A recent chat with a friend of mine (over several glasses wine) saw us talking about her recent experience working in a high school with a group of young teenage girls. The girls were known for being shy and uncooperative, so she knew she would have her work cut out.
She didn’t have long to work with the girls, and she had lots of content to get through but that she needed to build rapport at the beginning of the class and set ground rules right at the beginning to control the way the class behaved.
So she did what most teachers are trained to do, she stood at the whiteboard, with a marker in her hand, and asked the class what they thought the ground rules should be.
It was like pulling teeth, the group didn’t know what to say or what was expected of them, and she had a very hard time getting them to contribute (hence the several glasses of wine!)
So I shared a favourite technique of mine with her, and now I want to share it with you to.
Split the class into small groups of 5 or 6 and provide them with pens and butchers paper.
Rather than just asking them to set ground rules, write a series of questions on the board
– what would you like behaviour to be like?
– what should language be like?
Write questions based on what the students want the classroom to be like, feel like and what they want from you.
Then leave them alone!
Leave the groups to answer the questions on their butchers paper and stay out of the way.
Once the groups have finished answering the questions, they can come back together and discuss what they came up with. You can combine the answers they gave to create a “ground rules” which have been written by the students, for the students, without you standing in painful silence at the whiteboard.
Give it a go – and share with me how it went J
– Sam