There is a classroom management strategy called “the five questions” that a number of school districts have adopted. I’ve been asked about it several times recently so thought I should cover it.
The way it works is that when a student misbehaves and breaks a class rule, the teacher is to approach and ask them five questions.
The questions are:
1. What are you doing?
2. What are you supposed to be doing?
3. Are you doing it?
4. What are you going to do about it?
5. What will happen if you violate the social contract again?
A social contract is another name for rules that students, along with their teacher’s guidance, create and agree to.
I see three major problems with the strategy.
1. Time
To stop whatever you’re doing—pausing in the middle of a lesson, for example—to approach a student or pull them aside isn’t realistic.
It’s doable, perhaps, but at the cost of instruction. Effective classroom management must be quick and as least invasive as possible.
Otherwise, you’ll lose days of valuable learning time throughout a school year and frustrate your class.
2. Friction
Questioning a misbehaving student is antagonistic. From the student’s viewpoint it feels like the third degree.
Furthermore, the questions themselves are difficult to ask without sounding angry. This creates friction between you and the student.
It causes them to be angry with you in return. Answering the questions, then, becomes an act of submission that leaves an awful taste in their mouth.
It causes them to want to misbehave more, especially behind your back.
3. Reflection
Forced reflection isn’t reflection at all. For actual change in behavior, a student must decide to turn from their ways of their own volition.
This cannot and will not happen if they’re compelled to tell you what you want to hear, which most will do just to get you off their back.
Others will refuse or pushback disrespectfully.
By any other name, the five questions are an excruciating consequence that merely show a teacher’s dominance.
What To Do Instead
Here at SCM, we would recommend questioning students if we found it to be effective. The truth is, we’ve long known it to be a bad idea, covering this topic many years ago—before “the five questions” even came to be.
A much better approach is to have a set of rules that you create in order to protect learning, your likability, and your students’ love for being in your classroom.
Teach them in a highly detailed way and then enforce dispassionately so that it doesn’t disrupt your classroom or create friction between you and your students.
In this way you ensure that your students reflect on their misbehavior and choose on their own the better route next time.
For more on this topic, please check out the classroom management plans we do recommend:
Also, we’ll be taking next week off for Thanksgiving, but will be back with a new article on December 3rd.
Finally, if you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.
This is so helpful I’m looking forward to your next article on December
Thank you for this! This is required at my school and it’s validating to hear that it doesn’t work, however I get asked “how well are YOU doing at the CKH model?” each time there’s an issue in my classroom. If we don’t follow this, administrators won’t provide any discipline support. I had great classroom management with elementary students in a different school (we chose our own methods there), but I have struggled with it greatly since moving to this new school and the CKH model. I’ve found it nearly impossible to implement your strategies successfully while also following school policies. It’s created confusion for myself and likely for the students as well. I’ve regretted leaving my easy breezy small school for this new district. They spend many, many thousands of dollars on CKH training each year…and the results of the program are absolutely pathetic.
We also adopted CKH this year and I’m not happy with it!
Michel, I needed this reminder. Perfect timing as I felt compelled to talk to a small group of students for misbehavior, bullying a bit (the vie principal took care of this but in a conversational way with these students -thus the issues remain for a couple), and showing disrespect towards me. They have a history of doing this in their other classes too.
This week was a trying week with this group. I did become a “passionate” about their misbehavior and one of the students became defensive. So this article reminded me to be “dispassionate” in these situations. It was hard to because the student wanted to know why I did gave him a warning and I said why but then he plays the victim or so and so did this too game.
Dave
Love this advice! “Effective classroom management must be quick and as least invasive as possible.” I absolutely agree with this, otherwise kids are yanking your chain just to get you to take time out and deal with them, and thus they are now running the show. So what to do? It can be really hard, but a cool head must prevail and a blind eye must be given to this student while heaping praise on others who ARE doing everything right. If the student escalates, then approach them at a time when others are busy doing some work, and quietly say, “Can I see you outside please?” And then ask them what the problem seems to be and can they get back on track?” Often this
2-minute intervention works to turn the behavior around. When it doesn’t, I have to send them off to the principal and call their parents about it later (documenting all interactions).
