Here’s a tip for quickly getting a disengaged student back on task. Like any classroom management strategy it won’t work every time with every student but it’s powerful none the less and a great tool for your classroom management tool kit.
We all know how powerful praise can be as a classroom management tool. My personal view is that when used correctly, sincere, heartfelt praise is one of the most effective strategies educators possess for managing the mood of students and increasing motivation in lessons. This tip is a novel way of using the principle of ‘proximity praise’.
Proximity praise relies on the ‘ripple effect’ where the positive feelings generated by praising individual students who are working hard or behaving well spread or ‘ripple’ around the room. The other students in the room are given the clear message that if they behave in a similar way, they too will receive positive praise. We can multiply the power of the ripple effect with a novel praise idea which someone suggested at one of our live classroom management courses recently. It’s called ‘Windscreen wiper praise’ and although it’s very straight forward, with a name like that it obviously needs something of an explanation...
Let’s say you have a student (we’ll call him ‘Damien’) who is off task and not working as he should be, rather than nagging him or directing him, which we’ve discovered Damien seldom responds to, we’ll use the idea of praising other pupils in the room with the hope that he will want some of the same. With ‘proximity praise’ we would praise any student around the room who is getting on with their work or behaving appropriately. With ‘Windscreen wiper’ praise we focus on students who are very close to Damien – particularly those sitting next to him. The idea is to subtly but repeatedly praise the students sitting on either side of him – let’s call them ‘Kyle’ and ‘Kieran’ – for their work and/or behaviour. If Kyle and Kieran are friends of Damien it will make this even more effective but it works well even if they aren’t. This is how it could go...
“Hey Kieran you’ve got it. I honestly didn’t think you’d manage that question; absolutely brilliant – it’s good to see you learning.”
“Let’s have a look at yours Kyle... ...great, you’ve really improved. You’ve got that bit right, well done. Now, how could you improve this bit and get to the next level?”
A few minutes later...
“Thank you for putting that in the bin Kyle. By the way I saw that film last night you were talking about the other day – it was really funny, thanks for suggesting it.”
“Nice one Kieran. I like what you’ve done there. I’m really pleased with both of you actually, you’re working very well, thank you.”
Do you see how it works and where the name ‘Windscreen wiper praise’ comes from? By continually engaging with Kyle and Kieran in a positive manner Damien’s head will be going from side to side like a wiper blade on high speed wondering what his two neighbours have done to attract all this attention.
Students generally like getting attention – especially if it’s positive – and by NOT giving Damien attention for his lack of effort, but instead giving it to his neighbours for their compliance, we take the power of proximity praise to the next level.
Author Resource:-
Rob Plevin is the author of Magic Classroom Management and the originator of the Needs-Focused Approach to behaviour management. A full schedule of courses and free resources can be seen on his website at http://www.behaviourneeds.com
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