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Strategy: Teaching Behavior Expectations

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Use this strategy to improve these areas:

Behavioral Expectations Clear

Use of Reprimands

Positive to Negative Ratio

Interactions with Students

Level of Disruptive Behavior

Strategy Overview

How To

Strategy Tool

Reflection

Goal Setting

Overview

An expectation is a globally stated standard of conduct that is composed of positive characteristics that lead to success. It is important to teach students specific behaviors that represent these broader important expectations. Examples include “Be Respectful, Be Responsible, Be Kind, Be Safe, and Excel.” Think of behavior expectations as guidelines for success.

Students enter school with many different experiences. Therefore, it is important not to assume students will understand what being respectful (or other socially important constructs) look like in the context of the classroom without being taught, much like we teach students to read and write.

Purpose

Unlike learning math facts or letters in the alphabet, learning social behavior is more abstract for many students. Clearly defining and teaching behavior expectations in the classroom can reduce errors that students make simply because they don’t understand what a particular behavior should look like in the classroom. Teaching behavior expectations makes it clear to students what they need to do to be a successful student, reducing the time you spend away from instruction to correct behaviors.

There are five elements of effectively teaching behavior expectations:

1) Define behavioral expectations so that they are developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive, positively stated, specific, and observable.

2) Make the expectations relevant and important to students by telling them the purpose of the behaviors.

3) Explicitly teach and review behavioral expectations.

4) Practice behavioral expectations.

5) Regularly reinforce and reward students for meeting behavioral expectations.

How To

How to Teach Behavior Expectations

You can start teaching behavior expectations from the beginning of a school year. In addition, you may find that students benefit throughout the school year by reviewing the behavior expectations. The following strategy tools provide ideas for both.

Strategy Tool

Use the Starting the Year Off Right strategy tool to help you identify behavior expectations and help teach the expectations to students in your classroom at the start of the year.

View Tool Example #1

Use the Teaching or Reviewing Behavior Expectations Throughout the Year strategy tool when students are struggling with expectations throughout the year (e.g., after a break from school or when 20% or more of students don’t seem to be meeting expectations).

Reflection

Take a moment to make sure your plan is going to work.

Goal Setting

Use the following form to set your behavior expectation goals.

References to Other Relevant Resources:

Sprick, R. (2009). CHAMPS: A proactive and positive approach to classroom management. Eugene, OR: Pacific Northwest Publishing.

Reinke, W., Herman, K., & Sprick, R. (2011). Motivational interviewing for effective classroom management: The classroom check-up. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.