Promoting Academic Success

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Promoting Academic Success via Classroom Structure
Kathy Ruhl
Penn State
Abstract
One way to encourage students to stay connected and in school is to create welcoming environments.
Welcoming environments are those that have clear guidelines for success and consistent expectations
and follow through. This session includes techniques for improving classroom environment and student
behavior to optimize learning via clear communication of expectations in the classroom setting.
Narrative of Presentation
If you have ever attended a function such as a party or business meeting and dreaded attending because
you were not sure what would occur there or how to act, you can understand how some students feel
about school experiences. You probably continue to put yourself in somewhat novel situations because
you have had sufficient experience to learn that you do have the skills needed to be successful in those
situations and that you are able to figure out what is acceptable and what is not. Not all students feel this
way about returning to school. They do not feel successful there and one of the outcomes is that they
stop attending.
This presentation is about helping students feel comfortable in educational settings. It is about helping
them know what they should be doing so they can focus on their learning and not be concerned about
how to behave.
We tend to think of students dropping out during their last years of high school, but many are lost long
before that. Indeed, one important research finding is that early identification is vital to effective drop out
prevention. Problems with social and task-related behaviors that are not addressed develop into school
adjustment problems. These can be identified in the early elementary grades and of course the earlier the
intervention the better. So the dropout problem is not one that should be addressed solely at the
secondary level because by then it may be too late for some students.
There is a lot in the education literature on different models of drop out prevention. Some of these models
include intervention in the earliest possible years, in preschool or kindergartens, while others target older
students moving to middle school and beyond. Some models include alternative classrooms or whole
programs serving any number of districts.
The big idea here is that regardless of the age level of students who are targeted for intervention, it is
important to encourage students to continue to return to school by creating a welcoming environment
there. In order to feel welcome, students must feel safe. Often when we think about a safe environment,
what comes to mind is a school climate that does not tolerate bullying and intimidation. Indeed, students
who are physically afraid often stay away from school.
But safety in a learning environment must also include a sense of security about being able to pursue
academic achievement and aspiring to meet high standards, and all that goes along with that. This
includes being able to commit errors that are seen only as mistakes of learning and not really big issues.
The role of the educator in contributing to a safe and welcoming environment is critical. We are able, and
indeed it is our responsibility, to provide a structure that clearly articulates and supports expectation for
successful demonstration of appropriate behavior. One can provide structure in many ways: Careful
scheduling, room arrangement, and clearly communicating what behavioral expectations you have in your
classroom and supporting those with consistent actions.

Promoting Academic Success

This is important for all children and youth, but it is especially important for those with special needs who
do not typically learn through casual observation. Student with special needs typically require a more
explicit approach to learning and instruction, even those who are of high school age.
We cannot assume that a student who has been attending school for many years knows what she needs
to do in order to be successful in an academic setting. Indeed some students come from families in which
the attitudes toward school are counter to those needed for success, consequently they do not observe
behaviors or hear discussed, the kinds of actions that lead to success in school and into adulthood.
This makes it critical to clearly communicate to students the many behaviors needed to earn success
within and across different instructional activities.
You can take action to promote academic success via the way in which you structure the learning
environment. What is important to recognize is that it is not so much the specifics of that structure that is
important, rather it is the clear communication of that structure and affiliated expectations that is critical.
We know from years of teacher effectiveness literature that the most effective teachers know and convey
to their students what students need to do to earn success in their classes, at elementary and secondary
levels. Older students, those with longer histories, may indeed be more challenged because they have
experienced so many different classrooms and individual teachers.
The behaviors that earn success in a class vary with teacher and subject area. Students pass through the
education system and are repeatedly confronted with new teachers and content. There is no set of
behaviors that earn success in all classrooms. Therefore you need to identify these as they apply in your
classroom and teach them to your students every year.
So how do we go about establishing and communicating structure?
There are two principal efforts in establishing structure:

Clarifying your expectations and

Organizing the environment so that it supports students meeting those expectations.

