The Unteachables Podcast

#69: How to give instructions that students get (and follow!!). Avoiding classroom confusion and chaos by using the 'Get Ready, Get Set, Go!' strategy.

• Claire English • Season 5 • Episode 69

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This week, I dive into Pillar 5 of "It's Never Just About the Behavior." In this episode, I emphasize the importance of clarity in your holistic classroom management approach, and provide practical strategies to ensure students understand and meet expectations.

Today I discuss:

  • The Importance of Clarity in Expectations:
  • Why clear communication is crucial for student success
  • How assumptions about student knowledge can lead to misunderstandings and a whole bunch of chaos
  • Get Ready, Get Set, Go Strategy: A step-by-step guide to delivering effective instructions
  • Examples of how to implement this strategy in various classroom scenarios

Today's episode is based on Pillar 5 of my book It's Never Just About the Behaviour: A holistic approach to classroom behaviour management

Leave me a review for the book and send me a screenshot and I will send you 13 posters of the beautiful illustrations to pop up in your staffroom or office! Thank you so much, your kind reviews mean so much and help me reach more educators!


Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!

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Claire English:

If you expect it, you must explain it, and that is not just for instructions, that's for everything. If you expect them to complete a task in a particular way, if you're expecting them to be walking down to the oval in a certain way, you need to explain it to them. Oh hi, teachers, welcome to Unteachables podcast Congratulations. You have just stumbled across the best free professional development and support you could ask for. I'm Claire English, a passionate secondary teacher, author, teacher mentor and generally just a big behavior nerd, and I created the Unteachables podcast to demystify and simplify classroom management. I want this podcast to be the tangible support, community validation, mentorship, all those pretty important things that we need as teachers to be able to walk into our classrooms feeling empowered and, dare I say it, happy and thrive, especially in the face of these really tough behaviors. So ready for some no-nonsense, judgment-free and realistic classroom management support. I've got your teacher friend, let's do this. Hello, wonderful teachers, and welcome back to another week of the Unteachables podcast. Firstly, how are you really? How are you going? I know that, depending on where you're listening, it's either the very middle of the year, which can be a very big slog looking at the rest of the year ahead of you. So my friends here in the Southern Hemisphere smack bang in the middle of the academic year and it's getting colder, so I'm sending all my strength to you and for those of my friends in the Northern hemisphere. You're nearing summer or you're in summer, depending on where you are in the world, but I think that you need to celebrate that and I'm excited for you, and go and fill your cups. And if you don't need to listen to this podcast for six weeks, and so be it. I'm not going to be offended. You go and enjoy your summer and I'll be here when you get back.

Claire English:

So, if you are just tuning in, since episode 65, so five episodes ago I've been focusing on the book. It's never just about the behavior. That has just been released my book, my first book, very exciting stuff. So I thought that to just give you a taste of what's in the book and just to you know I don't know, get it out there in the world I guess I would do an episode every week based on one of the chapters of the book which I call pillars. So the pillars of the book, and we're five episodes deep into that. So if you are listening to this podcast for the first time. It's probably a good idea to go back to episode 65, because it will give you a bit more of an idea of where we've come from. However, it's not essential. You don't have to listen to them in order if you don't want to. The book is definitely intended to be read in order, but because I'm just taking little snippets here and there out of the book and popping them into the podcast Just to show you all of the gold that is in there, you don't have to listen in order. That's 100% fine. Something has happened in the last week that is very exciting as well. I wasn't expecting this to happen until next week. The book has been released out in the wild in the UK. It's been released anyway here in New Zealand. It's taking a lot longer than it would in the UK and I know that in the US it's not out yet either, but in the UK the first sightings of it's Never Just About the Behaviour are out there and I am just incredibly excited.

Claire English:

If you have left a review, I just want to say thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. It is so lovely to hear that the book has been received in the way that I intended. Some people said that and I'm just thinking about not reading it off anything I probably should have prepared some little reviews to read on the podcast today, but alas, I didn't. But I'm thinking about it. Somebody said that it feels like they are just sitting in the staff room with me having a coffee and I'm kind of talking about students that they're working with and helping them through that. That's exactly the way that I intended this book to feel, like that kind of vibe, and it just makes me so happy to hear there's so many beautiful reviews already, which I'm very impressed with. Like, you've read it really quickly and reviewed it really quickly. Um, but it's just the way that I intended when I was writing it. So thank you so much. Um, if you do leave a lovely review, please let me know, send a little screenshot to me via email or my Instagram, because I am sending out a bit of a present to say thank you.

