The Unteachables Podcast
Welcome to 'The Unteachables Podcast', your go-to resource for practical classroom management strategies and teacher support. I’m your host, Claire English, a passionate secondary teacher and leader turned teacher mentor and author of 'It's Never Just About the Behaviour: A Holistic Approach to Classroom Behaviour Management.' I'm on a mission to help educators like you transform your classrooms, build confidence, and feel empowered.
Why am I here? Not too long ago, I was overwhelmed by low-level classroom disruptions and challenging behaviors. After thousands of hours honing my skills in real classrooms and navigating ups and downs, I’ve become a confident, capable teacher ready to reach every student—even those with the most challenging behaviors. My journey inspired me to support teachers like you in mastering effective classroom strategies that promote compassion, confidence, and calm.
On The Unteachables Podcast, we’ll dive into simple, actionable strategies that you can use to handle classroom disruptions, boost student engagement, and create a positive learning environment.
You'll hear from renowned experts such as:
Bobby Morgan of the Liberation Lab
Marie Gentles, behavior expert behind BBC's 'Don't Exclude Me' and author of 'Gentles Guidance'
Robyn Gobbel, author of 'Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviours'
Dr. Lori Desautels, assistant professor and published author
And many more behaviour experts and mentors.
Angela Watson from the Truth for Teachers Podcast.
Whether you’re an early career teacher, a seasoned educator, or a teaching assistant navigating classroom challenges, this podcast is here to help you feel happier, empowered, and ready to make an impact with every student.
Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode packed with classroom tips and inspiring conversations that make a real difference!
The Unteachables Podcast
#106: Steal these 10 exit tasks for better engagement, behaviour, and calm end to the lesson.
Exit tasks
Exit slips
Plenaries
Whatever you want to call them...
...they are SO much more than just a tool to consolidate learning or tick off reflection and self-assessment boxes.
When used effectively, they:
👉 Reinforce engagement and behaviour expectations.
👉 Encourage work completion by becoming part of your routine.
👉 Show students you care if they engage or finish their work!!
However, in reality...
Students can quickly become bored of them because the language is the same.
It can feel a little forced, especially as an exit routine if you’re trying to think of plenaries every day.
It adds extra work to our plates coming up with these exit tasks and then checking them!
That's where this episode comes in. I'm sharing 10 of my no-prep exit questions you can use immediately. These ideas are fun, flexible, and designed to help you feel calm and in control, while keeping your students engaged.
THE EXIT TASKS:
Here are my 10 exit tasks that you can copy and write up on the board at a moments notice. And of course if you like these, you can grab my teacher favourite 'Exit Doors' presentation with a bunch of other exit routine goodies inside of The Behaviour Club, or at the-unteachables.com/exit
1. Teach a Teenie - Imagine you had to explain what you learned in today’s lesson to somebody much younger than you. How might you explain it in the simplest way possible so that they would understand?
2. Hi-5 facts - Draw an outline of your hand. On the palm, write down what you think the main idea or main takeaway from the lesson has been. On each finger, write down one small fact that you learned
3. $3 Summary - Imagine each word that you write is worth 10c. Write a $3 summary of what you learned in today’s lesson. For example, this sentence is worth $1.30 because it is 13 words long! (Change the currency to whatever your local currency is)
4. Catch-up Notes - Imagine one of your friends was absent from class today. Write a list of 5 main things they would need to know from today’s lesson to be all caught up.
5. Beat the Teacher - Based on what you learnt today, come up with a quiz question that you think can stump the teacher! Write it down and be ready to test it out.
6. One Word - If you had to sum up everything you learned in today’s lesson in just one word, what would it be? Then, explain why you chose that word.
7. Rock, Paper, Scissors - Write down:
YOUR ROCK: The toughest thing from the lesson
YOUR PAPER: The three most important things to make a note of
YOUR SCISSORS: Something least important you’d cut out.
8.
Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!
Resources and links:
- Take the "What's Your Teacher Type" Quiz
- Join The Behaviour Club
- My book! It’s Never Just About the Behaviour: A holistic approach to classroom behaviour management
- The Low-Level Behaviour Bootcamp
- Browse all resources on TPT
- Free guide: 'Chats that Create Change'
Connect with me:
- Follow on Instagram @the.unteachables
- Check out my website
Oh, hi there, teachers, welcome to the Unteachables podcast. I'm your host, claire English, and I am just a fellow teacher, a toddler mama and a big old behavior nerd on a mission to demystify and simplify that little thing called classroom management. The way we've all been taught to manage behavior and classroom manage has left us playing crowd control, which is not something I subscribe to, because we're not dancers, we're teachers. So listen in as I walk you through the game, changing strategies and I mean the things that we can actually do and action in our classrooms that will allow you to lean into your beautiful values as a compassionate educator and feel empowered to run your room with a little more calm and, dare I say it, a lot less chaos. I will see you in the episode.
