If you're working with a difficult class and nothing that you're doing seems to work, then keep on listening. In this episode, we explore the 7 deadly sins of classroom management. These are things to avoid at all costs if you want to see more positive, successful student behaviour in your classroom. This is information every teacher and educator needs to know. Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My co host is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and, of course, students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're gonna share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world. So you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Hi there. My name is Simon Currigan, and welcome to this very special 200th episode of School Behaviour Secrets. This week, I've mostly been thinking about how there are 7 days in a week. You know, it's funny that, isn't it? 7 days. You don't find that number anywhere else. There are 24 hours in a day. Nice even number, divisible by itself, 12, 8, 6, 4, 32, and the ancients knew what they were doing when they picked that 1. 12 months in a year. Again, nicely divisible. A 100p in a pound or a 100¢ in a dollar. Both fit nicely into the decimal system. Easy to manipulate mathematically. Even looking at the old system of LSD, there were 240p in a pound. Look. There it is again. 240, divisible by 240, 120, 80, 40, 30, 10, 8, 64. It just goes on. And on these numbers were all planned meticulously by their creators. And then 7 days in a week. Feels odd, but all of those numbers were carefully chosen. They're part of a system. Oh, 7 is no accident. 7 didn't just happen. You see, some people would say, we get the number 7 from how long it takes the earth to orbit the sun, but that's a bit convenient. No. Open your eyes, people. We just cracked open the lid on a conspiracy proof of the deep state at work, the hand of the Illuminati, the malign intent of the billionaires who gather at Davos. They specifically wanted 7 days in a week to oppress the masses. Look at where we find the other sevens, 7 deadly sins. The people of Israel mourned for 7 days. 7 is the number of a negative moon. It took the leper, Naaman, 7 dips in the river Jordan to restore his flesh, 7 colors of the rainbow, then that's a lie. There are more than 7 colors in the rainbow, 7 samurai, 7 heaven, 7 Harry Potter books, and the biggest smoking good of all, 7 swans are swimming. Don't get me started on those, guys. The clues are all there, and we'll do more on that article next week. I'm joined today by my cohost, Emma Shackleton. Hi, Emma. Like the number 7? Indifferent. Unlike you, obviously. It's a big thing. Time for a quick question. As always. Emma, when MORI polled the British public of the following 7 deadly sins, which did the public admit to committing in the last month the most? Was it envy, gluttony, anger, pride, lust, greed, or sloth? Oh, okay. I'm guessing the survey was anonymous, and I'm also guessing that there was more than one sin admitted to in the last month. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm interested in in the one that came top of the poll. Right. Here's my analysis then. Which was the most? Right. So what were their name? Envy. Yes. Probably. Especially with social media stuffing everyone's perfect lives down your throat. Gluttony. Probably. Restaurants offering all you can eat deals, for example. Anger. Well, everyone seems to be getting angry about something these days. Pride? Probably. Lust? How old were the people that they surveyed? Greed? Yeah. Consumerism at its finest. And sloth? Oh, I love a bit of sloth and Netflix on a Saturday afternoon. So I don't know which one was the most. Was it anger? Go on. Enlighten us all. I thought for a minute your answer was gonna be yes. So you are correct. The answer was anger. 53% of people admitted to being angry in the last month, and that's very on brand for school behaviour secrets. And they could do worse than going back and listening to episode 169 about Lifemorts and the hidden forces that drive anger. Pride came in 2nd at 36%. Sloth was 3rd. Only just 3rd at 33%, and then gluttony at 31%, all very close together. Envy at 26%, and lust only at 25%. Lust was the sin that people said they enjoyed committing the most. We haven't done an episode on that yet. 20% of people said they hadn't committed a deadly sin this month or were, of course, committing the 8th deadly sin of self deception. I was gonna say of being a lying toad. Wow. That's a lot of sin. So why are we talking about sin? What's the link? Right. So I'm obsessed by the number 7 today. So today, we're exploring the 7 deadly sins of classroom management. These are the things that set you up not for success, but for failure in terms of getting the whole class focused, working, and behaving positively in your classroom. This information, knowing what to avoid, is important for all teachers and teaching assistants or any adults working in a classroom, so do keep listening. 