Sometimes, things do not go as we hope.

We have all had the experience of a class for whom behaviour is a major issue.

In these situations, we must often sacrifice some of the things we want to do with teaching and learning, so we can establish a higher level of control.

Our primary objective becomes stopping the negative behaviour that has developed.

If we don’t do this, little else is possible.

The first step in such situations is to break the cycle of learned behaviour.

That is, to stop learners associating the lesson with the norms and values they are operating under.

But this isn’t easy.

It requires time and persistence as we try to break down old habits and establish new ones.

To begin the process, lock-down lessons can be useful.

These are a fall-back option we can keep in our lesson-planning locker, pulling it out on the rare occasions when behaviour is sufficiently poor that we deem radical change to be necessary.

A lock-down lesson is a lesson that has the express aim of minimising interactions, maximising teacher control and reasserting the primacy of learning over everything else.

They need to be highly focussed and heavily directed.

Here are some examples:

• Learners work on a series of independent writing tasks for the whole lesson. Discussion is not included, and the focus is strictly on the work learners have in front of them.
• The teacher gives a lecture based around three key questions. They talk about each in turn. Learners listen and make notes. At the end of the lecture, learners write up their notes individually and then answer a series of questions set by the teacher.
• Learners are given a set number of textbook pages to read and make notes on. This is followed by a series of questions to be answered independently, connected to the information in the textbook.

As you can see, in these three examples learning is still important, but it comes second after behaviour.

The aim of lock-down lessons is to subjugate all else to the maintenance of focus and the neutralisation of poor behaviour.

For this reason, they are an excellent tool to be able to call on in times of need.

Equally, if you stay on top of behaviour management and deploy a range of strategies to create lessons that are effective, you probably won’t need them.

However, it’s good to know that they are there, available if necessary.

To this end, you might like to sketch out two or three suitable ‘lock-down lessons’ relevant to the subject and/or age-group you teach.

Planning these in advance means you always have them to hand, should the need ever arise.

Usually, once you have delivered one or two lock-down lessons, you’ll have a handle of behaviour.

From here, you can start to gradually introduce some of the activities and techniques you would really like to use with your learners.

A word of caution, though.

Going slow is usually worthwhile.

This means you can maintain a high level of control over learner behaviour.

I’ve seen situations where a teacher uses a lock-down lesson to regain control over learner behaviour, only to then go straight back to complex group work in the following lesson.

And you can guess what the results were …