How to Stop Students From Interrupting Your Lessons

here's the scenario you're trying to kick off a lesson or get an activity started that you have worked tirelessly on but there are always those few kids or maybe that one kid that just keep asking questions some of them are relevant some of them are wildly random like Mr Reynolds uh why is water wet and so there could be reasons that different reasons that kids are doing this some kids just are naturally curious and really have a question other students are trying to Sidetrack your lesson trying to get you to not go into the thing

you're talking about in Geometry the thing that you're talking about with regards to diagramming sentences or any other fun activities that students like hear and they immediately don't want to do today I want to talk to you about a few ideas on how to stop kids from side tracking your lessons that the whole group can grow first of all I want to really get around this idea that like we don't always know which students are trying to purposefully Sidetrack a lesson and kids that are naturally curious so the question becomes then what do we do

anyway right it's on our job really to judge or to try and figure out that piece of the equation because it doesn't matter and I want the classroom to be a place where curiosity can show up naturally it can show up at any time that our jobs are to not sort of like to dictate in those moments but to sort of facilitate to help students navigate through this moment to see when and where the best time to answer a question is so the first piece of advice that I have is when a student asks a

question they're trying to sidetrack is acknowledging the fact that that's a great question when we do this we are immediately like letting kids know that it's okay to ask questions I actually in fact love that question it's a great question however the next step is letting them know what time is going to be the best time to do this so right now may not be the optimal moment to do that but if um if we can get through this next part of class if I can get through the lesson then we'll get to the question

so right there what you're doing is acknowledging a student not telling them so let me let me break down what this kind of looks like to me oftentimes I think students are told and this is a quote from anismojani palmnago I've often referenced is students are told speak when spoken to and then are never spoken to so if we can acknowledge the fact that a child had a question I'm giving you acknowledgment I'm even affirming the fact that I liked your question I'm telling you that I will indeed answer your question but first I need

this thing from you I need to get through this next part of what we're doing so that we can move through this so that we can get to your question now what you've done is incentivized paying attention moving through getting stuff done so that at the end of this lesson if that question is truly important to you then we will answer it the other thing is building so if when we're doing this to really amp that up because sometimes it's not it's not enough to a child that you're going to answer a question they might

not even care in 40 minutes or whatever that's going to be so part of this waiting is building anticipation and when we can do that one of the ways that we can build into this patient is by telling students oh wait that's actually a great question everyone here everyone here what Aaron just asked Aaron just had this really great question say it again Aaron really loud thank you all right so I'm not going to answer that right now right I need to get through what we're getting through right now but the answer to this might

actually blow your mind or it is an answer that you didn't see coming at all so what you're doing is building anticipation for the end of class so now students are like to snap like what what could the possible what is water wet um whatever that your student's question is you're building that anticipation piece in the next thing is it is again um so let me see what I have here is acknowledging to students like um how do I want to say this part it is acknowledging what we're actually what's actually happening right now so

let's say it's the same answer but your reason for the answer is different I think sometimes we expect students to come in with a level of of knowledge about social norms right so like when a student is literally a kid is presenting um we are in the middle of a movie we are presenting we're watching like no I'll just put TV for sure but like we're watching a film clip we're in the middle of something there's an announcement being made over the loudspeaker um it is letting students know very very quickly hey that's a great

question I want to answer it but I have to wait I want to honor Tim who's in the middle of his presentation I need you to hold on to that question write it down so you don't forget it please because it's important to me right right it you write it down I'm giving putting the onus on you because it's important to me that I that I respond to you but I have to wait until after the principal's done making an announcement it's important to me that we get through this TV clip with this movie clip

with this film clip because I want everyone on the same page so just hold on to that and then giving kids an amount of time I mean and and look this is never can you wait this many minutes it is telling students how much time they will wait right because I'm not interested in like like can you wait 30 seconds it's like well now I have they have the option to say no so can you or will you or actually um I need you to wait two minutes until this film clip is finished I need

you to wait the next five minutes until Tim's presentation is finished and so in that you're doing a couple of things you are you're sort of you're giving an example of what social norms are because we do not stop while someone is doing something they've prepared for random stuff we also are giving you a time so I'm giving you an out I'm not saying you have to wait forever I'm not saying you have to wait till the end of class till tomorrow until I can get to it which is an undetermined amount of time we

are instead telling students how much time they have to indeed wait and so that's far more doable so if I know if I'm at the gym and uh oh gosh I just think like if I had if I ask my wife who I go to the gym with every day how much how long until we leave and she was like till we're done bro what that makes working out suck but if she says in the next 10 minutes oh that's totally doable so that's there's a shift around that the other thing with this is and

