Top Behaviour Monitoring Tools for Primary School Children

One of the top priorities for primary school teachers is keeping their class under control. Ensuring good behaviour and managing a class of attentive, interested, calm and well-behaved learners is essential for any productive classroom. Of course, this is often easier said than done!

Primary school children are learning and growing every day, and their social and communication skills need to be developed and encouraged which will help them to understand what positive behaviour is.

Primary school teachers, therefore, must establish practical systems, classroom rules and behavioural management techniques to guide pupils and demonstrate to them not only what good behaviour is, but why it is important to behave well both inside and outside of the classroom.

So how can teachers encourage good behaviour, and what are the most effective behaviour monitoring tools to help them?

Here are some useful tips:

Setting expectations

Setting clear expectations for classroom behaviour at the start of each term is essential. Try to do this with your class by getting them to suggest the rules themselves. If pupils feel as though they are involved in the process, it won’t seem as if they are being told what to do, and it makes it easier for teachers to point out that the class as a whole came up with the guidelines and agreed to them - so, therefore, should stick to them too!

Implementing routine

Having a class routine can be helpful when it comes to monitoring classroom behaviour and reducing disruptive behaviour. If your pupils know that at the start of each lesson they come in, hang up their coats, sit at a specific desk and must be quiet as soon as you raise your hand to signal the lesson is beginning, there is a precise routine established which will help to guide them towards behaving well.

Using reward systems

Reward systems can be useful when it comes to encouraging pupils to behave. Celebrating good behaviour is favoured by many teachers and having a transparent, clear rewards system in place helps pupils understand what your expectations are, and encourages them to meet them.

Reducing distractions

Younger children tend to have shorter attention spans. Therefore it can be challenging to get them to concentrate on anything for long periods of time. Look around your classroom and see what you can do to reduce possible distractions. This might be noise, the way the seats are arranged, ensuring disruptive pupils don’t sit near one another - anything that keeps their attention on the learning, will help your class to focus.

Using visual prompts

Another effective method is to use visual prompts to help keep all eyes and attention on you. Children are more likely to get distracted if they have to read or write for long periods of time, so keep switching it up and using visual aids to help everyone remain focused.

Well Planned Lessons

Of course, ensuring your lessons are well-planned and executed as seamlessly as possible will also help. A well-planned lesson has clear objectives, great activities and will keep children interested and motivated to learn.

Primary school teachers also need to be able to record and monitor the progress of each student. If there are problems or recurring issues with a particular pupils behaviour, having a detailed record of this will be helpful. Some useful tools are:

Target-setting tools

Here you can look at how effectively each student has worked towards and/or met the expectations and ground rules you set at the beginning of the year. How are your pupils doing? Are there any specific problems? What could they do to improve?

Pupil questionnaires

Giving pupils the chance to think about their own learning, and what they could do to behave better, is also useful. Pupils questionnaires provide them with the opportunity to write this down and also to discuss how they could be helped to improve their own behaviour and attitudes to learning.

Weekly tracking grids

At the beginning of each week, set out behavioural expectations and different areas of behaviour to focus on. Monitor pupils throughout the week to see how well they are doing.

Every teacher wants their class to run smoothly and for their pupils to all behave well. While realistically this isn’t going to happen 100% of the time, by employing the above methods and using monitoring tools and resources, you can help your pupils to improve their concentration, communication and see a steady improvement in their learning and behaviour overall.