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September 4, 2010
Discipline With Purpose

Handling a large goup of kids at school? Play practice, Choir, Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts? Check out these crowd management skills being used by our teachers and administration during school.

DWP Website

Self Discipline is a person’s ability to wait.  While waiting, a person thinks, processes, and decides how to act.

Self-Discipline can be thought of as the ability to control impulsive behavior until there is time to make a deliberate choice about the actions that might be most appropriate for any given time.

There are 15 natural opportunities for people to practice waiting in daily life.  They are so natural, we often miss that they are practice opportunities, so we have named them in the Discipline with Purpose skills.

You might ask a child:

  • Why are they grouped the way they are?
  • Which skill do they need more information about?
  • Which skill do they think they are best at?
  • Which skill do they need help mastering?


One way to teach the skills is to evaluate a story you are reading with your child, or a TV show you are watching together...

  • Where did the characters demonstrate self-discipline skills?
  • Can they name the skills a character demonstrated in the story.


Or make up an example, and have the students identify skills.

Or have students write their own story demonstrating a particular skill or give them scenarios at the dinner table, and ask what would happen if?

All 15 skills are taught to all ages.  The first five skills should be mastered by 3rd grade, the second five skills by 5th grade and the last five skills should be able to be demonstrated consistently by the end of 8th grade.

The following information on Discipline with Purpose is pulled from the materials that the teachers use to teach the skills.  

Basic Skills

Listening

Why teach listening?
   1.  Inform students how to respond when a listening cue is given
   2.  Quickly bring a group of students to focused attention
   3.  Eliminate outbursts and interruptions
   4.  Equip students with a life skill

Listening is the only skill taught that has a series of steps that we ask the students to memorize.  All the other skills are learned by practicing excerises in which listening is required.  Listening means:
   1. Stop what you are doing and saying
   2. Clear away distractions
   3. Look at or toward the person speaking
   4. Be able to tell the person what you heard if asked
   5. Be able to ask questions about what you heard
   6. Be able to do the task the person requested.

Listening vocabulary ideas...
   "Please show me your listening skill"
   "I need you to focus your attention"
   "Thank you for getting into your listening position"

Following Instructions

When we follow instructions:

  • We wait for the speaker to finish giving the directions
  • We think: Can I repeat the steps in my plan of action?


To follow instructions the student (child) should:

  • Practice good listening skills
  • Repeat the instructions to myself or to someone else, or write them down
  • List or say the first three things needed to do to begin the task
  • Start on time
  • Stay on task the entire work time
  • Evaluate the task and how the instructions we followed at the end of work time


Teachers may give no more than three instructions at a time and use more than one instructional mode. We want to delay impulsive behavior by asking students before beginning work:

  • do you know what to do
  • do you know how to do it
  • do you have a plan to help you begin
  • did you set a goal for yourself


We may also break independent work into 5-15 min. segments and have students tell a partner the first three things they will do to get started.

At home, parents can make a family instruction booklet. List five activities everyone in your family should know how to do. Together draw up a list of instructions telling how to do the task. Example: Answer the phone, feed a pet, clean a room, use a dishwasher, wash clothes, computer use, etc.

Asking Questions

Asking Questions is skill #3- one of the basic skills, but also a powerful skill for adults when developed.  The teachers establish the criteria in class for a good question:

  • One that hasn’t been asked before
  • One the speaker hasn’t already answered
  • One that others might need answered also
  • One that doesn’t make the speaker uncomfortable
  • One that helps people think


We often say, “do you have any questions”.  Try to switch that phrase to “Ask me every question you have about this topic”.  Then allow the children time to think – count to 20.

Use questioning techniques that keep your audience engaged.  Ask the question, wait, then accept the answer.

Allow wait time so children can think about the question and formulate a good answer. There are four types of questions that we as adults using Discipline with Purpose should avoid:

  1. Questions you already know the answer to, such as “what did you do?” when you saw it.
  2. Questions that begin with “why” such as “Why did you do that?”  Younger kids probably don’t know why and older kids have the opportunity to make up a reason.  It is better to state what you saw and ask “How?”
  3. Questions that are put downs “Can’t you do anything right?”
  4. Questions that leave no options.


Teachers may use the policy of THREE BEFORE ME. And it works in the home as well.

After all questions have been addressed and independent work has begun, encourage children to answer their own questions by asking:

  1. themselves (re-read the material, or remember a previous example
  2. asking a friend or study partner (if it is school work)
  3. you the parent.


