Manage Pupils’ Behaviour to Improve Teaching and Learning

The big incidents get the attention, but it's the pen-tapping, chair-swinging and chatter that wear a lesson down. Most of it happens at the start, at the end, and when the class moves from one task to the next.

Seven strategies help make good behaviour the norm in your room, such as greeting pupils at the door and treating every day as a clean slate. Rewards and sanctions get put in their place, as part of preventative, corrective and supportive approaches, so what happens after a sanction gets as much thought as the sanction. And there's practical detail on routines: lining up, a task waiting on the desk, and rehearsing how books get handed out against the clock.

Half an hour spent practising routines at the start of the year pays you back in every lesson after it.