The Unteachables Podcast

#155: The first-week moves that’ll save you months of behaviour work down the track

• Claire English

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That quiet calm at the start of the year? Yeah, it won’t last... unless you do this.

Welcome back to The Unteachables Podcast. It’s still back-to-school season, and this episode is for every teacher who wants to avoid the classic Week 7 spiral when behaviours suddenly spike and everything feels a bit… cooked.

I’m giving you a front seat to the real reason that early-term magic fades—and what to do right now (yes, even this week) to avoid the whiplash of your “angel class” suddenly turning into chaos gremlins.

If you’ve ever thought, “What happened to my lovely class?” or found yourself pleading with the room to just start packing up already, you need this.

We’re talking about:

  • What the grace period actually is and why it ends
  • The difference between setting expectations vs reinforcing them
  • The boring-but-brilliant routines that will carry your class through the term

What you’ll learn:

  • What “grace period” behaviour is—and why it isn't lasting!
  • The routines that do the behaviour management for you
  • How to create buy-in for expectations so students actually follow them
  • What to do when (not if) kids start testing boundaries
  • How to balance warmth and structure without being “too soft” or “too strict”
  • Easy wins for your starter, transition, and exit routines

Resources mentioned:


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SPEAKER_00:

Hi there, teachers. Welcome to the Unteachables Podcast. I'm your host, Claire English, and I am just a fellow teacher, a toddler mama, and a big old behaviour nerd on a mission to demystify and simplify that little thing called classroom management. The way we've all been taught to manage behaviour and classroom manage has left us playing crap control, which is not something I subscribe to because we're not dancers, we're teachers. So listen in as I walk you through the game-changing strategies and I've seen the things that we can actually do in action in our classrooms that will allow you to lean into your beautiful values as a compassionate educator and feel empowered to run your room with a little more calm and dare I say it, a lot less chaos. I will see you in the episode. Hello friends, welcome back to the Unteachables Podcast. It is wonderful to have you back here. Thank you for giving me your time to work on your classroom management. Maybe you're just as much of a classroom management nerd as me, and if that is the case, then you are in good company. This month on the Unteachables Podcast, I'm talking all about the back to school season. And in today's episode, I am talking about the first week moves, the things you can do in that first week back that'll save you months of behavior, classroom management heartache down the line when you realize that the mist has lifted of the first couple of weeks, and what do you call it? The grace period has ended. It is going to make sure that you've extended that grace period a little bit and buffered some of that because you know that you can get to like week six, week seven, week eight, and it's like, ah, uh, why are behaviors all of a sudden just ramping up? Like they get a bit too comfortable and things start to go downhill. Of course, this episode and this month on the podcast is going to be most like relevant to you if you're going into a brand new school year. But of course, there are going to be little nuggets in these episodes that are going to be beneficial no matter where you're at in the school year, because what you can do in week one is what you can also do tomorrow on Monday, day one of term, because it's never too late or it's never a not appropriate time to reset expectations or press that reset button. So if you're thinking, oh God, I wish I had this six months ago when I started the school year, don't fret. You can absolutely still use these strategies and press that reset button. So let's get started, right? It is a very common story where you get into the new year and behaviors are pretty good, and then you get to the end of turn one, those cracks start showing, students start pushing boundaries, things start to get chattier, they're coming from their break times, and things are far more unsettled and dysregulated, and maybe there's conflict, conflict starts to bubble up, or you know, things feel just generally more on edge. Their relationships start to develop a little bit more. You have established yourself and your teacher presence, and now students have got you sussed out. Like they'll sit back for a little while, especially if for my secondary teachers, if they're going into year seven and they're used to being in primary school, they'll come into big school and they won't know where, like how things work yet, how things operate. They will suss you out and things will change by the end of term one. If you have noticed this happening, congratulations, you've exited the grace period. But this episode is going to be about what you can implement and how you can approach those first few lessons to create more of a grace period buffer so it lasts longer than the first weeks and into the whole school year because you're setting those foundations, those bones, those like the structure of your lessons. Just a reminder before we get started with this episode that tomorrow, Wednesday, the 21st of January, I am running my live back to school boot camp. There will be replays as well if you're like, well, I'm going to the beach tomorrow. So definitely there's going to be replays for that. You can have lifetime access to that if you come along. But in this training, I'll be going over my exact roadmap for the first three lessons of the year. It is just putting together all of those pieces of the