Teaching Students Good Manners & Respectful Behavior

A few years ago I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Hal Urban speak at a workshop.  A veteran teacher, Hal taught for more than 30 years in public schools in California and says he loved every minute of it.  Hal proposes that we can teach our students about the value of having good character and using good manners no matter what subject we teach or what sort of school we teach in.  He says that everyone, no matter what their background, can agree on the following:  1) The Golden Rule (treat others the way you'd like to be treated), 2) Societies (and therefore classrooms) function better when everyone uses good manners.  Hal convinced me that it's OK to take a few minutes of instructional time to set the tone for my classroom and to help teach students something even more important than French!  I followed his advice by talking to students about good manners and the power of words at the beginning of the year.  Hal suggests placing signs near the clock (because students will look there often) as a visual reminder to keep their words positive.  Here are the signs I put up this year.


Hal tells students that negative words can be as powerful as spraying poison in a classroom, so he uses an aerosol spray can as a visual reminder to all to keep their words from being poisonous.  I made one for my desk.  Here's a photo.


I pick up the can whenever I hear any name-calling, whining, complaining or any other type of negative talk and remind everyone not to "spray poison".  This really works.  I knew that for sure the day I walked by another classroom and heard one of my French students instructing their classmates to stop spraying poison.  It's a simple way to raise everyone's awareness of what's coming out of their mouths.  

After several strategic discussions about manners and the power of words, I ask students to write the rules of our classroom.  Here's a photo of my students pledging to themselves and to me that they would do their best to follow the rules they've written this year.

  


These are just a few of the things I learned from Hal.  Taking the time to implement these ideas has resulted in a truly positive classroom environment where mutual respect is the norm.  I highly recommend it. 

BE the change you want to see in the world.  It can start with YOU in your classroom!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fun Review Game

Image
I learned about this review game at a conference and tried it out with my students.  It's called  Organized Chaos.   It would work well for any subject!  Here's what you do: Write 8 questions that cover the topic you want to review. Make 8 copies of each question (so you'll have 64 sheets of paper). Give a few sheets of paper to each student. Ask students to crumble up each individual piece of paper into a ball. Tell students to throw the balls onto the floor, in the center of the room. Ask students to get out a sheet of paper and number from 1-8. Tell students to get up and start uncrumbling paper balls.  They write the answer to the question they find on their sheet of paper.  Then they crumble up the paper into a ball again and throw it back into the center. Repeat until they've found all 8 questions and answered them all. Collect their answers or go over the correct answers as you see fit. Put the garbage can in th...
Read more

Mock Oscar Awards!!!

Image
Hello fellow teachers!  I'm so excited to share this new idea with you!!  I tried it for the first time in my French II class last week, and it was an amazing success on so many levels.  I imagine that many of you ask your students to make videos for an assignment as I do.  This activity was done right after my students turned in a major video project which was due right around the time of the Oscar Awards.  In the past, I have asked the class to vote on the best video & I awarded a prize to the winner.  I liked doing this because it inspired students to produce something they were really proud of, rather than just making sure they met the requirements to get a decent grade.  I also discovered that my students often surprised me.  Sometimes students who didn't shine in other areas showed amazing creativity & ingenuity that I hadn't seen before.  But this year, I took this idea to the next level.  I held a mock Oscar Awards cerem...
Read more

Student Projects for Le Petit Prince

Image
I imagine that many of you out there in the blogosphere enjoy reading Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry with your upper level French students like I do.  I've collected many ideas over the years for activities to use while teaching this wonderful book.  I think these ideas  were passed on to me by my friend Mary, and I believe she found them on the FL Teach ListServ .  I use these at the end of our study of the book after students understand the book well.  I usually give students the choice of one of the following:  Write, create and illustrate 4 postcards written by the Little Prince to his flower from some of the planets he visited in the book. Create a board game or a card game that uses questions based on Le Petit Prince.   Illustrate the game and write original questions and answers to be used in the game. Design and create a planet that the Little Prince might have visited, maintaini...
Read more