Specific Questions for Classroom Management

Yesterday, I discussed the importance of asking our students introspective questions when we are assisting them in correcting misbehavior.  Today, I would like to talk about 4 specific questions that you can use to improve the over-all environment of your classroom. I wish I could take credit for them, but these four questions originate with Capturing Kids' Hearts by Flip Flippin.  If you ever have the opportunity to attend a training session, I highly recommend you go.  CKH totally transformed my already well-managed classroom and made it an even more engaging place for my students to learn and feel connected to each other. 
CKH isn't just about discipline or behavior management, it's about building relationships. If you look at classrooms where teachers are highly-effective, where students are authentically engaged, and where data shows high-leveled thinking is occurring, you will almost always see a teacher who has very strong relationships with all of her students.  This doesn't happen by accident and it doesn't happen because we want it to. It takes conscious effort on our parts and a lot of work. It takes time. We cannot expect for these kinds of relationships to come without a lot of work on the front end.  CKH gives a lot of suggestions for activities and team building games that we can incorporate into our classrooms to help create this environment.  In fact, they suggest you don't even start on the curriculum until week 3.  That's right, 2 weeks at the beginning of school just working on getting to know each other.  Some teachers--and certainly some administrators--may think that's crazy but the time that is missed with the curriculum at the beginning of the year is more than made up for when the teacher doesn't have to waste time redirecting, going back over things students missed when they were misbehaving, spending time "waiting" on students.  It's shocking how effective this strategy can be when it comes to transforming a group of students into a functioning family.
One of the key elements of the CKH philosophy are the Four Questions:

What are you doing?

What are you supposed to be doing?

Are you doing it?

What are you going to do about it?

These are the original Four Questions recommended by CKH.  I actually ended up modifying the last one because it worked better for my little ones but certainly,"What are you going to do about it?" works well for thousands of teachers.  I ask,  "Can you fix it?" instead and that usually does the trick.  The premise is that, we want students to know that they are making bad choices, that they are missing out on what they are supposed to be doing, that they have come to school to learn and to do their work and that if they are doing something else, that's not acceptable. In order to be affective, the questions have to be asked in a calm tone, they must be answered, the teacher cannot stray from the questions when they are being asked, and the teacher must ask all four of them each time in the same order.  In my classroom, it got to the point where the student would see me coming and start asking them themselves or would answer them all at the same time.  They knew exactly what I was going to say and, perhaps more importantly, they understood why.

It's easier to teach a student once you've captured his or her heart.

I've never taken just this one component of CKH and tried to apply it in a classroom where other key components, such as a Social Contract, morning greetings, and warm fuzzy circles were not also implemented but if you are having difficulty keeping your students on-task, try implementing this strategy and see if it helps. I would like to discuss the other elements I listed above in upcoming posts so that those teachers who cannot attend CKH can still hear some of their great ideas. It will definitely not be the same as attending training but it can go a long way toward improving the management of your classroom.

One more thing, in order for these questions to create results, there are two things that must take place, and they are both on the teacher-end. 1) You must have relationships with your students.  If you don't have a good relationship with your students, then start there.  Get to know them, let them know you care about them. Take time to talk about the things they are interested in. 2) You must believe in the power of the questions and you must follow through. If you half-heartedly rattle them off and don't wait for answers, then, no, it's not going to work.  If you truly believe that asking your students reflective questions about why they are off-task and how they can rectify this problem will assist them in growing as students and individuals, then the questions will work.

If you've been to the training or if you have experience with this sort of strategy, please leave a comment. We'd love to hear from other educators!