1st, though, if you are listening to this podcast and you enjoy the show or you're finding any of it useful in terms of SEMH insights and randomness, don't forget to take out your podcast app and hit the subscribe button now. That means you'll never miss another episode. Subscribing also helps us because it helps to grow the show, and that means we can get the information out to other teachers, school leaders, and parents who might also find it helpful. We've also got a free download that complements this episode perfectly. It's called the classroom management score sheet. And inside the score sheet, you'll find a list of 37 factors that have an impact on classroom management. So the score sheet is a list of things that you are either doing or not doing. Think of it like a clear road map to improve your presence in the classroom. The score sheet is based on thousands of observations that Simon and I have conducted between us, so you know it's based on sound classroom practice. And if you're a senior leader supporting a colleague, say, with their classroom management, it can help make your feedback and the action points that you give them even more clear and objective. Get your score sheet directly from our site. We'll put a direct link in the episode description. If you like it, open up your podcast app, tap the episode. This will bring up the notes that go with today's episode, and you can just click on the link at the bottom. With that said, it's time to pull on some Welly's, turn on our flashlight, and creep gingerly into the guano carpeted bat cave that we call behaviour. So this week, I thought it'd be fun to cover those 7 deadly sins of classroom management. Essentially, I think what we're saying here, Emma, isn't it? Do this if you want to be terrible, if you want behaviour to be terrible in your classroom. And you know what's interesting? Even really experienced teachers can fall into the trap of making some of these mistakes. And when you're in your class day after day after day, it's hard to be reflective about your practice. So sometimes we just get into habits, and we do things, and we don't really analyse why we're doing them. So, hopefully, today, there will be something for everybody to reflect on. Yeah. Absolutely. Sometimes when teaching is just so relentless, you repeat the same thing over and over and over because you don't have time to be reflective. So let's jump into our 7 deadly sins of classroom management. Shall I start the first one, Emma? Yeah. Go on. So the first deadly sin is deliver a boring lesson introduction. So let's think about what happens at the beginning of most lessons. You'll bring the kids together for some form of whole class time where you you tell them about what they're gonna learn in the lesson and give them some information that they're then gonna need to work and all manipulate or you sort of teach them through a skill that they're gonna need during the main part of the lesson when they actually do the work. So let's think about what happens when that lesson introduction is boring. So we'll bring the children together, and they'll sit on the carpet or you bring them together for whole class time, they'll listen to the teacher. What happens when we don't sound excited, when we don't sound enthusiastic, when we keep repeating ourselves over and over and over, And when we keep the kids sat there too long is that the kids get fidgety or they'll start shouting out or they'll they'll become bored. And what we need to do is actually engage them in the learning and not just keep them sitting there passively listening for a long time. The longer kids are sat there passively listening, the more we're gonna start getting low level behaviours. One of the things I've noticed, not just having observed, like, 100 and 100 and 100 and 100 of teachers talking in the real world, but also having people give me feedback on my lessons is that teachers tend to overtalk. What we tend to do is hammer the learning points over repeatedly over and over and over until we're confident that 99.9% of people in the room have got the point to go away and do the work. And what that does is it leads to lesson introductions that are just too long. Where most of the children are chomping at the bit to go and do the practical part of the work, we're holding them back. So we need to avoid we need to be aware of those weaknesses. We need to make sure that we're timing our lesson introductions so that they're at the right length that we give the kids the information they need to be able to complete the lesson and do the work, but not keep them for too long. And the other thing we need to do is deliver that lesson introduction with enthusiasm. Like, we're really excited about the material. And this is a problem we can get when we're teaching the same material over and over and over. Let's imagine you're a history teacher, and it's the 250th time you've taught this lesson in the last 5 years. For the children, it's the first time they've ever learned about it. They're coming at it completely fresh. And what we don't want to do is because we've taught that material and we've experienced it over and over and over to sound jaded and bored by it. Because when we open our mouths, if we sound like we're not that interested, then they aren't going to be enthusiastic. We're not gonna spark their interest in the material. One thing I've noticed by watching lots of good teachers delivering really positive, exciting, interesting lesson introductions is they carry you along with their enthusiasm. Your enthusiasm or your lack of it is catching. And if we want to have a successful lesson, by often by focusing on the first 10 minutes, the first 15 minutes where we bring the kids into the room and we get that whole class introduction right. We actually set ourselves up for success. We'll set ourselves up for failure. So if you want to set yourself up for failure, deliver a boring lesson introduction that goes on for a long amount of time where you don't sound interested in the work, and you'll achieve your negative success. Okay. So deadly sin number 1 was deliver a long, boring lesson introduction. Deadly sin number 2 is threatening that you're going to give a