How to get the class quiet; what do teachers say?

This was one of the most commonly mentioned problems for trainee teachers in particular, and the most common piece of advice from participants who were mentors of student teachers was not to talk over the class, and to wait for the class to be silent and attentive before starting to talk, as with a conductor about to start a piece of music with an orchestra.

Cowley (2002: 22) eloquently makes a case for the power of this approach:

‘My first discussion with a new class is always about my requirement for silence whenever I address them. I make it clear that I will achieve this no matter what…  If you work with challenging children, or in a school where behaviour is a big issue, this is not easy. The temptation is to give up at the first hurdle, to talk over them in your desperation to get some work done. But consider the signals you are giving if you talk while they are not listening. The unspoken message is that… you don’t expect to be listened to.’

Cowley goes on to suggest a range of strategies for following up this aim, including waiting for them to be quiet: ‘If you have the nerve, call your students’ bluff by waiting for them to fall silent. If you are willing to hold out, eventually many classes will become quiet without any further input from you.’

This is perhaps a good example of a principle of procedure, to be tested to see if it works or not. One of the standard questions I asked in the interviews with teachers was how they tried to get their classes to be quiet in order to start the lesson. Many of them mentioned the strategy of not starting the lesson until they were quiet. In two cases, teachers reported that it didn’t work (after waiting 23 and 40 minutes). In several cases, teachers questioned whether the time and effort spent waiting could be justified in terms of the teaching time lost or acknowledged that it didn’t always work:

‘Talking over the class’ is a common criticism of student teachers in the early stages of their first teaching placement, and the ‘wait for them to be quiet’ strategy emerged as a very commonly suggested course of action by experienced teachers and is a strategy that I recommend to my students.  However, there are some classrooms where it doesn’t appear to work:

‘I really tried hard to make it work…   I got to 23 minutes on one occasion but then gave up… I was getting nowhere.. the kids really weren’t that bothered. With this group anyway, it just didn’t work.’ (Student teacher)

‘One experienced member of staff told me that he had waited 40 minutes for them to be quiet. I just don’t think that a new teacher would have the confidence to do that and I’m not sure that after a few minutes it’s even the right thing to do.’ (Second year of teaching)

‘We do have some classes now where even established teachers struggle to get them quiet throughout the lesson. Sometimes we have to teach to the pupils who want to learn, and try and ignore the ones who are messing around. Often if you do ignore the low level stuff… if you don’t take the bait, they will settle down and just slump or mutter to each other.  I honestly feel that more learning gets done this way than if I were to try and get things perfect before starting. I know it’s not ideal but it’s my way of getting through the day with my worst classes.’ (Experienced teacher)

Why it matters (teacher testimony):

‘I regard it as a sort of litmus test as to whether things are satisfactory with a class or not. It’s a key stage of getting a class to be as you want them in terms of their behaviour.’ (NQT)

‘You need to be at level 9 or 10 to have a satisfactory question and answer interlude with pupils, and that is a very common form of lesson activity. If kids are talking through this, it’s not going to work well, you’re not really in control of things.’ (Head of Department)

‘Whole class discussion is really hard when you start teaching. It takes time to establish your ground rules and procedures, and some trainees don’t work patiently enough to get the pupils accustomed to these over a period of several lessons. But when you can have a relaxed and ordered, under control discussion with a group, it really opens up a lot of possibilities.’ (Teacher Educator)

However, one NQT said that even though they knew that this was important or ‘ideal’, they still struggled to get there with some groups – ‘With my most difficult groups in afternoon periods I still sometimes end up teaching over some talking, I still haven’t got the power to get them all quiet for any length of time and the lesson would be too stop-start.. I’d waste too much time.’ (NQT)

One mentor suggested that trainee teachers, for understandable reasons, sometimes lacked the confidence to persevere with this strategy long enough for it to work:

‘I see some trainees give up just too soon… they start when the class is still not really quiet and paying attention… they are nearly there… if they just said “We still don’t quite have silence…  Gary? Alan…?”  Another minute and they could have had them just so but they just didn’t quite have the confidence.’ (Third year of teaching)

Several teachers reported that sticking doggedly to not talking until pupils were quiet did work for them, although in several cases this took a considerable amount of time to achieve:

‘More than anything, it was just stubbornness and perseverance. Until Christmas, I was continually pointing out that they mustn’t talk while I am talking. We have a 5 steps system… 5 times when your name is on the board for transgressions and they have to go out. I had to constantly use that system, marking it on the board when kids talked out of turn. It didn’t seem to be working and then after Christmas, it started to take effect… it started to work.’ (NQT in a challenging school).