Use question cards or cubes for discussions:  WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, HOW AND WHAT IF.  Roll the cube or give out the cards, challenge the child to formulate a question that starts with the word they are given.

Students can also be taught and prompted:

  • when is an appropriate time to ask a question
  • to word a question in a way that doesn’t embarrass the speaker
  • to use appropriate signals to let the speaker know when they have a question
  • to refrain from asking questions that have already been answered
  • to recognize and compliment others for asking thought provoking questions
  • to design a plan to help him/herself develop the skill of asking questions

Sharing

  • When we share time we wait our turn.  We think while we are waiting:  How am I going to use my time when it is my turn?
  • When we share space, we wait until others have moved out of the space we plan to occupy.
  • When we share people, we wait until the person is available and appropriately get his or her attention.
  • When we share things, we wait for others to finish using them.


Older students also learn to share:

  • Information
  • Relationships
  • Cultures
  • Expertise


Older students share resources by recognizing there are limited resources:

  • Ask permission to use something that is not theirs.
  • Wait their turn.
  • Use materials for a reasonable amount of time, and return it when they are done in the same condition they got it.
  • Put things back where they found them.


Students practice sharing by

  • Raising their hands and waiting to be called on
  • Staying on task while the teacher works with others
  • Keeping their desks and the classroom neat and orderly
  • Returning materials in the same condition (or better) then they found them
  • Not using other people’s words or work as their own


Teachers might:
Assign a duty of the week to be teacher’s helper- someone to be a second go-to person (handing out papers, answering questions, collecting papers, organizing). Assign students to be responsible for corners of the room on a rotating basis. Teach children (and model) orderly use of space vs. random use of space.

 Specific use of the sharing includes:

  • How to get someone’s attention without interrupting
  • Positive vs. negative attention getting techniques
  • Right to privacy- they don’t have to tell or share their grades with other classmates, they have a responsibility not to ask others to show their grades
  • Teach about personal space.  An imaginary cube surrounds each person.  It moves with the person.  They have a responsibility not to invade someone else’s space.


Skill Vocabulary:

  • We need to share the sidewalk as we go to the __________. I need three volunteers to show what that will look like.
  • Monitor your voice level as we share this space
  • There is one teacher and 30 students, what are some ways you can share the teacher?


Exhibiting Social Skills

Social Skills are “rules” that exist naturally to help people relate to one another in a positive way.

We teach Social Skills to

  1. develop a civilized culture
  2. help students feel comfortable in different situations
  3. foster acceptance of diversity and inclusion of all students
  4. eliminate hostile or uncomfortable learning environments.


When we use social skills, we WAIT and THINK when we notice another person, “How can I make this person feel comfortable?”

Social Skills fit into three categories:

  1. Customs- the way others interact with people.
  2. Courtesy – how I would want others to act
  3. Common Sense – What would happen if everyone acted this way, what would happen if no one acted this way? Pushed to extremes the most logical way of acting will emerge.


A person will be practicing good social skills when they:

  1. Value the fact that people need people
  2. Notice the needs of others
  3. Take action so another person benefits
  4. Use criteria to judge what would be appropriate social skills
  5. Want to be civilized in a particular setting.


Appropriate social skills could include:

  • Saying hello and good-bye
  • Introducing people
  • Using polite words
  • Using proper voice levels for the time or the place
  • Giving and getting compliments
  • Telephone and computer etiquette
  • Table manners
  • Dressing appropriately
  • Attending to personal hygiene
  • Disagreeing without being disagreeable


One way to teach social skills is to analyze a Sitcom.  Tape a half hour show and note:

  • How courteous are the characters on the show?
  • What forms of greetings are used?
  • What did you notice about table manners and etiquette?
  • What did their non-verbal expressions convey?
  • How was humor used?
  • What attitude did the show portray toward people of different cultures or traditions?


Have children role play appropriate social skills for the following situations:

  • attending a funeral
  • visiting aging relatives
  • attending a function with people they have never met
  • giving and receiving complements
  • meeting an important person.


Bullying is often the result of poor Social Skills.  Together with your child, research bullying. Using at least three different sources, find the definition, statistics, examples, and strategies to help victims and things to do to avoid being a bystander. Talk about courteous use of the internet and cell phones.  Introduce them to resources such as "netiquette" to help them judge their own work.

Model Social Skills for your children.  When you, as an adult, use social skills at the store, in traffic, or with friends and acquaintances, identify the skill you were using for your child.  Role play out loud with your child when they (or you) are going in to a new situation.

 
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