consequence and then not following through. So I saw a really good example of this recently in a primary school classroom. There was a boy in the class, very unsettled, not necessarily dysregulated, but probably bored, humming, tapping, rocking on his chair. It was really distracting for the teacher. The teacher had asked him several times to stop tapping, stop rocking, sit still. She tried to redirect him. He'd carried on. He'd carried on. He'd carried on. And in the end, she said, at playtime, you are going to stay in and pay me back the time that you have wasted in this lesson. And the boy looked at her kind of shrugged his shoulders, settled down a little bit for a few minutes, and she continued with the lesson. Now I was lucky enough to be observing also across the playtime, and it just occurred to me. I thought, I wonder what is going to happen when it gets to playtime. And what happened was 2 children had a bit of a falling out. The teacher got distracted and was managing them. She sent the class out to play, and the boy who was supposed to be staying in and missing his playtime, of course, slinked off with the crowd and ran out to play. And the teacher dealt with the incident between the other two children and sent them off to play, and then we had a couple of minutes to grab a drink and have a quick chat. And what was really interesting was that she'd completely forgotten that she told the first pupil that he was going to have to stay in at playtime. And don't get me wrong. We've all been there. We've all done it. But from that boy's point of view, he learned that actually, Miss said he had to stay in, and, actually, she's not gonna make me stay in. So I'm just gonna carry on and go out. So she didn't follow through on that consequence. The other thing is that didn't only affect how he felt about the teacher. Other children in the class, particularly the ones who were fed up by the lesson being disrupted, will have also clocked that she said she was gonna keep him in and make him pay back the time, and then she didn't follow through with that. So her credibility actually takes a little bit of a nosedive there when other children start to think, oh, okay. It's all talk. She's not gonna follow through. So what kids learn when we don't follow through with consequences is that it's all a bit chaotic. Somebody might tell you something's gonna happen, but it's not actually going to happen. And that can also be true of positive consequences, things like rewards. You know, when you say to a child, maybe a young child, you might say, come to me at the end of the lesson for a sticker, and then you completely forget, and they forget momentarily. But later on, they remember, and they think, that sticker's not really that worthwhile because it was promised to me and then forgotten all about it, so it didn't have any status. So it's really, really important that we set clear boundaries. If you say that something is going to happen, you have to do everything in your power to make that happen. That's important for all children, including those with underlying conditions, whether that's ADHD or autism, and also children with a history of trauma, children with attachment difficulties. They need to feel and believe that you are reliable and trustworthy. So when you say something is going to happen, you make it happen. And as always, it's not perfectly clear cut because although you do have to be reliable and consistent, you've also got to use your common sense and your knowledge of the pupils in front of you and allow a little bit of flexibility sometimes as well. So it's hard to get the balance right, but by and large, if you say something's gonna happen, it's got to happen. If there are then extenuating circumstances, which means that you do have to be a bit flexible, then that's okay. But your intention should always be to see things through, and that's how the kids know that you are fair and consistent. So Emma's touched on the next one. So number 2 was if you say you're gonna give a consequence, then don't do it. That's the deadly sin. And number 3 is say your issue a reward and then don't do it. And Emma's given one example. I'd like to give you an example from my teaching career, actually, and to show the impact of that mistake. I remember working with one class once, and they love to play the game heads down, thumbs up. It's a game it's a quieting game, actually. It's a really good calming game that you play with the whole class and everyone in the class puts their head down. They close their eyes. They put one thumb in the air, and you have some people at the front of the room, say 3 or 4 kids, and they creep around the classroom, and each child puts down one thumb. The end of the game, there are you say you got 30 kids. You've got 4 children who've had their thumb put down, and then they have to guess which person chose them from the the sound of the footsteps and the noises they heard. And I had a class that loved playing this, and we were doing some really quite difficult work during class time. It involved a really, really long piece of writing. And I said to them, look. You've all worked so hard on this. At the end of the day, I'll make sure we put 10 minutes aside, and we'll play this game heads down, thumbs up that you really love. And then at the end of the day, my lesson overran. We were doing some art, and I'd sort of miscalculated how long it was gonna take to put away all the materials. And by the time we got all the room cleared up, it was time to go home. And then the kids got really excited. They were saying, no. We're gonna play heads down, thumbs