‘I had one year 8 class, I just couldn’t get them quiet. On occasions, the deputy head had to come in to get them to be quiet. After a term of flogging the same rule, lesson after lesson, it has started to work. Even kids coming back into the class from the behaviour unit fall in with it… they do what the other kids have got used to doing. I’m not saying that they are quiet all the time, or that things are easy, but compared to the first term, it’s a transformation.’ (NQT)

‘With a new class, I make a conscious effort in the first lesson, the first week, to spend a lot of time and effort very reasonably but firmly and clearly getting across a few key ground rules…. Only two or three, and the biggest one is not talking while I talk. I make it clear that if they talk over me, I will pick that up, that is not OK and there will be a smallish, reasonable sanction applied. The second anyone breaks it, I pick it up. If you can just get this accepted and applied so everyone knows the score from week one… that it’s the norm that you don’t talk while I’m talking..  it makes it so much easier and at our place this is achievable with most of the classes if you work really hard at it. It won’t work if you have a rules overload… if there are ten of them (rules) to remember and apply… you’re chewing.. your coat’s not off, no turning round, no tapping, if you are going on at them about everything, being mercilessly and gratingly negative… it won’t work. First things first. If you can get them to be quiet while you are talking, that is a really important move.’ (Fourth year of teaching)

‘It’s a series of small steps…  I’ll wait for quiet. If some are still talking I’ll raise my eyebrow and make eye contact, just to give them a signal. Some of them will cotton on and stop talking at that point. I’ll thank the ones who are quiet, “Thank you 7R for being so helpful. I’ll ask one who is still talking, by name, to please stop talking. If they don’t stop, I’ll point out to them that if they don’t stop talking, they’ll have to stay behind at the end to see me about it. They know that I will do something at the end of the lesson to inconvenience them in some way. I try and give them every chance to comply. It takes a few moments and a bit of patience but at my school, with most classes and most kids, it works, partly because they’re used to this ritual, this way of doing things. I’m aware that it might not work everywhere, or if you didn’t know the kids. It takes time to get your routines and rituals established.’ NQT

‘There are a few lucky people with such natural presence and charisma that it only takes them one glare and the students are reduced to silence. Not being one of them, the only thing I’ve found that works is sheer persistence – stopping every time you’re interrupted and making an example of a couple of people early in the year – phone calls to parents and detentions etc.’ Second year of teaching)

‘With the year 9s it’s harder, they haven’t internalised it yet so I can’t just glance or warn… I have to stop, praise and thank the one’s who are quiet, restate the rules… send out a yellow caution card message – if it doesn’t stop I will have to take some specified action to discourage them.’ (Second year of teaching)

‘You make progress gradually and at different rates with different groups. You need to adjust how you handle things according to how good or bad things are. With some groups, I’m confident enough to stop the lesson if there is someone talking. Pick out a few kids and ask them to be quiet please, politely but confidently, firmly… ask them by name. (NQT)

Another teacher talked of the importance of not forcing pupils to be quiet when it wasn’t necessary:

‘Silence is precious – don’t waste it’. A cheesy motto perhaps, but remembering this has really improved my classroom management. Some teachers ask students to line up outside the classroom in silence; I think this is misguided — it penalises the good kids who arrive early. It’s also a waste of good silence; why should children be silent if there’s nothing interesting to keep quiet for? I make a big fuss about the parts of the lesson where silence is needed – I say something like ‘Now this is the part of the lesson where you are going to have to be quiet for 5 minutes while I explain what we are going to be doing’. This is particularly important with lower ability groups and groups with lots of ADHD kids; they have half a chance of containing their talking if they know how long they have to hold out for. With really tricky groups, I even get one of them to time me – and to add on an extra two minutes when somebody talks.’ (Third year of teaching)

One last piece of feedback in this area; a teaching assistant, giving his  opinion of how often the strategy of waiting for quiet appeared to work:

‘What surprised me was how often it worked…. Over 90% of the time… sometimes more quickly than others… but not every time.’

What conclusions might be drawn from such testimony?  That just waiting for pupils to be quiet doesn’t always work? That sometimes it doesn’t justify the time it wastes? That sometimes teachers don’t persevere with it for long enough? That it has to be used in conjunction with other methods to make it work – for example, picking up on pupils who are reluctant to be quiet and punishing them? That the chances of success depend on the school you are working in?

In terms of the usefulness of the ‘waiting for quiet’ strategy, there were several respondents who suggested that the success of this strategy depended to some extent on the strength of the school system, the degree of support from senior staff, the extent to which teachers supported each other, the skill with which the strategy was deployed (see above), and the degree of perseverance and determination of the teacher in trying to get the rule/routine to work.

