Natural Consequences

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Home : 2003 : July : 30

Natural Consequences
By Chicago Teacher

I have used a behavior chart in the past and the students COULD "move their name" if they broke any class rule. In the setting I was teaching in (inner city, 1st/2nd grade), I could've had kids moving names almost constantly
(not always the same kid, of course). I saved "moving the name" until I had used other options - but to get that far, the behavior had to be pretty blatant and usually a repeat offense with a small amount of time in between. On typical, every day problems, I tried to be flexible and creative to come up with natural consequences for the behaviors. At first it was hard, but after awhile

it became much easier.

Kids who forgot a pencil - too bad, better ask people in the class if you can borrow! For asking, they'd usually get anything from eyes rolled at them from the lending student, an aggressive warning from the lender to "give it back at the end of the day", and worse-case every kid in the class would refuse to lend a pencil (then I would give the student one).

Kids who forgot homework - too bad, I guess you'll have to do it during recess/computer time/art (whatever they would probably enjoy most that day).

Kids who refuse to work - This is a tough one, because I found that the reason varied based upon the kid and could be anything from student who forgot to take his Ritalin to girl who stayed up until 2am because no one told her to go to bed to someone pouting about something. So my response would depend on the situation. Certain kids needed to be moved to a seperated desk to work, others just needed to talk out whatever was bothering them, some needed encouragement, and others needed a tough consequence that was usually whatever they individually hated the most [doing extra problems, "moving their name", sitting away from the class, etc.] But, EVERY kid, regardless of the reason, finished their work. It doesn't matter to me if they want to wait until 11am to do the 9am math lesson, but hopefully they won't need help then, because "I'm working on our reading story with the people in the class who have been participating today".

Basically, the bottom line - for me - is that there is a big difference between misbehavior that is purposeful and misbehavior that is unintentional. When it's purposeful, that's when I stand my ground, and if it's unintentional, there will still be consequences, but I try to make them appropriate and related to the initial problem.