up now. We're gonna play heads down, thumbs up. And then, essentially, the bell went off for me to sort of dismiss them because all the parents were waiting to collect them outside. And they looked really, really deflated. And as they walked out the door, I did think to myself, oh oh my goodness. What have I just taught them? What have the children just learned from that? That if they put in extra effort and work towards something, and I promise them some sort of reward to motivate that, then they've learned that I don't always follow through. And that will make them doubt me in the future. That will make them doubt whether it's worth putting in the investment and trying hard to achieve that goal. It's gonna make it harder to motivate them in the future, and that will get harder and harder if I do that more and more in the future. There was a really interesting study. There's something called the marshmallow test, which is really well known. We've spoken about it on the podcast before, which is if you get a child in a room, say the child is about sort of 4 years old, and you you put a cookie or a big marshmallow in front of them, and you say, you can have that marshmallow or cookie at any time. But if you can wait for 10 minutes, then I'll come back and I'll give you another cookie or another marshmallow. So the idea is the child learns delayed gratification. If they can wait that 10 minutes, then a bigger reward comes or they can take the cookie now and get a smaller reward. And what's really interesting is they're all people have made all sorts of comments about that study. But what researchers found was if the researcher on day 1 did that study with the children and they promised that follow-up reward. So the child hung on. They restrained their impulses, and they expected the second marshmallow to come. And then the researcher walks into the room and says, oh, I'm sorry. We're out of marshmallows or cookies or whatever it is. I don't have one to give you. Then when you follow that up a few days later and put the child through the test again, they are way, way, way more likely just to eat the first marshmallow because they don't believe you're gonna follow through with the reward. So if we're gonna motivate kids with things like exciting rewards, then they have to believe, just as they have to believe we'll implement consequences and boundaries, they have to believe in us as teachers and adults that we will follow through with the rewards that we promised them or the rewards will be ineffective. So if you want terrible classroom behavior, say you'll issue a reward and then don't do it. Okay. So the first one was deliver a boring lesson introduction. The second sin was threaten a consequence and don't follow through. The third one is say that you're going to reward the children for something and then don't follow that through either. And the 4th deadly sin, a little bit contentious, but the 4th one is give everybody exactly the same work. Now we've been around for a long time in education, and things come and go. At the moment, especially in the UK, there is this leaning towards all of the children moving through the curriculum at the same pace, which might look like everybody having the same work. However, we all know within your class of children, they are going to be at different stages with different subjects. They're gonna have different strengths, different abilities. If everybody has got exactly the same task, it's going to be difficult for everybody to achieve that and for it to be pitched at the right level for them. So for example, if you've got children in the class who can't do that work, if they can't access it for whatever reason, of course, they're going to get bored. And we know that when kids get bored, that increases dead time, and we know that where there's dead time, there's low level disruptive behaviour. So if the child can't do it and it's just plonked down in front of them, they're gonna find a way to avoid it. They're gonna occupy their time doing something else, probably something that you don't want them to do. Equally, if the work is too easy and children just race through it and they finish really quickly, they too are likely to have a bit of deadtime on their hands, and they are also likely to engage in low level disruptive behaviour, getting out of their seat, asking for a drink of water, asking to go to the toilet, chucking a rubber at their friend, whatever that might look like. So the work has got to be pitched at the right level so that it's challenging enough for children to move forward and to learn something from it. And we've also got to remember that for some children in the class that you'll have who've got low resilience, there's a real difficulty with them being presented with work that they feel is too hard for them. It's just too much for them to try to attempt that work because there's such a massive fear of failure and maybe of being discovered that they're not clever enough or they're not as good as their friends. So those children who are really worried about failing because they perceive that the work is too hard, they are also likely to engage in disruptive behaviour. So deadly sin number 4 is giving everybody exactly the same work every day regardless of where they are at. Sin number 5 is you, the adult, sitting in the same place all the way through the lesson. There's something called proximity control, which is a lot less sinister than it sounds. And, essentially, imagine you've got a classroom and the children are supposed to be working quietly, and you get a couple of kids talking at the back of the