classroom management puzzle. It feels so big and unmanageable. Like, where do expectations sit? Should I do expectations before I, you know, do icebreaking? Should I do icebreaking after? Will it come across a little bit like I'm being too strict if I don't do that and I do that? Like, how do I balance everything? Where do I introduce routines? Where does SEL sit? If I have a calm corner, when do I talk about that? It is a lot. And the reason why I've created this boot camp actually was because inside of the Behavior Club, I had all of these back to school resources. But then the questions I got were like, but when do I start doing this? And when's the best time to do this? And of course, your context is always going to be different, but I wanted to provide a bit of a blueprint so you won't have to wonder. I'll just I'm handing you over my blueprint for that. So if you want to come along for that, brilliant. It would be fabulous to see your face there, or to just give you access to that, just head to thedushunteachables.com forward slash back to school boot camp. If you'd rather just be in the behavior club, I'm actually like enrollments are open at the moment until the end of January. So you can also just head into the behavior club by heading to thedeshunteachables.com forward forward slash TBC. If you already know, like, yeah, that's all well and good, but I just want to be getting all of it. Like I want all the training, I want all your resources, I want all of the stuff that's going to make my 2026 awesome, and I want the support going into 2026 that I know that I need and deserve, then come into the behavior club instead. Okay, so let's park that. Let's get into the episode. What is the grace period? Why the grace period? There are really logical reasons why that happens. Why there is that sense of like, oh, okay, this is going to be a really great year. This class is beautiful. They're attentive, they're engaged, they're coming in, they're following instructions, they're listening to me when I'm giving my teacher that instructions. It is fabulous when you first start. And then when things go too crap, you're like, what happened to my beautiful, calm, quiet class? Why are they swearing at each other and throwing things and not engaging anymore? And you know, like it's really tough. But kids by nature are boundary pushers. It is wired into their neurobiology. They will keep testing where your boundaries are without even being cognizant of it. And this will happen slowly over those first weeks of the term, first weeks of the year. So having a really clear approach to how your classroom runs will help significantly in ensuring that your students understand that you stand by your expectations, that there are boundaries there. There are, there's, you know, like where they need to meet those expectations. And you're going to be there and you're going to be reinforcing those expectations and those boundaries, whether it's week one or whether they're in week 20, they will understand that you're going to always reinforce those. And there is something that a lot of people misunderstand. And it's this that when we talk about boundaries and expectations, and we talk about consequences, and we talk about rapport building and relationships and all of these things, they aren't opposing forces. They all work together beautifully. And it's not one or the other, it's not, oh, you're too soft of a teacher or you're too strict of a teacher. There's this middle ground that has to be reached. There's this point that this sweet spot that needs to be balanced in your overall classroom management approach. And this is the kind of stuff when I talk about the things in this episode. This is the kind of stuff that helps us remain in this middle ground and not swinging the pendulum to one side or the other side for too long or too hard and fast. Because we don't want to get that pendulum to swing over to the, oh my God, like Miss is so strict and so like detached, and she doesn't want to get to know us, she doesn't care about us, even though you might, because you're trying to hold those boundaries, or you won't swing to the other side where, oh, Miss is never gonna give a crap about the behavior. She's never gonna follow through. She's never calling my parents, you know, she always threatens it or she always suggests it, but she never does it. She's so soft. So this is about getting that pendulum, not swinging to either side, and really finding that middle ground. So we are really respecting and honoring the teacher that we want to be. Because if you're listening to this podcast, I would be pretty certain that you are the kind of teacher that wants to go into the classroom and be compassionate, kind, understanding, you know, regulating, and just being someone that actually leads with like heart, you know. Like I know that you want to do that for your students, but you also don't want to get walked all over. You also don't want to be disrespected. You also don't want to feel like you've lost all control of your classroom. So this is where the middle ground is really important. So expectation setting, expectation communicating. Something to remember before we like crack into actually doing all of those things. I want you to remember that students can only ever meet expectations that they are even aware exist. Sometimes we have these expectations of our students, and we have different expectations than the teacher down the hall. We have different expectations than their primary school teacher did, or their teacher before that. So they can only meet the expectations that we have made really crystal clear for them, but then also supported them to meet. And I see it happening so often that teachers get frustrated and like, why aren't they doing their work quietly, for example? And I'm like, well, have you told them that that's what