four chair legs are on

the floor.

It may sound pedantic but it avoids opportunities for the Iam sitting

properlyarguments.

iv)Smile

It takes the sting out of your instructions for students who rebel against

authority and it shows you are confident.

v)Ask them to confirm that they heard the instructions

Darren, what did I just ask you to do?

Kyle, tell me what I just said please.

John, repeat the instructions please so I know you heard me.

This is the key step because once theyve told you, they cant ever come

back at you with I didnt understand or I didnt hear you.

vi) Give them a reason

In 1978 a group of research psychologists investigating human behaviour

tried to determine the factors which make people more likely to do

favours for others. They set up an experiment involving a photocopier

machine and tried three different approaches to get people to let them

jump the queue:

1. Request only:Excuse me, do you mind if I go before you to usethe photocopier?


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2. Made up or irrelevant reason:Excuse me, do you mind if I gobefore you to use the photocopier because I have to make somecopies?

3. Real reason:Excuse me, do you mind if I go before you to usethe photocopier because Im in a terrible rush?

So a third of the time they just asked to skip the line, a third of the time

they gave an irrelevant reason (ofcourse they were there to make

copies!), and a third of the time they actually gave a real reason (Im in a

hurry).

The research yielded interesting results. When the researchers gave a

reason for wanting to queue-jump they were allowed to do so far more

than when simply making the request without a reason. The mostsurprising part of the study was that it didnt seem to matter what the

reason was a totally irrelevant reason (Can I go first? I have mice at

home) worked just as well as a legitimate one.

The point we can take from this study in relation to our classroom

management strategies is that when making a request for a student to do

something, we should back up it up with a reason: Can you do this

please and this is why it would be a good idea).

It doesnt necessarily have to be a goodreason Get on with your work

because otherwise you wont get it finishedshould work just as well as

Get on with your work otherwise youll have to finish it at break; and

will undoubtedly stimulate fewer arguments and protests.

Try:

Help me by quietening down please, I have a hangoverheadache

rather than snapping Be quiet!

Line up please, because were running out of time.

rather than Line up please.

Giving them a reason for doing something also means you can attach

importance to the instructions without coming across as officious and

bureaucratic:


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When you come to see me at lunch time get here for 12:30 so we can

sort this out without it interfering with your lunch too much.

rather than

See me at lunch time, without fail.

Play around with it and see what happens but dont get carried away or

you might get in trouble (give me your dinner money because Im badly

paidwill almost certainly make you unpopular on yard duty).

vii) Use closed requests.

Starting a request with thank youbefore theyve done what youreasking them to, gives the clear impression that we expectthem to

respond positively. We all know the effect of positive expectations so it

comes as no surprise that requests phrased in this way tend to give

favourable results, often having a quite magical effect on students.

Thank you for lining up straight away.

Sometimes people dont pay attention to the information they are

receiving; only the structure of phrasings and sentences. If you can fityour request inside a structure that people are used to complying with,

theres a good chance that theyll comply. By following up with some quiet

1:1 praise we can cement the fact that the student has successfully

followed instructions.

Thank you for doing as I asked it makes my job much easier.

For more classroom and behaviour management

ideas like this to help you succeed with

challenging students, jump over to our

breakthrough teacher resource:

Take Control of the Noisy Class

its available right now.
http://www.behaviourneeds.com/noisyclass/video-1http://www.behaviourneeds.com/noisyclass/video-1

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Seven Ways to Get Students to Follow Your Instructions