FA2

Following PL from Kevin Knight in January, a real focus for me is to make sure I have children at FA2 (or FA1, but they are only 5!) before giving instructions.

According to Kevin this means that the children are very attentive - quiet and still, some fidgeting, no talking, only 1 or 2 continue to work, children are attending. With 5 year olds I will aim to have none working as they are not developmentally able to be doing and properly listening - that will come!

One of my relationship goals for the year is around behaviour management and if I can nail FA2 then I think other elements of my practice will become easier.

So, how will I do this? Here is my game plan;

• Tell my mentor group what my goal is
• Practice with them

• get them to be noisy (FA6 or FA7!)
• call them to attention – using the 5 pattern clap we agreed on as a group of mentors
• practice the different techniques Kevin talked about;
• Sweep
• Praise
• Quiet voice
• Stance (body language), plus non verbal cues – wait with hands on head / shoulders etc so it is easy to see who is listening and focused
• Wait
• Tactical ignore (making it clear to all that I was ignoring the behaviour)
• State the obvious – in a neutral manner (so be careful about body language)
• Neutral prompt “NJ what should you be doing?”

Then I will need to be consistent in my actions and as Muireann said I just need to give it time so I will have to be careful that I don’t get impatient and lapse back into talking over them.

I’m going to monitor how I’m doing over the next couple of weeks and I have asked Muireann (and I will ask the other team members) to give me feedback based on this one (rather large) goal.