Hi Michael,
I am a grade 2 teacher and I have a question about how to address disrespectful behaviour towards others. When a student does something very unkind to another student, for example hitting, the student who was hit is very upset. I feel like it isn’t enough to just say “X, that’s a warning. that was disrespectful” or “X, that’s a time out.” So instead I end up asking students WHY they did that and forcing an apology which i know is also pointless.
Also, I would really love to know your suggestions for what to do when students misbehave in serious ways at lunch or recess when you aren’t there to supervise and didn’t witness the misbehaviour. For example, a students comes to you crying and says they were hit. What do you do?
Anna
I appreciate your suggestions but like so many advisory programs it only says to “enforce the rules” but doesn’t go into detail on what to say when those rules are being broken. And what are good consequences if any?
Can you give specific sentences that don’t distance us from our students but do get the offender to come back into line.
Dear Michael,
Thank you for this. I completely agree with you. When we ask a child why he/she did something, the only answer is, “I was stupid,” or something similar. Or as my sister in law says, “It seemed like a good idea at the time!” I love that one! I have been using your class mngmnt system since September. It works.
To Anna, I would say that hitting is an immediate letter home, but maybe you disagree, Michael. Anyway, Thank you for everything!
This is a similar questioning technique to Bill Rogers’ a behaviour specialist, outlined in ‘Cracking the Hard Class’. I have successfully used this technique for 15 years and have found it to be efficient and motivating to redirect students to the high expectations I set and uphold in class.
There are occasions where I will speak with the student individually, based on known student behaviour and relationships.
My questions are:
What are you doing?
Why is the expectation?
How will you fix it?/What will you do?
How will I know?
We are in the last five weeks of school in Australia and I have been reassigned to cover a teacher on leave. Her classes are HARD, the behaviours persistent and some are extreme requiring removal from class. By setting high expectations and using this questioning technique, behaviour has improved dramatically. I no longer have students lying on the floor or walking out of class and all students are working well to complete their assignment on time. Other teachers are dropping by to ask what I have done to improve behaviours.
If your district requires you to use this technique, may I suggest you head to Bill Rogers’ website, perhaps read one of his books and see how you can adapt the technique in your class. My experience is that you will need to reinforce behaviour expectations increasingly at first with this questioning technique , until students know that you are consistent and fair. The need to reinforce expectations will then be occasional. It is quick, efficient and redirects students to expectations. It builds a classroom of inclusivity when students know you are persistent, insistent and consistent with expectations and hold them to high expectations.
Michael’s system is much more concise and straight forward. I suggest you research it. It’s quicker and very effective if the teacher is consistent in implementing it.
The current administrations of our schools today seem incompetent and uninterested in supporting teachers in this crisis. Unfortunately, parents haven’t much of a clue either how to manage their kids effectively outside or inside now that the screens have their young ones brainwashed. Heed Michael’s advice.
Excellent ideas
Classroom students should know that
differentiate consequence and punishment. Deviating from classroom norm have no punishment but little bit consequence must be share with the children.
If the rules cannot be enforced because there aren’t consequences that are not considered threatening to students the plan won’t work. I have been giving 10 grade points per day for behavior and participation for over a year and I have learned my high school freshman do not care. I remind them they will lose points they remind me they don’t care. There isn’t one rule that hasn’t been broken. They won’t be called to attention. Standing on a chair doesn’t work. Banging on a pipe doesn’t work. Reversing my mic in the speaker doesn’t work. My school policy is time out in other classrooms. I cannot get these large students to exit my room. Security cannot assist during long lunchtime periods which I have to teach each day of the block. I’m at the end of my rope. Now I have parents threatening me because I am being rude to their children because I demand they be quiet so I can give basic directions.
Great article! I appreciate when trendy blanket practices are questioned for effectiveness. We expect these students to internalize these questions, and it makes sense that outwardly questioning them would lead to negative emotional responses.
I can’t help but notice that in the “What to do instead” section, the topic wasn’t completely addressed. In reading it twice, I found myself asking, “Ok, specifically, what do we do instead.” Rules are already in place, hence the misbehavior – this is a day one strategy. How do we as instructors get them to reflect on their misbehavior and choose a more productive outcome?
thank you for that…I had the same internal response