Much of these occur before the school year begins, at the preplanning stage, but they are critical for
operating a classroom environment conducive to student willingness to participate in his/her own learning.
Structure: Conveying and Supporting Expectations
Identifying where you want your students to end up, enables you to communicate that to them and teach
them how to get there. As special educators you are generally aware of the importance of goals for
students. What I am talking about here is broader in that they apply to everyone in your room. We have
the technology/methods to help students achieve our expectations. But before we begin to apply these
methods, we need to clarify for ourselves and then for students, what those expectations are. If were
unclear about our expectations, how can we expect our students to be clear?
There are many aspects of establishing, clarifying, and communicating expectations. This is a funneling
down approach beginning very globally and ending more specifically.
In order to establish and communicate structure you need to:
Identify the major instructional and behavioral goals you want to accomplish. (Long range goals)
Highlight the ways students can be successful in your classroom (Success Principles)
Spell out the rules
Distinguish among varying expectations
Work out key Procedures or Routines

Promoting Academic Success

Convey all of this to students through directly teaching them, and by arranging the physical space and
schedule of activities in ways that support behaviors that meet expectations.

First, recognize your long-range goals.

Long range goals focus on what you want your students to be able to do at the end of the year as the
result of having been in your class.
There are academic/instructional goals and behavioral/social goals.
Academic/instructional goals: are related to what students will be able to do better or differently in terms
of the academic content you will cover.
Behavioral/social goals: have to do with the attitudes/traits you hope to promote in your students.
Having your goals specified will help you stay on track. Sometimes you get so immersed in day-to-day life
in the classroom that you lose sight of where youre hoping to be. If you know where you want your
students to end up,
you will look for instances of behavior that is effective in reaching those goals and point those (behaviors)
out.
If you find ineffective behaviors you can redirect them toward those that will sustain the goal with an
intervention and get students back on course.
(Focusing on goals takes the values out of any specific behavior as being
good or bad and but shifts the emphasis on the behavior as being in/effective towards achieving goals.)
For example, if you have goals for students to (1) Develop written expression to communicate in narrative
style or (2) Learn to work cooperatively in groups when you see students exhibiting a behavior (academic
or social) that is heading in a direction that is off course you can give them feedback to get them back on
track. Specifying your goals, helps you know whats important and whats not.
If you dont know where you want to end up, how can you expect your students to know?
Once you have identified your goals, You may or may not choose to post these goals in your room but
you should definitely put them somewhere that
you will be forced to review them frequently to be sure your actions are supporting movement toward
those goals. You should at least consider sharing these goals with your students on the first day of school
and whenever you get a new student in your room.
If you have high turnover rates (as is often the case in districts with high drop out rates) you should come
up with a way to share these with students that does not require a lot of your time. This is discussed
briefly later in this document.
Identify and Outline Principles for success. Highlight the ways students can be successful in your
classroom
Articulating ways students can be successful in your class is especially important for classrooms in which
there are multiple students who have many needs. It is your responsibility to inform students that you
believe they can be successful and what actions lead to being successful.
You need to communicate to the students success principles
(You can call these anything you want. Roadmap, Guidelines, Recipe, Formula, Prescription, etc.),
Your principles for success should include general descriptions of the fundamental attitudes and courses
of action that will help students achieve the long-range goals.

Promoting Academic Success

As will become apparent shortly, these are different from rules. Rules specify behaviors.
Principles for Success clarify what students need to do generally to be successful in attaining the goals
youve set. Again, this is not an emphasis on good or bad, but on how to be successful.
When formulating success principles ask "what are values, the ideals, about learning (and life) I want my
students to learn from me"? What are the attitudes you hope their behavior will reflect? Specify these as
brief, descriptive statements of attributes/demeanor/behaviors you want to encourage in your students
being careful to use active verbs (e.g. be, do, etc.) Some teachers develop an mnemonic to help them
and students remember the principles.
You should plan on sharing these with students on the first day of the school year and
refer to them periodically.
My tips for success for being an effective teacher include:
Be Responsible
Be Clear and consistent
Be Guided by data
Be Approachable and humane
The next activity that you want to undertake is to develop and specify your classroom rules.
You want to create rules that support positive classroom behaviors and to do this you should: anticipate
what misbehaviors are most likely to occur and
incorporate those in your rules.
Rules are statements that delineate specific behaviors for which there will be consequences. Rules are
more objective descriptions than just principles for success. They also usually apply across the board and
are not activity specific.
Two examples of rules are:
Arrive on time with all your materials
Follow directions immediately.
Rules serve as a basis for consequences for behavior. A rule without a consequence is like a speed limit
without a fine. It is important that there are both positive and negative consequences.

