Three acronyms that changed my SRE teaching

Learn three acronyms that will help you set expectations and manage behavior in SRE classes.

There’s no understating the impact that Bill Rogers has had on me as a teacher, and by default, on any SRE teacher who has been trained by me (approximately 900 SRE teachers across Sydney in the last year and a half!).

Dr Bill Rogers is an expert in behaviour management in school contexts. Ask anyone who has completed a teaching degree in the last 15 years and they will have one of his books on their shelves. What is a lesser-known fact about Bill is that he is a fellow brother in Christ, having worked in church ministry before becoming a teacher and now world-renowned educational expert.

I was privileged to attend a training course with Bill earlier this year. What I will share with you now are three acronyms I’ve learned (two from Bill and one I made up myself) that I have started using in my year 4 SRE class this year: FGFA, 1H1V, and YOYOB*. These letters stand for three little phrases that I use over and over as I set values and expected behaviours for my SRE students.

FGFA stands for a Fair Go For All. I start with this because this is the value I want to communicate to my SRE students. In SRE, we want everyone to have a fair go. To explain this to my students, I make it concrete:

“There are 22 students in this room – that’s a lot of people! So it’s unfair if I am giving all my attention to the 2 or 3 students who are calling out, misbehaving or being disruptive. We want everyone to have a turn.”

Students are innately wired to ideas of fairness (which teacher or parent hasn’t heard a young person whine “but that’s not fair!”?). If you appeal to the students’ desire for fairness they’ll immediately see how important it is.

Values lead to behaviours. To take an example outside of SRE, my friend values NRL, and particularly his favourite team, the Manly Sea-Eagles. These values shape his behaviour: namely, he proudly wears his Manly supporters’ jersey despite the fact he’s been living in the middle of Cronulla-Sharks territory for the last 30 years.

Translate this to SRE: because we value FGFA in our scripture class, we behave in two key ways: 1H1V and YOYOB.

1H1V stands for One Hand One Voice – which means there is one voice at a time during up-front teaching time. It is either my voice or the voice of the person I have selected when they put up their hand.

The good thing about giving it a slogan is that instead of phrasing our correction in the negative (ie, “Don’t call out Billy!”), we can describe and reinforce the behaviour we want to see (ie, “Billy, remember, One Hand One Voice”) .

When I teach this to my students, I tie it directly into a Fair Go For All.

“Do you know what’s not fair? Someone jumping the queue by calling out the answer. Or, lots of people talking over you instead of listening to your answer. To make sure we all have a fair go during our lessons, we will have One Hand One Voice.”

In the establishment phase of these new expectations, I uphold 100% compliance. That means regularly reminding the students that we have One Hand One Voice – I don’t care if I sound like a broken record!

Phrases I keep on returning to are:

                “Lots of people are remembering one hand one voice, fantastic.”

                “Thank you for those of you who aren’t talking because you remember one hand one voice.”

                “Jack – we’re doing one hand one voice right now.”

If a student calls out an answer, I will do one of two things:

If it’s an open question (one with lots of possible answers like “Who can name one of Jesus’ miracles?), I will say “James, you didn’t use one hand one voice. I’ll come back to you when you have your hand up”, then I will take answers from 1 or 2 other students before returning to James, now with his hand up, and have him answer it again.

If it’s a closed question (one with only one possible answer like “What is the name of Jesus’ friend who denied him three times?”), if James calls out the answer, I will do a “rewind”, literally, “James that’s right, but can you do it again with your hand up?”.

It’s essential to only reinforce the behaviour you want. Never allow students to get away with calling out even if the answer is right. All you’re doing is reinforcing that it’s ok to call out.

The final acronym I’ve been using is YOYOB – You Own Your Own Behaviour.

To make this concrete for my students, I ask,

“Is Max responsible for Katie’s behaviour? No! Max is responsible for Max’s behaviour and Katie is responsible for Katie’s behaviour.”

I had a great win with YOYOB the other week. Jimmy was struggling all through the lesson with calling out. I had reminded him about one hand one voice at least three of four times. On the fourth time, he said “I just can’t help calling out!”. I said “Jimmy – YOYOB – You own your own behaviour”, and he got it! No more calling out! (At least for that lesson!).

Term Two is a great opportunity to establish some new routines in your classrooms. How about you give these a go – or come up with some catch slogans of your own?

* The astute among you will note that these are not technically acronyms, as acronyms have to spell a word. Nevertheless, that's what I'm calling them because "initialism" (which is their official term) doesn't sound right!