Build an Intentional Classroom Culture

When you step into the classroom of an excellent teacher you just know that they have worked relentlessly to build the culture that you see in that particular moment. They have taught, re-taught and taught some more. Every element of what you see in a fifty minute lesson has been meticulously unpicked. They have thought long and hard about almost everything that is both in their classroom and what goes on in their classroom. It is deliberate and importantly it is completely intentional.

So what exactly do these teachers do? Can we unpick what they do so that we can all learn from it? I’ve tried to do this through watching as many colleagues as I could over the course of my career and not only observing the pedagogical techniques (which are also extremely intentional) but observing the nuanced aspects of their classroom.

For the time being I have distilled it down to three key areas that I think provide the marginal gains necessary to build an intentional classroom culture: they Teach Behaviour, teach and insist upon Routines and they have their very own Rondos.

Teach Behaviour

On the very first day these teachers have a class in front of them they are teaching the key behaviours they expect to see from their students. For example, as they meet their class at the door they verbalise exactly what they want to see, ‘walk efficiently to your desk, and place your bag under your desk, your coat on your chair and get on with the Do Now’. They take this further by correcting students with non-verbal and verbal instructions, whichever will best completes the job.

They are intentional with how they want their students to sit and track them during instruction. Do you want the students to sit up, have clear hands, fold their arms, and track you with their eyes? These questions have all been considered and explicitly taught to their students.

Also, these teachers have considered how students will respond to questions and never interrupt one of their peers. For example, they may insist that students speak in full sentences and finish with ‘..Sir/Miss’. If students do interrupt then to correct the behaviour they will utilise their schools behaviour policy by using demerits and merits appropriately along with narrating their expectations: ‘Julie, we listen so that we learn, that is a demerit.’

Routines

Intentional classrooms are filled with routines. Almost every action is a result of the embedded routines that have been taught explicitly. This can range from how books are handed out to what happens when a student forgets their pen and has a clear focus of optimising the time spent learning.

How books and textbooks are handed out can often be a big time waster in lessons. Intentional classrooms task the students to pass them to the end of their desk in order of where they sit so that the next time they are in the classroom they can be handed out quickly. I have even seen teachers use trays for each row which the students are in charge of, after being taught how to maximise time, of course.

Intentional teachers often use Turn to Your Partner (TTYP) as a questioning strategy but the key thing they do here is pre-organise who each students partner is so that when the instruction is given students can get straight to discussing the content instead of searching for a partner to chat with. This allows the teacher to say ‘turn to your partner for 30 seconds in 3, 2, 1 and go!’ and immediately there is a buzz of students discussing the knowledge. After the 30 seconds the teacher can say ‘track me in 3, 2, 1’ followed by ‘hands up in 3, 2, 1’ to direct the students attention to what is expected. If this is what the teacher does regularly then it will quickly become an embedded routine.

Rondos

David Fawcett writes in ‘Relearning to Teach’, after speaking with Doug Lemov that:

In a time where we are looking for the next glitzy activity, Doug suggested that we should ignore the cult of novelty where we change things on a daily basis to keep interest. Instead we should keep things much simpler.

What they were discussing was the lesson planning process. Instead of piecing together activities have a small number of strategies and techniques that you teach explicitly and return to in almost every lesson! This could range from your Do Now activity to Drill Questions and the deliberate practice element of your lesson.

If a strategy you use works then re-run it constantly until it is habitually what happens as part of your classroom practice. Intentional classrooms I have had the pleasure of visiting have utilised Do Now tasks, regular retrieval quizzes, writing scaffolds and the use of a visualiser to model and provide worked examples.

These are just a few of my observations for what helps us teachers build an intentional classroom culture. There are, of course, a million other things that you could do but these have worked for me and are evident in the classrooms that I have the great pleasure of visiting.