Speaker 1:Hello, hello, welcome back to the Unteachables podcast. It is an absolute joy to have you join me here again, or maybe it's the first time you're joining me and if that's the case, welcome. My name is Claire, I'm your host and it is brilliant to have you here. My name is Claire, I'm your host and it is brilliant to have you here. If you don't know what I'm all about, I just like to come onto this podcast and talk to you about the things that will actually make a difference with your classroom management and behavior, the things that people, for some reason, don't tend to talk about, like the way teachers are taught about classroom management. It's all about the behavior and it's all about, like, how to crowd, control your room and what to do when this happens. When, my gosh, classroom management can be so much more empowering and proactive and calm and, you know, really in alignment with the values that I know that you have if you're listening to this podcast. Anyway, on last week's episode, I gave you a rundown of three of my non-negotiable exit routines, like three things that I do every single lesson that are absolutely essential for me to make sure that I'm ending a lesson really calmly and controlling the space in the way that I can control it. One of those things one of those non-negotiables was the use of plenaries. My gosh, I had such an overwhelming response to that episode and so many of you have already sent me photos of the plenary doors in action and given feedback about how they're working for you in your class, and it is exciting. Nothing makes me happier than hearing back from you about something that you're doing in your practice that is actually making a huge impact on the behavior in the room and how you feel about teaching, and you know, like I've heard people use the word like it's filled me with hope in the last week and it just brings me so much joy to hear that and I'm just so grateful for anybody who's reached out and let me know how those resources have gone for them.
Speaker 1:So this week I decided to go a bit deeper into plenaries, and this episode is specifically for those of you who don't have my plenaries doors resource but just want to try out plenaries, plenaries that are actually engaging for students. And, let's be honest, right, just I wanted to give you some that you could chuck up on the board, didn't have to think about and could just give it a go like you know, take them up, write them on your board and use immediately. So this episode, I'm going to be handing over 10 of my plenaries that you can copy paste from my show notes and then pop up on the board and use those in any lesson that you teach. First, I don't know if you heard last week's episode about the qualms that I have with plenaries, but I want to go a bit deeper into the qualms because, even though they are brilliant for learning and classroom management, the opposite can certainly be true, and I have seen the opposite happen in most classrooms. I've seen plenaries being done in. To be honest with you, because if they're not done right it can feel a little bit forced, especially as an exit routine.
Speaker 1:If you're trying to think of plenaries every day and trying to think of them on the fly, it can become really monotonous. It can become really boring and dull. The second thing it adds extra work to our plates by coming up with plenaries and then we're checking them. That's a lot of work every single day and students can quickly become bored of plenaries because the language is just the same. Like what did you learn? What could you do better? What would you you know? Like the even better if and what happened? Like whatever plenaries you're using, students can very quickly become bored of them because of the language that we use.
Speaker 1:However, I am a huge advocate for plenaries. When they are used right, they are the most brilliant proactive classroom management tool because, as I said in the last episode, it is just the perfect example of how teaching and learning and classroom management are so interlinked and so intertwined and they're one in the same, and it's not just about the behavior itself. It is just such a wonderful way for us to proactively classroom manage because when we use plenaries right, they reinforce their expectations around engagement, they encourage work completion. They send nonverbal messages that we care about what students are doing and we're going to check that work and we're going to expect the best work from them. So the best way to try to overcome any plenary fatigue that you have, or avoid plenary fatigue altogether, is to, first up, have a bank ready to go so you can just grab them at a pinch. You don't have to be thinking on your feet, you don't have to be like the mental load of having to come up with either a starter activity or a plenary activity. It's just immense like just the mental load of doing that every single lesson. You know six lessons a day. So have a bank ready to go so you can grab them at a pinch, you don't have to think about it.
Speaker 1:Try to embed a bit of novelty in the way that you deliver the plenary to students. Change things up with the format. By the way, I don't mean at any point in that that you get students to do convoluted tasks like make models or do performances or make up songs. I'm not suggesting that at all because I think that goes against the way that a plenary should be in the lesson, which is like quick, sharp, to the point, really meaningful. I think that we just do that sometimes to try to get a bit clever with it, but it ends up being a 30 minute task in itself and that's not what you want from a plenary. And have a system where you can take the temperature at a glance. So the days where you don't want students to sit down and do like a five minute pen to paper activity, they can just like pop their books in like a tray and they can, you know, show you at a glance of where they're at with their kind of thinking and learning, and just include more interesting ways to deliver the questions. Even if you're kind of asking the same thing over and over again, deliver the questions in a way that makes students think about things differently or you're delivering it in a different way, so it's like something fresh, it's something new.
Speaker 1:Today I'm going to help you with the last part a few interesting ways to deliver the plenary questions, so students are going to be more inclined to actually engage with them meaningfully. Actually, it helps with most of them. The first one as well. I'll give you like a bank of 10 that you can draw from that you can just like grab and pop up on your board. So here are 10 plenary questions you can start using immediately, no matter what classroom you teach in, no matter where you are in the world.