room, say, on the right hand side. The kids at the back of the room, if the teacher just sits at the desk throughout the lesson at the front of the room, they know that the teacher probably isn't monitoring very carefully what they're doing. And what you can do is just by getting out of your chair and walking to the corner of the room and standing by that table, you are sending the message to those children that I am monitoring your behaviour. And for many children, just having the adult standing there just for a short time is enough for them to stop engaging that behaviour because if you're doing the wrong thing, it's fairly dumb to do the wrong thing when there's adult next to you because you know you're gonna get caught. And so you just go and stand over there, and it creates this kind of pool of calm. And then after you stood there for a little bit, you walk around to another table and you might help that table. And that creates a new pool of calm at the new table, and then you move to another table and you sort of settle those and work with those, and that creates a new pool of calm. And the thing is as we move around the classroom, we keep creating these pools of calm. And if you leave one table for too long, that pool of calm kind of evaporates. It dries up, so you have to return to the same place. And simply by physically moving around the classroom, we can keep behaviour calm. We can keep the kids focused without having to say a single word. You don't have to do it like a prison warden. You can do it in a friendly way. You can go there and start supporting kids with their work, but we're sending the message, I know what's going on in this corner of the room. Teaching, effective teaching, effective classroom management is often about being really mobile and getting loads and loads of steps in. So if you want children to feel like their behaviour isn't being monitored and you want to see avoidable low level behaviour in your classroom, sit behind the desk at the front of the room for the whole lesson. That's deadly sin number 5. Can I just add in there really quickly as well, Simon, that it's up to you to make sure that your furniture fits into the room in such a way that you can navigate your way around that classroom? And I know that's tricky. I go into a lot of really old Victorian buildings, and they've got too much furniture in them, to be honest. But where you can, circulate the room. You need to be able to get to all of the areas of your class room. Sometimes, particularly where desks are arranged in rows, I see the teacher teaching from the front, and they only ever enter into the first quarter of the classroom because they don't go past that first row of desks. So they were always at the very front. So the kids at the back and in the corners, they kinda know that the teacher's never coming back there. It's about setting yourself up to be successful. So I suppose the the add on to that deadly sin is make your classroom furniture like an obstacle course that you can't get past. That'd be sin 5 and a half. So, the 6th deadly sin then, this is a good one, the 6th deadly sin is when you keep on sending children out of class for undesirable behaviour, sending them to a senior member of staff. So we've all seen this before. This is where the classroom teacher has tried to address the behaviour with a pupil. The pupil might be showing defiance or not listening or not changing their behaviour, so the teacher resorts to either calling for the deputy or the head. As the adult in the room, you really want to be dealing with about 99% of the behaviour yourself. And I know some people are gonna throw their hands up in horror, but bear with me. When you send a child out of class, you are accidentally sending out a little bit of your power and authority with that child. You are communicating that you can't cope with their behaviour or you can't cope with them, or sometimes, actually, you don't like them. And when you do that, the child learns that when they exhibit particular behaviours, that's gonna push your button, and you're gonna send them out, and they are going to get access to somebody that they don't get to see so often in school. Somebody usually perceived to be higher up in the hierarchy, so that might be a member of the leadership team or even the head. So the child works out the way to press the lever to exit the classroom and to spend time with a more important or more senior member of staff that they don't get ready access to is through the root of bad behaviour. And the power of the senior management is their distance. Because they're not around all of the time, they're not with that child all of the time, it might be more appealing or more attractive for the child to spend time with them. So each time you send a child out or you send for a member of senior staff to deal with a child's behaviour, you're inadvertently communicating. You don't actually have to do what I say, but you do have to do it when the big guns arrive. And, of course, the caveat to this is there are going to be occasional extreme cases of behaviour where you are going to need backup. You are gonna need another member of staff to come to help, or you are gonna need a child to go out if they're dysregulated, for example. But where you can, work on time in with that student rather than time out. And another little tip there, if you do have to call for an additional member of staff, make sure that you, as the class teacher, however early you are in your career, make sure that you are still calling the shots. Make sure you are leading on what happens, and that will mean a