Personal contacts with students

• Foster positive relationships.
• Greet students at the classroom door.
• Be polite.
• Model good manners.
• Be a good listener.
• Treat students with respect and kindness.
• Seek and meet in hallways.
• Start conversations with individual students.

Journals

• Write regularly to each student.
• Make no corrections; students simply answer your questions and ask questions.

Attend your students’ extracurricular activities

• Watch intramural games.
• Go to an event at or away from the school.
• Interact with students at recess or on a field trip.

Display student work

• Create bulletin boards to display outside classroom.
• Ask for students’ work for models.
• Send students to show their work to another class with school leaders, other teachers and visitors.

Explore students’ interests and demonstrate a sincere interest in students as individuals

• Be sincere, truthful and honest.
• Give out a student interest survey.
• Engage in student conversations.
• Interact with parents and guardians regularly.

Adapt curriculum

• Differentiate lessons to meet the learning needs of every student.
• Foster student understanding of the link between the activity and the intended learning outcomes.

Create an inviting atmosphere and establish a positive accepting atmosphere

• Greet students at the door.
• Use politeness.
• Encourage students by using specific praise.
• Show dignity and respect for students by both modelling and displaying posters, rules and so on.
• Decorate the classroom (bright colours, posters, displays).
• Create a quiet zone (rugged area, table at back and so on).
• Create a place to store individual materials (sense of ownership).
• Create, teach and reinforce behaviour and cleanup rules to keep your classroom a positive (and safe) place to be.
• Create centres, for example, a writing area, a problem-solving area, a listening center and a viewing corner.
• Have students create displays.
• Display students’ work, pictures, writing and so on respecting FOIP.
• Choose apps, books, magazines, kits and games of interest to students.

Have positive expectations of students

• Post rules in classroom.
• Have no more than five rules; keep them short, simple and positively written (that is, instead of “Do not be late,” write “Be punctual”).
• Ensure that students understand the rules.

Promote students’ input into establishing class rules and consequences

• Solicit feedback from students.
• Build positive consequences into the program.

Be on the alert

• Especially during transition periods.
• Use ‘sponge’ activities when transitioning between activities.

Make clear and explicit expectations about acceptable behaviour

• Be consistent.
• Be fair and firm.

Establish consistency regarding rules, assignments and so on

• Ensure consequences are equitable and logical.
• Ensure the consequence is a measured response to the misbehaviour.

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