Here are some rules for making rules:

Content should:
Address potential chronic or severe misbehaviors.
Define functional behaviors
Formulate rules by:
Being short and specific: Describe observable behaviors
Stating in the positive: Focus on behaviors you want to see.
Keeping to few in number (7 or fewer)
Making statements Vs requests
As noted earlier, it is important to have positive as well as negative consequences for your rules. All
behaviors have effects on the environment in some way. There are outcomes. Sometimes we choose
those outcomes sometimes not.
In classrooms, the most effective consequences are those that can, and are, delivered consistently and
with minimal delay. When a student follows a rule, he should receive some positive comment or sign that
you noticed (this will of course only be effective if the student values your attention). Something
recognizably positive should occur as a result of students rule abiding behaviors.

Promoting Academic Success

The reality is that we live in a society based on laws that have predetermined, negative consequences.
The positive consequence of being a law abiding citizen is that we maintain our freedom, hang onto our
income, and are generally well regarded by our peers. If however, we break a law, there is some
consequence that we must face. If we speed and do so repeatedly (and are caught) we will eventually
forfeit our drivers license.
Indeed there is some argument for human behavior being guided primarily by negative reinforcement or
avoidance behavior in which we engage in desired behaviors only because they let us avoid or escape
some more aversive situation. Because of that, we should have some mildly aversive consequence for
rules in addition to the positive consequences.
When a rule infraction occurs, some predetermined (therefore predictable) negative consequence should
be instituted. When planning consequences be sure to make them relevant to the rule that was broken.
They should be obligatory in nature.
For example, if a student breaks a rule on coming to class on time by coming in late, therefore interrupting
instruction for everyone else, that student should owe you some time. It may not be, and indeed need not
be, a tit for-tat situation. If the student is 5 minutes late, he might owe you 2.5 minutes of wait time after
the other students have left. This can seem like a long time even to an adolescent.
If there are small, nuisance behaviors covered by rules you may want to use a system of demerits in
which the behavior earns one demerit and it is only if a predetermined number of demerits are earned
within a specified period of time that the demerits lead to some predetermined consequence.
Again, it is worthwhile to stress that it is just as important, if not more so have positive consequences for
rule compliance.
After you have clarified your goals and identified principles of success and the rules, you need to pay
careful attention to behaviors that are more situation specific.
Clarify Essential Behaviors for Specific Activities.
Whereas Principles for Success and Rules apply generally across the board and to all situations, there
are going to be times when certain student behaviors are productive and times when they are not. It is
important you spend time determining this and communicating it. You need to identify the essential
behaviors for various activities during the school day.
The school day is divided into a series of activities and transitions between those activities. There are
instructional activities such as: Teacher-Directed large group, independent/Individual, and cooperative
groups. There are assessment activities such as quizzes and tests. And finally there are transitions
including Out-of-seat individual (Entering class. Moving between groups. Storing materials) or Whole
group, and In-seat (Getting out materials, Changing texts)
Appropriate, learning, behaviors vary with the nature of the activity or transition, but within any transition
or activity students have the opportunity to:
be engaged or not
interact with others verbally appropriately or inappropriately
remain seated or in assigned area or be out of seat/area, and
find they are uncertain about something, have questions.
In some situations, talking to peers is acceptable, in others it may not be.
Again there are no hard and fast rules for this. What is important is that you communicate the differences
in expectations for essential behaviors to students so they do not have to keep trying to figure out what is

Promoting Academic Success

expected/acceptable by testing the waters. It is also important that once you have communicated these,
you are consistent in supporting them. You do not want to send an inconsistent message.
There are 5 areas to clarify requirements for within each activity or transition. These include:
Activity Outcome:
What is to be achieved by the activity? What is the target outcome?
Engagement:
What will students be doing if they are engaged in behaviors that lead to the outcome?
Interaction:
What level of interaction is appropriate for this activity/transition?
Out of assigned area:
Can students get out of their seats or out of their assigned areas?
Uncertainty:
How can students deal with uncertainty about assignments? How do students get attention and
ask questions?
Recognizing these various opportunities for students is the first step in differentiating essential behaviors.
You need to do this systematically for each activity and transition that occurs in a typical school day.
The first thing you need to do is list all activities and transitions and be as specific as possible.
For example:
We right now have a teacher-directed activity. The anticipated outcome of this activity is that you work on
tasks I assign and respond orally.
If we consider engagement ,I know that if you are looking at me, orally responding to my questions,
laughing at my jokes, maybe writing notes, and asking questions relevant to the topic, you are engaged. If
you are talking to each other, looking at your watches, sleeping, reading a novel, sitting without
volunteering responses I will know you are not engaged.
What level of interaction is appropriate among you. May you talk to each other?
In addition to determining whether or not talking is appropriate, if it is, I may need to specify how loud,
how long, topic, etc.
When considering out of assigned area, I need to specify the assigned area, in seat, in the group, in the
room and so on and whether or not moving out of this area is ok.
Finally there is uncertainty: How can students deal with uncertainty about what they should do? How do
students get attention and ask questions? If they must wait for attention, what should the do in the interim
and so on.
Once you have analyzed the activities and transitions you need to prepare to teach students what the
various expectations are for each. Discussion of how to do this comes later in this document.
Related to Differentiation of Essential Behaviors are Critical Procedures.
In every classroom the goal should be to maximize student learning time yet there are many daily tasks
that must be accomplished relative to managing the classroom. These take time away from learning.
Every teacher has his own way to deal with these tasks so it is again important to plan ahead, identify
how youll accomplish these, and share these with students. These ways of accomplishing some
management tasks are critical to keeping students engaged in learning activities.
For example, if students routinely have to hand in papers and you sometimes collect them from the front
of the room, at other times from the back and occasionally from the side, you are going to loose what
could be instructional time each time by having to explain the procedure du jour. It is far more student
friendly to be consistent and use the same process each time you collect student work.

