Preparation is the best prevention- plan ahead so that you're ready to dive into the fun activities immediately after taking attendance. Keep the class moving along or the students will make their own fun!

Ignore behavior that can be ignored. Unless a student is engaging in unsafe or destructive behavior, keep your focus on making the scheduled activity much more interesting than whatever the disruptive student is doing. This allows you to stay positive, benefits the students who are behaving, and may even re-engage the students who are doing their own thing.

If appropriate to your setting and subject, try adding an element of competition to your activity. "I want to see who can build the tallest tower in the next five minutes. Oh, I see (behaving student)'s tower is already about a foot high! (Disruptive student), how high do you think you can build yours? You've only got four minutes left!"

When the disruptive student makes even the slightest movement towards re-engagement and appropriate behavior, reward them with positive attention, compliments, and jokes to let them know you're glad they're back in the swing of things. One benefit of only seeing our students once a week is our ability to offer them a clean slate every class.

If things have escalated and none of the above ideas are making a difference- let us know. We would be happy to contact a parent on your behalf or give you situation-specific ideas to try. Please refrain from speaking to school staff about behavior issues, but don't hesitate to let us know what's going on and allow us to help in any way we can!