you expect? No, but they should just know that when I sit them down to do an essay, that they have to be, you know, sitting there quietly doing it. Well, where's the visual for that? How have you said that? How have you communicated that to them? How are you reinforcing that for them? How have you supported them to do that through the things that are going to help them to seek support for their essay? Like some sentence starters, some scaffolding, some structure. Have you modelled it? So that's just like a throwaway example, just whatever I've come up with on top of my head. But it is just a good way of explaining like how have you even set up the expectations for them? Do they know what the expectations are? Because I'm sh- I'm telling you, everybody has seen a teacher down the hall have the toughest behavior, but then walk out going, uh, just don't care. Like if you are an experienced teacher, if you've worked in a school for any number of years, I'm sure you know those teachers who actually are just like a bit jaded, don't really mind if the students sit on their phones, don't really care if they're listening to their teacher-led instruction up the front. They'll just talk over the chatter. So those exact students are coming into your class and they're going, well, why do you expect me to not talk while you're talking? Because Sir does, miss does, you know? Anyway, moving on from that. When it comes to expectations, I love going out on little tangents, don't I? Uh so let's talk about expectation setting, okay? Like how do we actually communicate these expectations so students follow the expectations, they know the expectations, and they're crystal clear. I do mean explicitly setting them at the start of the year. I do mean actually having a lesson on expectations. I would always have a really explicit lesson dedicated to that. The way we do this definitely matters, though, because you don't want students to have no buy-in for it. The best way to do it is in a really collaborative way. So students see this as something that is a part of the community, not something that's being enforced upon them. The second we make it like an othering thing, like this is what I expect of you. And if you don't do these things, then this is going to happen. The second we start to go down the road of doing that, that's when we lose all buy-in and students don't give a crap about our expectations. So the best way to do it, super collaborative. And I'm talking like, what are our expectations together? Like, what are the class norms here? What will make this classroom run? The second thing that we need to think about when it comes to a lesson on expectations that's really effective and gets buy-in, is that it is conceptual. So, what I mean by that is an understanding of what expectations are, because some students will hear the word expectation, they'll have like an assumption about it, but they actually haven't been taught what expectations are and why they matter. So, one of my favorite ways to communicate that about expectations to students is making it really conceptual, really real world. So, where do expectations exist outside of the classroom, in your homes, in your sporting teams? Like think about Olympians, like what expectations would they have upon themselves? Like thinking about things like do you have a bedtime? Why is this an expectation? What would happen if you didn't have that bedtime? Or what happens now that you don't have a bedtime? So just really bringing it into the real world for students and having really great starter activities for the day you go into your expectation setting lesson is really helpful. I do talk about this in the training, and I also have a done for you expectation lesson that helps you do this just as an aside. But this is just the base. A quality expectation lesson sets the foundations and it is very important, but that is just the base. The problem is sometimes we think, oh sweet, we're done. And that piece of butcher's paper, whatever you've written your expectations on, it goes up on the wall and over the year it's never referred to again, and it gets all tattered and dusty, and you know, it's it's just never used. Expectation setting is not a one and done, it is a constant, consistent day-on-day reinforcement. And I spoke about this a bit in the last episode, actually. Um, I didn't mean to because I knew I was speaking about it in this episode, um, and I was talking about a few routines, but I'll go into those routines in more detail and how we um reinforce our expectations non-verbally in more detail. Because the biggest game-changing move for that first week back that I have seen time and time again in my own practice and literally in the practice of thousands of teachers now is something that is so basic and so boring, but it's just setting the right routines that do the talking for you, that's it reinforce those expectations in the real world, in the day-to-day of your classroom. It's kind of like the cogs of the machine that just keep things moving. So you know when you walk into that classroom that's really tough with year seven, they know what to expect. You've got that starter, you've got that entry routine, they know how to come in. When you're transitioning from one thing to the other, they know there's going to be a visual, they know there's gonna be a timer, they know there's gonna be something there. But I'll go into them in a bit more detail. So I mentioned these in last week's episode, but let me break down the way that certain routines can communicate to our ex our students what we expect from them. So when they walk into the classroom, they know what to do and where that bar is. First of all, a starter routine. A solid starter routine can tell students what you expect when they arrive to the classroom. How do they stand outside? Is there that invisible barrier