Students who have frequent behavioural difficulties, e.g. mood swings, problems maintaining relationships, can in general be supported by:
o keeping the routine predictable;
o keeping the seating / grouping
arrangements supportive at an interpersonal level;
o shadowing the students
inconspicuously, and articulating authentic encouraging comments, phrases and
giving a smile at the right time;
o developing mutually understood
signals for when a student should stop a behaviour or needs help (look for early patterns in the data showing
such and such a behaviour usually escalates so the student can be supported in
bridling their emotion). This is especially applicable to preventing
aggressive students from hurting others, the benefit stabilises everyone’s
sense of security;
o remembering the teacher is helping
the student to build character. The student requires modelling and authentic
comments that they can attribute to the teacher as caring about them as well as
feedback from someone they esteem: and yes that’s the teacher;
o reflecting on the base needs of students to belong and learn, as well as to exercise their own personal power. Such provision should
be embedded in the pedagogy;
o providing a space and a ‘calming
box’ or calming activities with sensory materials and if possible soothing
music;
o timetabling creative art as it
helps students who have internal barriers to work through issues. The provision
of regular art lessons, creative writing, playing music or even listening
appreciatively to music will over a period of time help students to have the
life skills to moderate their emotions - allowing regulated expression of their
inner connections;
o allowing the withdrawn student to
watch safely from a distance, part of a successful re-entry can be established
by the student getting time to observe the modeling other students are
providing;
o creating a couple of soft cozy
options for quiet reading, think about the interior decorating details: given
what we have make something possible;
o reading ‘angry’ books and
discussing the issues individually and with the group. In reciprocal reading
groups make sure you as the teacher are a part of the discussions when sections
concerning anger are being discussed;
o modelling coping strategies. Highly
emotional students are usually dealing with many issues or a major one (at
home, at school or on the bus) and are becoming aggressive at a point when they
are overwhelmed;
o being sure to give the quiet
students in class as much attention as the extroverted and the aggressive
student, it’s fair and serves as an ongoing learning experience for the
attention seekers;
o remembering the ABC in student data
gathering, sometimes it can be useful to respectfully name and communicate the
identified feeling to the student so they might begin to understand and learn
other options;
o planning decisions based on
behavioural data (who/where/when/what) and the behavioural analysis (ABC):
A antecedent (what happened in the minute before or the day before)
B the behaviour (the exact behaviour, e.g. not ‘defiant’ but he told
the teacher to “ >>>” or refused to do the work because … )
C consequences refer to the events that immediately follow the
occurrence of the student’s challenging behaviour. Examples of consequences
include the attention paid by an adult in response to the behaviour, as well as
the activities and objects the student either escapes or has access to as the
result of the behaviour, i.e. look for patterns.
