Version Differences for Try Paraphrasing

'''Try Paraphrasing''' 

When correcting or counselling students, make sure you resist the temptation to focus on the first words they utter. A close look will reveal that this is how listening and understanding mistakes occur. The first response of many students is often not good--and can lead you astray. In fact, first responses are often inappropriate. When you listen to the first response, make judgments, and act quickly, you may miss many opportunities to understand and act effectively. Therefore, remind yourself to listen to everything a student says. Try paraphrasing to ensure that you heard correctly. Work to pull more out of a student rather than stop him or her cold. You'll get better information and take better actions if you do. 

Sometimes the whole process of helping a student acquire discipline can seem overwhelming hence the quote above from Martin Luther King to remind us to break it down and take each step 1-at-a-time.. If needed, for some of our most difficult clients we can take each step and break that into a series of mini-steps. The secret is to make sure we are proactive and do something positive each day to move the student forward on social skills, cooperative skills and Learned Responsibility. The surest way for a child to acquire a social skill is to hold them accountable for it. 

I firmly believe that if you are using Cooperative Learning, embedding social skills and have good classroom management it will alleviate most problems, in our training and follow up sessions on behaviour management we work on the ‘4 levels’ necessary for success (academic and Social): 

1. Cooperative Learning, variety of structures, plenty of Classbuilding and Teambuilding 

2. Social Skills (background reading Kagan Cooperative Learning, Item Code BKCL page 11.6) 

3. Management, (Preventative Procedures) 

4. Moment of Disruption, Follow Up (Win-Win Discipline)