Speaker 1:I said before like it is such a universally helpful thing to have a bank of plenaries ready to go. I'm also going to pop these in the show notes so you can easily just copy and paste them into your notes to then copy up on the board at the end of the lesson. The best thing is, all of the ones that I'm going to talk about can just be done with a pen and paper. A plenary shouldn't take 20 minutes of prep work. I also want to say that all of these I've just used in my practice over the years and probably picked up from different places. So if you hear one you're like, actually like I've seen this person using this plenary and that's on this website. Please feel free to let me know, and I can credit the sources of these plenaries, but they're just plenaries that I've used in my practice for many years and I've just grabbed them from different places over the time that I've been teaching.
Speaker 1:So the first is teach a teeny. So imagine you had to explain what you learned in today's lesson to somebody much younger than you. How might you explain it in the simplest way possible so that they would understand? I love this one because it helps students to then synthesize everything they've learned and just put it down in really simple terms. And that skill of synthesis is actually really quite a higher order thinking skill. The next is high five facts. So draw an outline of your hand on the palm, write down what you think the main idea or main takeaway from the lesson has been, and then, on each of the fingers, write down one small fact that you have learned to take away as well.
Speaker 1:$3 summary, the next one. So imagine each word that you write is worth 10 cents. Write a $3 summary of what you learned in today's lesson. So, for example, this sentence is worth $1.30 because it is 13 words long. Of course, change the currency to your local currency so your students aren't like what the hell is this? We use Euro.
Speaker 1:So the next one is catch up notes. So imagine one of your friends was absent from today's class, write a list of five main things they would need to know from today's lesson to be all caught up with the lesson today. The next one is beat the teacher. Based on what you've learned today, come up with a quiz question that you think you can stump me with, write it down and be ready to test it out. So you can even like, as they exit the room, as you as they walk out the door, they can give you their question and then you can try to answer it. So you can start to do little fun things like that, and that way you don't have to sit there and mark books. It's another way of you just kind of gauging what they've learned from the lesson.
Speaker 1:The next thing is one word. If you had to sum up everything that you've learned in today's lesson in just one word, what would it be? Explain why you chose that word. Again, it helps you to see if they've gotten the main idea from the lesson, but you're not doing so in a way that's saying what did you learn this lesson? Number seven is rock paper scissors. So they write down their rock, which is the toughest thing they found from the lesson their paper, the three most important things they want to make a note of. And then their scissors, something least important that they'd cut out. Number eight is the shout out. So what is one big thing you learned this lesson? Write it on a post-it note, hashtag your name and pop it up on the board as you're leaving. Number nine is you know it, poet.
Speaker 1:Write an acrostic poem about what you learned this lesson, using the words know it down the page or one of your choosy. You can use whatever words you want for that. Again, I just like this because it gets students to think outside of the box. It's not about, oh, like, let's write a poem. If you say, write a poem about the lesson that you just had, I feel like that's a little bit harder for students because that requires them to have certain skills. You'd have to teach them around writing poems and what's poetry and you know all the rest of it. But if you get them to just follow, know it as an acrostic poem, it just challenges them to think about things differently, which I really really like. And the final one is I love this one and my students really love it and I can present it in different ways, which is also really fun, but the obstacle course. So write down the muddiest point during the lesson, which is the most confusing or hard to understand thing, the highest wall you had to climb, so the thing that took the most effort to do. And then the home straight, the thing that you found the easiest or the most fun.
Speaker 1:So those are my 10 plenaries that you can like copy and paste from my show notes. Pop up on your board tomorrow. Any lesson you want to do a plenary and just give them a go. So that's it, just a really short, sharp episode so you can have some plenaries to use and pop up on the board this week. But if you're sold on plenaries and you're like, let me just go all in on plenaries, I want all of your plenary resources. If you want to have a bank ready to go so you can grab them at a pinch.
Speaker 1:If you want to embed a bit of novelty in the way you deliver the plenary, if you want to change up the format.
Speaker 1:If you want to have a system where you can take the temperature at a glance so you're not adding more to your plate having to look at all of the plenaries that you're making them create, because that can add a lot of extra work. You can grab all of my exit routine resources, including my epic plenary doors resource that I cannot nerd out on enough at the-unteachablescom forward slash exit. Or, of course, you can just jump into the behavior club, where you can download every single resource I've ever created, with all of the accompanying training, and you get me as your mentor. So, uh, that would be fantastic, because I would love to spend 2025 with you, making you feel super confident about what you're doing in the classroom and support you through all of the inevitable highs and lows that come with that. But for now, thank you so much for spending your time with me today and nerding out on plenaries, and I shall see you back here next time. Bye for now, wonderful teacher.