that goes into the classroom? How do you greet them? What are they expected to do? When they get into the classroom, where do they put their bags? Just those really basic things. What do they get unpacked? Having a consistent starter for your entry routine will reinforce that they are expected to engage from the moment they walk in. And you are supporting them to do that. You're not giving them a starter activity that triggers their stress response the second they walk in because this starter activity is golden. They know how to do it, it's personal, it's real world, it's concept-driven, or it's something that's maybe a little bit of SEL, but it just reinforces that they are expected to sit down and get that pen out and get cracking. A routine of a learning map communicates to students that in this classroom, right here, right now, we are doing planned, purposeful, important stuff that is all leading towards us meeting some kind of outcome for the lesson. It's about us progressing in a certain way. Everything is working towards that goal. So that is an entry routine. All of those things work so beautifully in unison to communicate the expectations of your students when they come in. A routine like having a simple timer up on the board, even a timer as a tool communicates to students that they are expected to work for that amount of time. And just say if you've got a 20-minute timer up on the board and students have a writing task, again, that nonverbally communicates that that writing task is something that they will need to be doing for that amount of time. They might finish a bit early, they might go a bit over, but it's not a one-sentence task. It's a longer task than a one-sentence task. So that's starter um starter routines. I'm sorry, entry routines. Transition routines now, including things like using timers when they're transitioning. So, you know, you've got five minutes now to get back to your seats, be packed up, be standing behind your chairs, or whatever that transition is, visuals up on the board, the use of music, all of these things nonverbally communicate to students that they are expected to be getting back to their chairs or into their groups or wrapping up by a certain time and doing so in a certain way. If you want them to be transitioning within three minutes, quietly having their areas packed up, that needs to be very explicit and that needs to be a hardwired routine. That's why I use things like my um transition slides because they are really consistent routines. You can add some novelty in there. So I use my fast track for heater and my um tardy taco, and I use those when the last student is ready, the first student's ready. It just brings a little bit of humor and novelty into it. So you don't have to be this strict, like, you know, dictator about it either. Like, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that you have to like be, you know, everything has to be really regimented and rigid. But these routines, like transition routines, can help significantly getting students back to their chairs, into their groups, whatever it might be, in a certain allotted time. Just alleviates a lot of stress for you. And you're not going to be standing there up the front, then going, come on, class. Like that is a surefire sign that you need a transition routine. If you're standing up the front of your lesson and you're going, come on, I'm still waiting, like, stop dilly-daddling, if anyone still says that. Uh, you know what I mean. So that's transition routines. Exit routines, like my row by row you go, row by row you go is excellent because it is just a really clear routine, or table by table you go, group by group you go. I love this routine because it just communicates to students that unless they're doing the X criteria, so unless they're cleaning, cleaned up their desks, sitting there quietly or standing behind their chairs quietly, they're simply not going out to lunch first. Like it's just a really clear way of reinforcing those expectations. I'm not saying keep them in, but like it just means that you're being very selective on who you're letting go out of the classroom. And if you do that every single lesson, the magic here is in the consistency and the predictability of it. If you're Doing that every single lesson. Lesson one, it might take them five minutes to get their crap together to be able to go out to lunch because they're still not picking up the rubbish or they're still having a chit-chat. I'm telling you, by week five, when other lessons usually go to crap because the grace period's over, your class is going to be like dialed into those routines, hardwire, they know exactly what to expect, and there's just no resistance there. The next exit routine that is a non-negotiable for me is an exit ticket. An exit ticket communicates to students that you are going to reflect on this lesson and there is something here that you must complete before you leave. You must be sitting there pen to paper. We're not hovering by the door, we're not hanging by the bin, we're not hanging by our friend's table. We're sitting there and purposefully ending the lesson on a high note. So exit tickets are non-negotiable for me. Um, if you're a behavior clubber, all of those are in there for you. Turn it in trays are something that I love doing. This is not an exit routine that you necessarily need, but it really helps for me to get organized with my papers. I am the kind of person that has, like if I am not careful, I will end up after one week with piles and piles and piles of paper. I'm the kind of person that will go to the printer and photocopy a class set of something, get back to my desk, and immediately lose it, even if I've been very clear about like post-it noting it and everything. Like I am awful with paperwork. I was the kid at school who would scrunch up my work and have it