Class diversions: How fun and games can empower pupils

It's Friday afternoon before the midterm break at St Joseph's School in Coolock, Dublin, and the pupils are sporting their fancy dress costumes. You might expect chaos and disruption given the impending week of freedom. Instead, an air of calm pervades the school.

In one class, a teacher has taken on the persona of Granny Wacky – dressed in stockings, apron and a wig of curly grey hair – to go around distributing prizes for good behaviour.

After sounding a harmonica, the class is divided into two teams and they are told to do a handwriting task. Any disruption is called a “spleem” and these are chalked down until the winning team is decided.

One team clocks up a spleem, so a child from the opposing team gets to choose a prize from Granny Wacky's prize bag. The reward? The pupils get a chance to dance to the Monster Mash around the classroom.

They take great delight in dancing about before flying back to their desks and settling back to work.

The pupils are taking part in a programme called the Pax Good Behaviour Game, an evidence-based classroom management programme that has been trialled in more than 20 first and second classes across the State.

The programme promotes desirable behaviour and reduces “off-task” behaviour by teaching children to take responsibilty for their actions.

Instead of waiting until the end of the week for rewards, the game offers several chances throughout the day to be recognised for good behaviour.

On a wall in one of the classrooms are notes known as “tootles”. These are positive teacher-pupil or pupil-pupil messages written to recognise good behaviour.

“Usually when children get notes from teachers or pass notes to each other they can be negative, so tootles are a way of encouraging nice, caring messages,” says St Joseph’s principal Rosemary Gaffney.

Tackling discipline

It may sound like a new, untested approach to tackling discipline but the Pax approach has been developed using 30 years of research. It works, say its founders, by teaching students self-regulation, self-control and self-management. Pupils draw up the rules themselves: they agree what they would like to see, hear, do and feel more of, and also what they would like to see, hear, do and feel less of in the classroom.

Behaviours are described in a novel language and the pupils are rewarded in ways which are imaginative and appealing.

Internationally,the Pax programme has been shown to gain an extra hour of quality teaching and learning classroom time each day that is otherwise lost to minor disruptions and distractions.

More than 20 teachers in disadvantaged primary schools took part in the first pilot of the programme last year.

This proof-of-concept study – evaluated by Prof Mark Morgan and Dr Margaret O'Donnell from St Patrick's College in Drumcondra – delivered impressive results including:

– A 43 per cent reduction in “off-task” behaviours across the participating classrooms;

– Highly-significant reductions in the incidence of hyperactivity and emotional symptoms for children and a corresponding increase in social behaviour;

– Almost one-third of children reported as displaying challenging behaviour at the start of the study were reported as showing behaviour within the normal range after 12 weeks;

– Qualitative feedback from teachers indicated classrooms had become calmer, children were taking positive control of their behaviour and teacher-pupil relationships had been positively impacted.

Implementation

Breda

Tomkins

, who teaches third class at at St Joseph’s, has been trained in the first phase of implementation and instructs other teachers in a number of schools.

“Teachers have different styles and children have different needs but the reaction from the teachers and principals in the various schools where it has been implemented has been really positive,” she says. “Principals are reporting improved behaviour among students and calmer atmospheres in the school.”

She says the programme allows children to take collective responsibility for their behaviour and integrates well into the school day. The various games take place while the students are engaged in regular school work. They can last from just a couple of minutes up to 45 minutes, are played at least three times a day, and increase in duration over time.

Gaffney says the key to programme’s success is positive affirmation for children rather than punishment.

“It allows the children to feel good and affirms them regularly, not just at the end of the week or the month. The kids feel good because they are being rewarded quickly for their good behaviour and have to work together,” she says. “ It sets off a ripple effect in schools because children are more calm when they are praised regularly and know what is expected of them.”

Tomkins says self-regulation is another benefit of the programme because children can focus for longer and are less disruptive.

The programme is straightforward to implement in schools, adds Gaffney, because the prizes are inexpensive and can be presented on the spot.

“It’s quick, it’s instant and they get that feel good factor back quickly from the activities,” she says. “They are supposed to be fun, free, enjoyable activities that they can do – such as doing a funny dance, bursting bubble wrap or jogging on the spot. It puts the fun back into teaching while achieving great results.”

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Using a toddler to teach kids about empathy – 'The baby is the teacher. It creates a safe space for the children to talk about emotions'

There’s a buzz in the air of Sacred Heart Junior School in Killinarden, Dublin, as children wait for their teacher to arrive.

But this is a visiting teacher like no other: a toddler is teaching the children about empathy, parenting skills and emotional responses.

It's part of a programme developed in Canada called Roots of Empathy, an evidence-based programme managed by Barnardos in Ireland that has been shown to reduce levels of aggression among school children, raise their social and emotional competence, and increase their empathy.

Schoolchildren learn to observe the baby closely and understand its needs, emotional responses and view of the world. As they do so, they gradually learn to bring the same attention to their classmates.

Edel Horan, a teacher at Sacred Heart, says she was sceptical of the approach to begin with.

“My main priority as a teacher is the academic side. I want my kids to know their phonics and their maths,” she says. “However, after the first two months of the programme, I began to see how important emotional literacy and a sense of empathy is.”

“The kids in my class in particular have developed more nuanced emotional literacy. Before, they used to only know things as being sad or happy,” adds Horan.

As the programme developed, she says the class became more aware of their emotions and were able to say if they felt anxious or afraid of something. This, she says, was a massive development for them.

“The baby comes in once every three weeks and in those three weeks we look at different topics. We have dealt with emotions, crying, safety of the baby, feeding the baby and then use the baby to discuss what we have learned.”

“The whole point of Roots of Empathy is that it creates a risk-free learning environment so in doing that the baby helps. The children don’t feel like they’re talking about themselves, they feel like they’re talking about the baby as we talk about the baby’s behaviour”, she says.

“By allowing the children to be aware of their own emotions and the emotions of others, it creates a better ability to tackle the world around them. If they can recognise emotion in themselves, they can recognise emotion in a friend.

“It decreases bullying and bad behaviour in the classroom because they learn what it is like to feel sad or to say hurtful things to other children.”

Horan says it has enhanced a sense of community within the class. She gives the example of a boy who had struggled academically and couldn’t come up with a personal “milestone moment” as part of a classroom task.

“Some kids had said they learned to tie their shoelaces or spell a tricky word. Every single one of them could do that but he couldn’t.

“The whole class turned around to him and pointed out all his achievements. For those two seconds that boy’s face brightened – he knew he struggled but for his classmates to tell him that made him feel like a superhero.”