Discipline Methods Revisited

The Clip Chart

The clip chart is not as effective as I’d hoped it would be. It’s still proving useful, as many students get excited when they move up, but those students who are usually in trouble become accustomed to being low on the chart; so much so that it doesn’t bother them. Perhaps it would be more effective with a first language classroom.

English times and zones

As we are teaching bilingual classes where English is the students’ second language, we have designated English times. From the first bell in the morning until they finish regular classes (not including afterhours lessons/activities) the students are required to speak only English. This ‘English Only’ is restricted to the classrooms themselves and the passageway area directly outside the classrooms; thus they can still enjoy their breaks. Naturally this restriction is lifted during any lesson in which they are taught in Chinese, or if a teacher asks them a question in Chinese.

The principle has told us she likes the idea and so will be officially implementing it, getting proper signs made and announcing to all in the various assemblies that the areas outside all the bilingual classes are English only.

English Police Officers

This is another fun idea we’ve hit upon, and it benefits the teacher by passing some of the responsibility over to the students. Each week we assign a few students in each class to be English police officers. If students are speaking Chinese when they shouldn’t be, then it’s up to the other students to tell them not to. If they don’t listen, then they get reported to a police officer.

My police officers carry small books with them in which they write down the names of other students who won’t stop speaking in Chinese. Of course, if a police officer is caught speaking Chinese too many times, then they can be subsequently “fired” from their position.

One of the other teachers has found that her students were a little overzealous in their approach to using the books, so she replaced them with police badges which the students wear on a lanyard around their necks and proudly stick it in the faces of students who are not obeying the rules.

Chain link

This is an interesting idea which works well. It requires two things. The first is a little sacrifice on the teachers’ behalf, as they’ll be required to spend a little of their own money at some point. The second thing is to keep everything visible.

First you select something you don’t want the children to do (i.e. speak Chinese during English class, shout or scream, be badly behaved, etc.) and each time they do that thing the teacher will write a mark on the board. At the end of the day, the marks are counted up. If they have fewer than ten (a number which works for my class) then they get another link to their chain. If they go over ten, then they don’t. If they go over ten by an increment of five, then for each increment they lose a link to their chain (e.g. 15, 20, 25, etc.). The chain links are made by taking strips of paper and gluing/stapling the ends together.

You attach the chain somewhere where the students can easily see it and tell them that when the chain reaches the floor, you’ll give them a party. This could be anything from a lesson of only games to simply buying them some cake.

It’s important to start them off with several links in their chain. Not only will it be more impressive than one, but it’ll also motivate them as it’ll seem attainable. On the flipside it’ll also give you links to remove if they misbehave too much.

Fortnightly Rewards

A friend of mine who is a teacher at a cram school does something similar. He keeps a record of the students’ behaviour on the board. Every two weeks, if all the students are well enough behaved, then he takes them to a shop near the school and lets them choose anything that costs under a certain small amount. That alone is entertaining, because often he finds students clubbing their money together in order to get something nice they can share. It works out to be a fairly cheap way to buy discipline.