Prevent Poor Behaviour by Motivating & Engaging Pupils

Pupils who can't see the point of the work find something else to do, and that's where a lot of low-level disruption starts.

You'll look at two kinds of motivation, the want to learn and the need to learn, and how to build both. Hook pupils at the start of a topic with a video, a debate or a guest speaker, set tasks with a real audience, and show them where the learning leads. Then hold the bar high with habits from Teach Like a Champion such as 'no opt out', where the pupil who couldn't answer a question ends up answering it.

The thinking draws on the Pygmalion effect, the finding that pupils tend to do better when their teachers expect more of them. Planning for behaviour this way means less of your lesson goes on managing it.