Promoting Academic Success

Developing critical procedures helps students know how they are expected to function in your classroom.
Having clear and consistent procedures helps students feel secure because they know how things are to
be done. They do not have to spend time figuring things out.
Critical procedures allow a variety of activities to occur concurrently and efficiently with minimal downtime
or confusion. They therefore increase student on-task. Critical procedures encourage the class to run
smoothly thereby creating an environment that is comfortable to be in and welcoming to students.
Develop critical procedures by thinking through the typical events in a day, listing those and planning how
you want students to deal with these recurring events.
There are two categories of procedures:
Those the teacher does
Greeting students
Gaining student attention
Those the students do
Entering the room
Turning in work
For the many, many recurring events in your classroom you should develop relevant critical procedures
and then teach those to your students.
Teach/encourage students meeting expectations
Clarifying for yourself what behaviors are productive under various situations/activities/transitions is
helpful for you. But it will not help the students if the results of your analysis are not shared.
You must use good teaching methods to teach students these differentiated expectations just as you
would teach them academic content skills. Once you have identified your goals, principles for success,
rules/consequences, distinguished the essential behaviors and developed critical procedure, you need to
ensure that your students know these and that the rest of the classroom environment supports them. You
need to pay attention to the arrangement of the physical space.
The physical environment of the classroom has considerable impact on student learning and the ways in
which students behave. Classroom arrangement influences: the flow of instruction, student interactions,
teacher effectiveness, and student learning. The physical arrangement provides discriminative stimuli for
students. Through placement of furniture and delineation of space, the teacher communicates
expectations for student behavior and learning. For example, desks that are close together impede,
visually and in reality, gross movement. This suggests that students should stay seated.
Consequently, organization of classroom space warrants some thought at the beginning of the school
year to insure a physical setting conducive to learning.
Furthermore, it is characteristic of some children experiencing learning and behavior problems to be upset
by change. For these children, the classroom should be arranged before the first day of school and
changes introduced gradually as needed.
A major point to consider when determining room arrangement is the kinds of objectives that are a priority
in the room.
Social Objectives are included on the IEPs of many students with special needs. Orientation and
proximity of student desks will influence attainment of these. Some arrangements encourage formation of
interpersonal relationships while others discourage them. Cooperative tasks and social interactions
prescribe particular arrangements.