Several teacher educators suggested that one of the differences between trainees who develop towards excellence in this facet of teaching and those who make less progress is partly a question of ‘open-mindedness’. Has reading the extracts above made any difference to your views of waiting for silence; will your practice be in any way different as a result of reading the extracts, or will you carry on pretty much as before?

One factor which was not widely mentioned by respondents was the degree to which teachers skilfully and consistently deployed their school’s systems and routines to address the issue of pupils listening quietly whilst the teacher is talking. The strength and effectiveness of such systems can vary between schools (as can the degree of challenge posed by pupils). However, some commentators have argued that the strength and effectiveness of such systems, plus the strength of support from senior management, and the extent to which ALL TEACHERS TRY TO APPLY THE SCHOOL SYSTEM CONSISTENTLY with regard to pupils being quiet when this is desirable, are crucially important determinants of how easy it will be to get the class quiet when needed (see, for example, Bennett, 2017, Porter, 2016).

Bennett, T. (2017) Creating a Culture: How school leaders can optimise behaviour, London, DfE, online at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/602487/Tom_Bennett_Independent_Review_of_Behaviour_in_Schools.pdf.

Porter, J. (2016) ‘No-excuses discipline changes lives’, in K. Birbalsingh (Ed.) Battle hymn of the tiger teachers, John Catt, London: 67-78.

Teacher testimony from Haydn, T. (2012) Managing pupil behaviour, London, Routledge: 80-84.

Postscript: why ‘getting the class quiet’ can be a difficult issue in some contexts

It is a difficult issue because a lot depends on school context. There is not one simple prescription or solution that works quickly and perfectly with any class in any school (see ‘Variables influencing classroom climate’ for further development of this point).

As with many facets of managing pupil behaviour, ‘what works’ often depends to at least some extent on the context in which the strategy is being applied. Strategies which might work  to get the pupils quiet so that the teacher can start talking to the class in a calm, quiet and relaxed manner in a school with a very strict code of practice, very supportive parents, and a ‘good’ catchment area and pupil intake might well not work in the more difficult context of a pupil referral unit.

And even experts on pupil behaviour disagree about what are the most helpful approaches. Paul Dix and Sue Cowley are both very highly regarded experts in the field of pupil behaviour. However, they differ significantly over the ‘waiting for quiet’ strategy.

Waiting for them to be quiet: two different views:

‘My first discussion with a new class is always about my requirement for silence whenever I address them. I make it clear that I will achieve this no matter what…  If you work with challenging children, or in a school where behaviour is a big issue, this is not easy. The temptation is to give up at the first hurdle, to talk over them in your desperation to get some work done. But consider the signals you are giving if you talk while they are not listening. The unspoken message is that… you don’t expect to be listened to.’ (Cowley, TES, 22 November: 22). Cowley goes on to suggest a range of strategies for following up this aim, including waiting for them to be quiet: ‘If you have the nerve, call your students’ bluff by waiting for them to fall silent. If you are willing to hold out, eventually many classes will become quiet without any further input from you.’

Sue Cowley (behaviour expert)

‘Waiting for silence is not a behaviour improvement technique but an invitation for pupils to take control of the lesson. Pausing briefly can work well when you know them and they understand what that means. When the pause is momentary, accompanied with a look of gentle surprise rather than anger, it can bring attention back. Offering to wait in silence until pupils decide to come to order is an invitation for more disruption’ (TES, 6 April: 24).

Paul Dix (behaviour expert)

The importance of school culture and context

Many of the teachers interviewed did not mention ‘school context’ as a factor which might influence approaches to getting the class quiet, even though some of the interviewees had worked in several schools. This is perhaps because teachers, not unreasonably, tended to respond to how to get classes quiet in the school that they were currently working in. But in terms of their overall responses to questions posed, rather than in response to this specific question, many of the teachers did make the point that it was difficult to be prescriptive about approaches to this problem, as the degree of difficulty involved depended a lot on the school context.

Behaviour expert Dr Bill Rogers (‘You know the fair rule’ and many other books on managing pupil behaviour) models the ‘teacher skills’ involved in the process of settling a class and getting them to be quiet in a YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLFcaovsriA). However, some schools may be very unhappy with this, as the emphasis in on having very strong and consistent school policies about this issue (getting the class quiet straightaway, so that the lesson can start promptly/the teacher can address a silent class at any time when necessary). See, for instance, Joe Kirby (2017) ‘Bootcamp breaks bad habits’ in K. Birbalsingh, Battle hymn of the tiger teachers, London, John Catt: 79-93.