in the bottom of my bag, and then my teacher would go, like, where's your assignment? And I'd have to dig through like tattered, kind of moist pieces of paper because my water bottle had leaked, you know, like that was me as a student. Having things like turn it in trays is game-changing for me. I will have trays there that students put their exit tickets in or a piece of work. The turnitin trays will be like, you know, red, orange, green, representing how they felt about the lesson. It allows me to kind of um triage who needs the most support from me. So I'll of like I'll often check the ones in the reds and then I'll just have a quick look through the other ones. But it just helps me to visually see where students are at. It helps students to reflect, but then it allows me to then have a process where I can file things as well. So having turned in trays is excellent. Um, but all of these things, all of these exit routines just communicate to students that they are expected to engage right up until the bell, to reflect, to be a part of the lesson, to pack up sensibly, to take good care of the space, to respect the space, to not just be bounding out the door. Um, like that is just as a game changer, especially because I have had many years of having huge like year 11 and 12 kids who tower over me and I've been like standing at the door, like a freaking bouncer, like trying to get them back to their seats. This completely gets rid of that issue, completely gets rid of it. Um, one routine I didn't mention was an early finisher routine. I can't believe I didn't mention that before exit routines, but an early finisher routine is golden because if you have a process for students to go through to reflect on the learning once they've finished early, especially if they finish significantly early, and then have a place for them to go to get an early finisher task, that then communicates the expectation of in this classroom, you will be finishing your work up until that time. And there's no dead air here. Like it's all productive. You're going to be doing something. If you finish 10 minutes early, you better believe I'm going to expect you to think about the work you've done. Is it good quality? Go back and change things. And then if it is fantastic, if you've just finished because you're finished, then there is going to be something else that you can do to extend that or to reflect on something or to practice some skills. That is an early finisher routine. Anyway, so routines, they are just the consistent, predictable, like heartbeat of a lesson. And students need these to know where the boundaries are, where the expectations are. Expectations are not a one and done thing. They're not something we do at the start of the lesson, forget about, put up on the wall. And if you're doing them like that and wondering why students aren't able to follow instructions or like respect the space or respect each other or do their best work? Like they're often the class norms that we put on there, aren't they? Keep our hands to ourselves. Like, what routines can we embed into our classroom to support students doing those things in the day-to-day? I want to I want to leave you with that one. So, like thinking about your classroom norms, what are the routines that will support students to do that in the day-to-day without as much resistance? I mentioned at the start of the episode my back to school boot camp. Inside of that, I talk about how to start to introduce these kinds of routines in that first week back because putting the pieces together to then think, okay, that's all well and good. These are some great routines, but where do I actually start to talk about them? I talk about where to slot those in and how to start introducing those routines. If you want to be a part of my back to school boot camp, head over to the unteachables.com forward slash back to school boot camp. It is less than the cost of a margarita if you're sitting there on the beach ordering margies. My Aussie Kiwis or anybody else going back to school soon, this is for you. Um, I will be running this again in June for my US, UK, Europe, um, anywhere else in the world in the northern hemisphere that's going back to school around the June, August, September time. I will be running that again twice throughout the year. So I've got you if you haven't even gotten to the end of this school year yet, you're thinking, okay, that's not for me right now, but I've got you when that time comes. But I really hope to see you there if you're going back into a school year and you just want to feel so much more calm and confident and just feeling all over it and knowing that no matter where you are in your teaching journey, whether you're just starting out as a grad teacher or you are an experienced teacher, you have a plan, you've got some things to implement, and you're doing the best job that you can with the support, with the tools that you have. Either way, lovely teachers, I will catch you on the next episode of the Unteachables podcast. Thank you so much for listening in. Make sure you're heading over and following along so you don't miss an episode. There's so many amazing things coming in 2026. And if you're feeling extra lovely today, it would mean the freaking world to me to go over and write a written review for my podcast, preferably the good kind. Uh, if you don't like it, just go away. No, I'm just joking. Yeah, it would mean the world to me because that means that I can reach more teachers who need this exact support. So please go and do that. If you haven't already, it would mean the world to me. And until then, keep sprinkling classroom management magic all over the place, specifically this time with your excellent routines. Bye for now.

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Claire English

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