Claire English:

I'll send you the link to download 13 posters made out of the illustrations in the book. They are so beautiful in color. I was so lucky to find Susie Hacker, the illustrator that I did when I did, and she just brought my vision to life. I was kind of like the mad dash before the book manuscript was due and I was looking at the images that I had created myself and I'm like these suck, I'm just not. I'm not an illustrator. I wanted them to kind of represent and visual like you know, have like a bit of a visual for the content that I had in the book and I'm like no, I want these to be special. I want these to be something that people can connect with. I want them to be something that can go up on a staff room wall and really reflect the content of the book and just be a beautiful reminder of that. So I would love for you to have a copy of those. Please just send a screenshot of your review to me and I will send those out to you as a thank you gift.

Claire English:

Now on today's episode, it is a nugget from Pillar 5, which is, be Clear, the golden rule for this pillar is that every single thing we expect from our students we need to explain it, because we make so many assumptions about our students. We make so many assumptions that they know where the boundaries are, what our expectations are, what to do with their work, how to enter the room in a way that we want and all the rest of it. And it's so easy to assume this because we've internalized it so much and it's so important to us that they conduct themselves in the classroom in this particular way. But are we actually communicating number one, what the expectations are every single day, in the day-to-day? And even if we are, are we giving them the skills and the strategies and the knowledge that they need to actually successfully meet those expectations? Are we providing them with the support to do that? Are we being really clear about what to do when they walk into our rooms?

Claire English:

A perfect example of this is I had a teacher reach out the other day about a dilemma she was having. She shared a class with another teacher. I don't know if anyone has had shared classes in secondary. I don't know. If you do it in primary school, you can let me know, but in secondary it is very it's very common to share classes just because of the way that timetabling works, and anybody who timetables in a big, big high school I've done it in a smaller high school, but anyone who timetables in a big, mainstream high school I am just my hat is off to you. It is a puzzle all in itself. But anyway, back to the point, people end up sharing classes and if you have done this, you know it can be really challenging because some teachers have really different expectations to you. So this teacher shared with me. I'm really struggling. I share a class.

Claire English:

This teacher has really different expectations and this class is tough. So she was having immense difficulty because every single lesson that she had them so it was a 50-50 split every single time that she had them there would be pushback, there'd be oh, but miss, so-and-so does this? Oh, you're no fun. So there was all of this pushback because the boundaries and the expectations and the way those were communicated were very different. And this just reinforces the fact that we can't assume that our students know what to expect, because every single context that they go into around the school will differ, whether you're a secondary teacher or a primary teacher. If they had a teacher the year prior, their expectations would be different, the way that they did things would be different. And if you're a secondary teacher it is even harder because you don't have every single lesson to create that culture. You need to create that culture in three lessons a week, three 60 minute blocks If you are lucky.

Claire English:

I work with teachers that are math not math teachers sorry, music teachers who have one lesson with each class a week or a four night, that is. That is mind-blowingly challenging to you know. Try to get that culture going around expectations. So I really wanted everybody in this particular pillar, I wanted everyone to have some really clear, actionable, easy strategies to use that communicate their expectations really clearly and just doing so in a way that students get, they understand and they're successful in. So I've put together a clear classroom toolbox and I share that in the pillar. It's all about communicating your expectations in a way that students get and they buy into.

Claire English:

And I also don't just mean expectations around behavior, I mean expectations around what students actually do in the lesson. How do students understand the work that they're doing? How do they engage with the work? Are they completing the work to the best quality, to the best quality they could, or are they just rushing through and saying, oh miss, I'm all done and putting up? And I know that a lot of you can connect with that as well. You know they rush to it and go, all done, pen on the desk and then that's it, and it's really hard to get them to re-engage with that work. You know it's really challenging to, you know, convey the expectations around all of these things, but all these things are really important.