Promoting Academic Success

Generally speaking, students with special need require clear cut structure
Careful delineation of spaces for work behaviors vs. more informal activities provide greater structure.
Academic objectives warrant addressing the need for areas for various instructional arrangements.
Consider whether academic instruction occur will predominantly in large group, small group or as
independent activities.
Physical or psychomotor objectives must be considered also. Handwriting drills for a few students may
best be conducted at a special center. But for groups of students needing a variety of motor skills, it is
necessary to plan for the full spectrum of movement by including an area easily converted to open space.
After determining the relevant objectives, you are ready to determine location and arrangement of student
desks.
If most, or a large part of student learning will occur at student's desks, a significant part of classroom
space will be occupied be individual desks. As a group, individual desks should be placed in an area of
the room removed from other areas at which distracting activities may occur concurrently with work at the
student desks.
Having selected the general area for student desks, determine the configuration of individual desks which
best supports student learning. Generally, students exhibiting learning and behavior problems perform
better when in a structured, predictable environment.
Consequently placement of student desks and other pieces of furniture, in a symmetrical arrangement is
recommended as symmetry represents the familiar. A symmetrical arrangement suggest balance and
order, not only in the use of space, but also in the behavior expected within that space.
When selecting a configuration for student desks, one must keep in mind the extent of student-to-student
interaction desired. Research indicates that rows tend to encourage on-task behavior when on-task is
defined as working independently or responding to teacher questions. However when on-task is defined
as interacting with one another as in a cooperative activity, arrangements that put students in close
proximity and facing each other are more effective.
In addition to room arrangement you should pay some attention to the schedule. Much of the schedule is
beyond your control but for the time that you do control it, a routine, predictable schedule of activities is
best. This certainly does not need to be adhered to rigidly but creating a situation in which students can
anticipate what is coming next is one other way to create a welcoming environment.
You might also build little islands of enjoyment so that students can anticipate a favored activity or lesson
topic following something that is less preferred. For example you might regularly include a relatively low
energy activity followed by one that requires more movement. You might intersperse new skills with those
already mastered.
All of this identification of goals, and so forth is useless if you do not teach them to your students. If you
were going to teach students a way to do a math problem, you would you go about it by:
Telling them why it is important
Showing them how
Having them practice
Giving them feedback
Reviewing
It is just as important to teach students what they need to do to be successful in your room as it is to
teach them the academic content. So it is critical that you plan on sharing your goals, success principles,
rules, expectations, and procedures with them. You want to do this in an explicit way.

Promoting Academic Success

One obvious way to do this is to post your goals, success principles, and rules in prominent places
around the room. But beyond just posting you want to be sure to call attention to them during the first
days of school and intermittently through out the year.
You should incorporate time in your day dedicated to teaching behavior at the beginning of the year and
daily for several weeks with shorter time periods as the year goes on. Initially you should openly and
directly discuss goals, success principles, and rules. This not only communicates the content of these but
it also implicitly supports your belief in them as successful students. This does not have to be a long
process but you should point out each goal, paraphrase it and move on to the next. Link the success
principles with the goals by stating that the way to be successful in meeting those goals is by X, Y, Z. With
rules, you should not only share them with the students but you should model examples and nonexamples of each just as you would when effectively teaching a new math formula. Also discuss the
positive and negative consequences of rule compliance. It is also critical that when you observe someone
following a rule, you acknowledge in some positive manner and when someone breaks a rule, you must
be consistent in implementing negative consequences. This is probably the most important way to
reinforce the importance of your rules.
There are other, less direct, but important ways to emphasize the goals, principles for success, and rules.
You can link various activities to specific goals. When you see students engaging in behaviors that are
effective towards reaching a goal or that illustrate a success principle call attention to that for the student.
Also, you can use them as topics of various activities. If a goal is to work cooperatively, you might link that
with a writing activity for Thanksgiving. You can have specific weeks dedicated to a particular principle
during which you do special activities to support that principle (e.g., reading a book that illustrates the
principle in someones life). Again, Just as you dedicate time to teaching other subjects, science or
reading, you should have behavior lessons or behavior class (or success class, or whatever).
As for essential behaviors and critical procedures, you must also use good teaching methods to teach
students these. Teach essential behaviors and critical procedures the first time there is an opportunity to
use them. What is important to remember here is that you want to teach these before students have the
opportunity to engage in behaviors that are counter to those youve identified. So the first time you have
students engage in a whole group activity you teach them the essential behaviors for that form of work.
The first time you collect papers or post home work you teach the related critical procedures. Basically
you: (1) Present essential behaviors or critical procedures to students (2) Provide them an opportunity to
practice the behaviors, and (3) Provide feedback on their performance.
There are at least two obstacles to ensuring a welcoming environment for students by communicating
the structure of your room: High student turnover rate and inconsistencies across classrooms.
We know that students with attendance problems are often enrolled in districts with high student turnover
rates so you have to also consider how youre going to orient students new to your room throughout the
year. You need to do this without having to shortchange the other students by taking time away from
instruction. Some ways I have seen this accomplished is via newsletters or video tape orientations made
available to students while at school.
The second barrier to conveying structure involves inconsistencies across classrooms. Teachers as
individuals, have different ideas for goals, success principles etc. This diversity can be disconcerting for
some kids. Need to band together and develop school-wide system so there is consistency there.
Determining the specifics of your classrooms structure requires a good deal of reflection and planning.
Once you have accomplished this, you must invest time in the early days of school to communicate these
clearly and consistently to students. This communicates that you expect students can and will be
successful in your classroom. It communicates a safe and welcoming environment and is well worth the
time and energy expended.