Reasonable Consequences

Often times I've had colleagues share with me a consequence that they had given to a student for misbehaving. Some of these consequences shared were a bit harsh and not appropriate for the misbehavior. It is important that teachers think of reasonable consequences for students at the beginning of the school year, this will help to avoid coming up with outlandish consequences when a student is misbehaving.

Here are some examples of unreasonable consequences:

A. The teacher explains to her students that they will be doing a cut and paste craft and tells the class if anyone starts before she says so that they will be sent to the office.

B. A teacher is having trouble lining up the students. She tells the class anyone who is out of line is going to spend the entire recess time in timeout.



These are reasonable consequences for those misbehaviors:

A.  A more realistic consequence would be, if you start before I begin you will have to take a 5 minute timeout before you can start making your craft.

B. A reasonable consequence would be, to remind students to quickly get in line and tell students that everyone who is line up will receive a good behavior sticker or the class will receive a point toward their popcorn party when everyone is in line. (This is if the class has an incentive like this already in place.)