Setting rules and high expectations is extremely important and should be applied by teachers in all of their classes. It is vitally important to be consistent in handing out sanctions if these rules and expectations are broken. From my own experience working in schools, when teachers have been inconsistent in applying sanctions, then setting rules and high expectations can become redundant.

The importance of establishing rules and expectations is also confirmed by Little (2010) who suggests strategies such as setting up clear expectations and rules, immediate consequences for inappropriate and appropriate behaviour, and teaching target behaviour are all effective in reducing low level behaviour.

In most of my lessons I ensured to set these out from the start so that students understood what was expected of them and so that they all were aware of the consequences if these were broken. As Lemov and Atkins (2013) indicate academic research has consistently found that high expectations are the most reliable driver of high student achievement, even in students who do not have a history of successful achievement.

This also enabled me to establish authority with my classes and helped create a more structured, stimulating learning environment in my lessons.

The importance of setting rules and high expectations and being consistent with these was also confirmed when I taught my year 9 practical class. I ended up missing the first 2 weeks of teaching with this class due to different reasons out of my control. When I did eventually teach this class, in our first lesson I did not establish my rules or expectations as I had done with my other classes. This resulted in one of my most negative lessons, with a number of students displaying disengagement across the lesson. This was displayed through a lack of participation, poor low level behaviour and a lack of effort in certain drills. This only highlighted to me further the importance of this strategy and it was no coincidence that this was my worst lesson I have taught to date. This was also confirmed by my mentor who had observed me in a number of different lessons including this one and who stated in his feedback with me ‘this shows you the importance of establishing your rules and expectations in the lessons from the start. Writing these on the whiteboard in the first lesson or providing a handout resource for you and the students to go over at the start of the lesson would have helped provide structure and improved the difficult lesson that just occurred.’

Going forward in my teaching career I will certainly use this strategy with all of my classes from the outset as I have seen the positives this can bring to a classroom environment along with the contrasting negative effect it can have on engagement if these are not established early on with a class.