Claire English:

So in this toolbox are things such as success criterias, timers, getting students prepared and ready to follow your instructions, how to instruct students on their behavior, what to say, what not to say, what's really unclear, what is more clear. So it gives you this really nice comparison between two approaches, where I know that, like the mistakes that I wrote this pillar based on the mistakes that I was making in my first few years and you know, all throughout, until it kind of clicked and I went, oh gosh, I've been confusing the hell out of my students. So one thing that I wanted to share with you today was because I can't do all of them justice in a single podcast episode. Obviously, that's why I wrote a book. But I did want to talk about one strategy that I include in the toolbox that is so useful. It's so helpful, and that is get ready, get set and go.

Claire English:

So it's really about giving instructions that students get and students follow, not having to constantly go round and round or, you know, ask them to do something and everything just, you know, falls into chaos, like think about the last time you told your class to clean up at the end of the lesson. Do they do that really easily? Is it really systematic for them, is it really hardwired for them, or is it a little bit chaotic? Think about the last time you asked your students to get themselves into groups for an activity or get started on a task or anything else you've expected it to do. Do they nail it every time? Or are there some students who are hanging back a little bit confused, having their own chats, doing the opposite of what you've asked? That's what this strategy is for.

Claire English:

So one thing I want to say before we get started with it is, if you are struggling with this, it is important to remember that this is just in the territory of being a human being and we're not automatically able to process and understand every single little bit of information, every single little bit of data that comes in to our brains. Like it's just not the way that we operate as human beings. We feel it goes to a knowledge filter and it's very choice theory. It goes to a knowledge filter, it goes to the filter of like. Is this actually important to me and, as a matter of fact, a lot of the information that comes our way, we immediately spike out because it's not important to us. I'm not saying that what you're asking your students to do isn't important to you, but it might not be important to them and it might just be immediately spiked out, which is why this strategy is really powerful. So it's not your fault, it's not their fault. It just is the way that we are as humans. But there are certain things that we can do to mitigate it and to support them to follow those instructions with ease. And we don't have to worry about it. We don't have to be, you know, I don't want to say bashing our head against the wall, because it's quite crude, but, like you know, it feels like that sometimes.

Claire English:

So, whether you are providing verbal instructions or visual instructions, a mixture of both is always a winner. When appropriate, I want you to follow the get ready, get set and go strategy. So the first thing is get ready. What you do when you're getting students ready for instructions is give them a heads up for what is about to happen. I'm going to give you examples of this in a moment. Get set. You then provide explicit and clear instructions on how they're going to be successful in doing this. What are you looking for? What's the criteria here? And then go. All systems go. When you're confident that they've got it, set them off to follow the instructions, keep an eye out and just use verbal reinforcements to keep them back on track, whether it's, you know, saying well done you know, I can see James over there really nailing this or it's oh, you know, I can see half the class are doing it. Do we need any more support here? So get ready, get set and go.

Claire English:

So I'll go through two examples, and these examples are in the book as well. So the first example is when we say to students I want you to move back into the groups you were in last lesson and I have. I use these examples because they're examples of what I have done myself so many times, and then I wonder why things are going really badly. So instead of saying, move into the groups you were in last lesson, you'll say something like this so get ready, you'll shortly be moving back into the same groups as you were last lesson. So you're preparing them, you're getting them ready for the instructions that are going to be happening For this. So you're getting now, you're getting set. So for this you are going to be going back into the same place as you were in, you're going to be bringing only your writing books and pens and you're going to be sitting down ready for my instructions in three minutes. So these are really clear instructions that students are going to follow. If you want these to be followed in the best way possible, you can also have them projected up on the board. You can type them up on the board as you're giving instructions, whatever it is, try to make them visual if possible, because a lot of students can't actually follow multi-step instructions. Again, not being able to follow multi-step instructions is not their fault.