conversation with the other members of staff. But when a member of SLT comes to your door, don't just metaphorically shove the child out and tell them to go with that member of staff. Make sure you are communicating what you want to happen. And this is called the illusion of control. It makes the child and all the other children who are listening believe that you are still in control of the situation even though another member of staff has come to support you. They're not doing it for you because you can't do it. They're doing it with you because you've requested that support. So sin number 6 was keep sending the kids out to senior members of staff. Sin number 7 is a different one, really. It's more of a mindset one. It's blame the kids. There are 2 types of people in the world. Okay? There are people that have what's called an internal locus of control, and there are people that have an external locus of control. And they think about the world very, very differently. People with an internal locus of control feel like they have agency. They feel that they make things happen. They have an impact. They make choices that lead to outcomes. They're the kind of people that make change happen. If you have an external locus of control, you feel like things happen to you. You feel like you are responding to all sorts of things that are happening around you and outside you and that you don't really have any control about what's happening. So let's think about those ideas from the perspective of classroom management. If you've got an internal locus of control in the classroom and behaviour is not working well, you feel like you can have an impact. You feel that there are choices you can make and things that you can do that will make the situation better. That is empowering. If you have an external locus of control and you think, well, it's the kids and it's the way they brought up and it's social media and the school's behaviour policy doesn't work, you feel like a victim, and you feel like there's nothing you can do to make things better. And that's a really, really stressful place to be. Having an external locus of control makes you the victim in the situation, and you are never going to find the things that are gonna move the classroom on. So if we're working in a classroom and behaviour is not right, or I would say, actually, working in any classroom or doing any job of any capacity whatsoever, we need to take an internal locus of control, which means when there are problems, we focus on the things that we can change as the adult. And there are always things we can change and make better. You might look at the environment. You might look at how the tables are set out. You might look at how your displays are encouraging on task or off task behaviour. You might look at your seating plan and thinking about which children are sat next to other children and being really strategic with the way you set up those social relationships. You might look at your lesson structure. You might be teaching in a certain way with a certain lesson structure from a certain scheme of work. And if it's not working for your class, you might go to senior management and say, for my children in this case, it's not working. I would like to change it. You might look at how you form relationships with the children. You might look at the work tasks that they are being given, how they're pitched, the kinds of tasks. Is it individual or social learning? You might look at the quantity of positive and negative feedback that you're giving the kids throughout the lesson. You might look at the first 5 minutes of the lesson and how you invite the children into the room and make you feel welcome and how you focus them to their work. These are things that are within our control that nearly always lead to immediate improvement. But to get them done and done well and to recognize them, you need an internal locus of control. You need to feel that there are choices that you can make that will result in positive change. I see this a lot. Often, we're called into classes where children are unfocused or social relationships aren't working and and lesson times just don't feel productive. And we have a system called the classroom reset, which is all about changing the environment and using a specific lesson structure and putting a focus on behaviour positive behaviour for sort of 2 to 3 weeks. And it has, to be honest, a 100% success rate when all of the elements are done and done well. And it focuses on things that are within the teacher's control. So our 7 deadly sins today were, number 1, deliver a really boring lesson introduction. Number 2, say you'll give a consequence, then don't do it. Number 3, tell the children that you're going to give them a reward, and then forget. Number 4, make sure everyone has the same work all the time. Number 5, sit in the same place all day long. 6, keep sending the children out to senior members of staff. Number 7, blame the kids. And that's what we've got for you today. If you found today's episode useful, please take just 10 seconds to rate and review us by opening up your podcast app. When you leave a rating or review, it prompts the algorithm to share school behaviour secrets with other school leaders, teachers, and parents who are just like you who would benefit from this information, and it gives us a bit of motivation ourselves to continue making the podcast in the future. We do love reading about what you think about the show. Thanks, everybody. That's all we've got time for. Have a brilliant week, and we'll see you next time on School Behaviour Secrets. Bye for now. Bye.