Create Rules & Contracts for Disruptive Behavior
Tips on Dealing With Trying Students in the Middle School Classroom
Oct 3, 2009
When middle school students are on task, they are learning. When they are misbehaving, they are disrupting the learning process for everyone in the room. The bad behavior affects all students.
Create Classroom Rules
By the time students hit middle school, they know the basic rules, and they know what is expected of them. When students are allowed to help create the rules for the classroom, most will take ownership of them. Also, some will take on more responsibility of helping enforce the rules because they were allowed to create them.
Making Group Rules
Teachers can put a large piece of paper on the wall where students can write their ideas for the classroom rules in marker. Give each student a chance to write something on the paper. There will be some duplication, but it is interesting to see what is written.
Voting on the Rules
Next, the teacher can compile all of the rules into a list. The class can then "vote" on the top ten rules for the classroom. When students do not follow the rules, the teacher can remind the student who made a bad choice that the class was allowed to create the rules.
Create Behavior Contracts
When students continue to break the rules, something must change to change their behavior. One idea is to create a behavior contract. This is to be agreed upon by the teacher, student and the parents. Before writing a contract, the teacher needs to call the parents about the child’s disruptive behavior.
Contact the Parents
The teacher should tell the parents that a behavior contract is needed because the student is disrupting the learning environment for the rest of the students. Also, the teacher should explain that the classroom rules were a decided upon by the students.
Writing the Contract
There are two key things that need to happen so that a behavior contract will be successful. First, the contract needs to be simple and not complicated. Second, the parents and school administration need to be supportive of the contract.
The parents, child and teacher should sit down and write up the contract. Choose up to three specific disruptive behaviors that they student does on a regular basis to list on the contract. Then, decide on consequences for those behaviors. Also, there should be rewards for when the student has completed a week without the disruptive behavior. The consequences and rewards can be things that parents can help support at home.
Follow-up on Contract
The contract should have an expiration date of no longer than a month. Each week, the parents should receive a progress report of how the child is doing. The teacher and parents can discuss how the rewards and consequences are working. After a month, the parents, child and teacher can decide if the contract should be extended or if the contract is no longer necessary.
The behavior contract is just one way teachers can work towards changing disruptive behavior. If parents and administration are supportive, the contract will have a better chance of working well.
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