Welcome to Behaviour Bites . One quick tip per week that you can put into action immediately to help you crush your classroom management . This is your host , Claire English , and this is your Bite of the Week . Hello teachers , welcome to this inaugural , first ever Behaviour Bites , and I hope it's the first of many bites to come .
And this week's behavior bite is in absolute alignment with what we're focusing on this month and it is low level behavior . So if you haven't gone to listen to the other episodes , the last five are just golden , golden nuggets of low level behavior .
Goodness , all about nonverbal pedagogy , all about crafting a teaching presence , all about the quick things that we can change to make immense amounts of progress with our classroom management . So I suggest you go back there and listen as soon as possible . But onto today's behavior bite .
Students will always and I mean always follow our example before they follow our verbal instructions and what this means when we send verbal messages to our class .
Whether it's you know , go , sit down in your chairs and get your pens out , get your books out , or you know you're listening to whatever I need to say now , or you're doing this independently and quietly . Whatever it is that you are saying verbally to your students .
What you're sending to students non-verbally , what you're communicating to your students non-verbally , is going to be the favoured message for the brain . We are always sending non-verbal messages at the same time as we're sending these verbal messages , and your non-verbals are always going to be the favoured message .
Just think if somebody's crying and they're saying , oh , you know , I'm okay , I'm okay . Are they really okay ? And of course , there's more nuance to this when we consider neurodivergence . But it's all about modeling what we want from our students .
If you want students to be working independently and quietly , don't keep talking loudly to students around the room , because it gives them nonverbal permission to do the same , to follow our example , even if the verbal instruction was do this quietly and do this independently .
Another example that I see really often is when students are in an assembly and we're expecting students to be paying attention , yet we're up the back whispering to our colleagues , making comments to our colleagues and having a chat . There's so many more Like in the moment to moment , day to day . We are doing this constantly . We are sending these verbal messages .
We are sending nonverbal messages along with them . So your action point , your takeaway , is just to think to yourself am I right now modeling what I want for my students ? Constantly ask yourself that question , because I would bet that the answer to that question for a lot of us is at least one no a day .
And when we tune into those no's we can make seemingly small shifts that add up to something immense , huge , transformative for our classroom management . Okay , teachers see just a little , teeny , tiny bite of classroom management goodness that anybody can listen to and implement immediately .
So I hope you like that little behavior nugget and I will see you next week for another .
Bye , for now , this behavior bite was brought to you by the Behavior Club , my wonderful membership for teachers , where every single month I'm releasing training around a focus area , quality resources to lighten the load in every sense of the word , a brilliant community that I'm in daily answering questions and giving personalized support , and just so much more .
So consider this my personal invite to come on in , take a look around , and I absolutely can't wait to see you there . Help you feel confident , help you feel capable and just crush classroom management . Head to the-unteachablescom forward , slash TBC or find the link in the show notes .
Me and my behavior clubbers are popping on a cuppa and pulling up a seat as we speak .