Claire English:

Okay, and then go. Are there any questions on what you were doing last lesson? Are there any questions on who you were working with last lesson? Pop your hand up, wait. I think I read something the other day that was when we ask a question of our students, the average wait time for us to receive an answer is 0.9 seconds. As teachers, that is nowhere near long enough for students to think and process what they want to say, kind of formulate the answer in their mind and then be able to say that I'm a 35 year old woman. I have worked in leadership in schools. I do this work with all of you and still, if I am in a meeting or if I'm in a group and somebody poses a question, I feel like in my brain I need to get things really straight before I say things. So give me like a minute of wait time. I'm not in my brain. I need to get things really straight before I say things. So give me like a minute of wait time. I'm not saying to give people a minute of wait time in this particular scenario, but it's something to really think about for when you are asking students to give their feedback. Okay, are there any questions? Okay, move into your groups. Now I've got three minutes up on the board. Have a timer up there, something really visual. If you are going to give them a time limit to do this, make sure it's a really fair time limit. Pop a timer up on the board so they know how long they have left it's not something arbitrary and they know that you are going to be holding that expectation once they see that you have placed that boundary around it. So that's the first example. So move back into your groups. You were in last lesson. No, we don't do that because it's not really clear that you know they'll go off and do whatever. Get ready, you'll shortly be moving back into the same groups you were in last lesson. Get set for this. You're going to be going into the same places. You were in bringing only your writing books and pens and you'll be sitting down ready for my instructions in three minutes and then go. Are there any questions? Okay, now move into your groups Three minutes up on the board. I'll be waiting for you then, okay.

Claire English:

The second example is again something from my own personal experience. When you send students into the library or you've, like, walked them down to the library and you get them to go in and there's all these different classes and they're doing their own little bits and pieces and it's a shared space and you don't want you know them to go in there and really disrupt. And it's quite embarrassing as a teacher when you just send your kids in. Also, if students know they're going to be using the computers at some stage, that'll pop on the computers. You have to get students back down to listen to instructions. It can just be a little bit of a nightmare.

Claire English:

So the way that I talk to students about this is by following the get ready, get set and go strategy. So I say, get ready. We're going to be heading into the library now so we can do some research on the computers. Get set, you are going to be going straight in sitting on the floor in front of the whiteboard because I need to give you instructions for the task. Remember, we're in the library, we need to use our private voices and then go. So, okay, head on in now, year seven, and then, as they're kind of going in and settling and sitting down, just reinforce them.

Claire English:

So, great job, henry. Brilliant work. Getting ready, ben. I can see you know half the class is ready and waiting for instructions already. Fantastic, let's get started. So you're constantly reinforcing what you want them to be doing.

Claire English:

Honestly, get ready, get set and go is such a simple strategy. It's just about trying to increase the clarity of the instructions that we're using in a way that just gives them the tools that they need to be successful at what you're asking. You are increasing the clarity and, along with it, your chances of having students successfully meeting those expectations you have along with them. So that was clear. That was the pillar on be clear and, if ever in doubt. If, again, I said that last podcast episode.

Claire English:

If you remember one sentence, go back to this golden rule, which is if you expect it, you must explain it. And that is not just for instructions, that's for everything. If you expect them to complete a task in a particular way, if you're expecting them to be walking down to the oval in a certain way, you need to explain it to them. Okay, if you want to read more, of course you can grab a copy of it's Never Just About the Behaviour, which, if you're in the UK, people are starting to get now, so you can order a copy. I know I've seen on Amazon Australia that the copies are being sent out, but I haven't seen anyone in Australia receiving it yet. So fingers crossed. So I can't wait to hear what you think. Remember, if you send a review screenshot, send it to me and I'll send you a gift. And I'll see you in next week's episode where we dig into pillar six, which is be challenging.

Claire English:

That is the biggest pillar in the book and I love it so much because it's living, breathing proof of the fact that it's never just about the behavior. It might be helpful to tell you where you can get the book. You can go to the-unteachablescom forward slash book or it probably is easier just to Google it in the country you are from. If you're from the US, australia, the UK, the link the-unteachablescom forward slash book will have a link for you. Otherwise, just Google it. It's never just about the behavior. Clear English and it will pop up in your country and it will give you the best way for you to get a copy of it. Okay, lovely teachers, you have a lovely week and I will see you next time in the same place.

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