How mentoring improved classroom behaviour

last updated:01 Jan 2009

Dominique Spillett, a Year 5 teacher in her first year of teaching at a primary school in Hertfordshire, was finding the behaviour of one particular boy in her class particularly challenging.

He had poor concentration and communication skills, and limited reading ability, but had no special needs statement. His behaviour seemed erratic and unpredictable.

Dominique looked at the Research for Teachers (RfT) summary on primary school pupils with emotional or behavioural difficulties and felt that the Directed Activities Related to Texts (DARTs) activities would help because they are designed for pupils who struggle with reading.

These activities include:

• cloze procedures (filling in missing words)
• reorganising sentences
• underlining or highlighting text
• making spider charts.

Dominique increased the amount she used these activities with the boy during science lessons.

She also created a time every day when she would talk with the boy for ten minutes. They talked about his behaviour and his feelings about the events that had taken place, for example happy, sad, upset or angry.

Conclusions
Dominique maintained her behaviour records and regular meetings with the boy for half a term. She felt that talking with him about his feelings and how to manage them, and discussing what kind of behaviour is appropriate and what isn’t, had a positive effect on his behaviour. She also felt that talking with him helped her by enabling her to understand why he behaved the way he did and how she could help him.