I'm not short enough to write on the bottom half of this board um fun teacher hack Expo erasers are fine but they get really crappy really quickly Expo claws are the jam or just a Microsoft cloth uh they erase way quicker way easier and you can wash them and bring them back to school you can't wash an eraser so I guess you could try but that's going to get disgusting so don't don't do it or do it and and have a fun activity at home the other thing when a student asks a question completely randomly

and you're not really sure what to do is that you acknowledge that that student's question it deserves more time so that's a wonderful question but it's going to deserve more time than I actually have to give to it right now so can you again can you remind me of this question I want you to write it down right I want you to hold on to it but can you remind me at the end of class because I'm going to answer that or can you remind me at the end of this activity or can you remind

me student asks you something in the hallway even can you remind me of that as soon as you come into class day because I want to do it so again it's a this is about honor it's about honoring students it's also about giving them the time that you will do it and sometimes when you're in the middle of a lesson and you only have 10 minutes left it's letting the student know that I I care about this enough that I'm acknowledging to you that I cannot get through this right now I don't have enough time

to give you to give you an honest answer to give it a thoughtful answer to give you my mind share right now because I am like herding cats around here we're like cleaning up from an activity and people are handing in homework there's questions about tonight's homework there's um you know someone Pops in the door and the kid goes Mr Reynolds Mr Rose Mr owns um can I do any extra credit before the end of the quarter to bring my grade up that's a great question Tim that's a super great question I can't answer that

now thoughtfully but why don't you come in or like when the bell rings come up and see me at the end of class I'll speak to you real quick we'll get you in and out of here or show up after school or show up during lunch when I have a lunch group with everybody that would be a great time to come in and we can have this conversation because I really want to answer that for you and I appreciate you asking it it's done now that kid doesn't feel pushed off they feel cared for but

given the time that they can do it the other thing and last thing I really want to talk about is sometimes students and I think this is a big fear of teachers I know I've had a fear of this because I've been caught like this a kid asks you something and you don't know the answer right they ask something even if it's relevant to the lesson you're teaching the book you're teaching the author that you're reading about the concept that you're teaching about and you don't know the answer to that I think it is really

it's faulty thinking on the part of teachers to know that we should know everything so when we go over Greek mythology in our class that is such an enormous enormous topic I know a great deal about Greek mythology however I can't possibly know everything especially when kids like connect it to like the Percy Jackson series or some video game that they're playing like gods of War or something like that's like I don't even know where you're coming from and I don't know how how that movie saw this particular creature or Monster or event So my

answer is that is a wonderful question again see the theme Here I like saying that to kids because I want to acknowledge them um but this is going to need more research and so I have two options here it's letting a student know that's a really wonderful question and I know I'm I'm pretty sure I know the answer or I've never thought of it that way like you got you got me on that one I've never really thought of it that way but I'm going to do some research tonight or this weekend or this week

and I'm gonna get back to you about that I'm going to make a note myself and I'm going to get back to you because I think everyone can benefit from that so did we all hear the question I think doing that is publicly acknowledging that we don't know everything that we are lifelong Learners and that's something we want our students to be so we need to be the example anything you want your students to be we need to be the example if I want my students to work hard to be nice to show up early

to stay late to put in all their effort I need to be able to and willing to do the same thing and if I'm not I sure shouldn't be asking my students to do any of the things I'm not willing to do so I as a lifelong learner I am going to research this the other thing you can do because I love delegating I love putting the onus on students is we can give that project to a student oh man that's a good question I'm I am willing to give you extra credit and if you

watch my videos if you've been on the channel for long I don't do extra credit as a catch-up ever unless there's extenuating circumstances but if a student goes above and beyond right extra is going above and beyond so if you can find the answer to that I'll give you five minutes tomorrow and I'll give you an extra assignments worth of credit if you can answer that and present in front of the class tomorrow on Friday next week whenever or you let me know when you have it so what this is doing is it's helping students

to satiate their own their own I guess you are helping students to um to kind of like feed their own curiosity to go ahead and look for those things so um and then show up and then show what they've got to the class and then present and so there's all these other pieces all these other really important um attributes that are being connected to this so the the bottom line here is this that we want to encourage our students to ask questions to be inquisitive and to be active participants in their own education right Cesar

Chavez said that the power of Education lies in fostering curiosity and nurturing the natural love of learning we always want our kids to be thinking we always want them to be questioning we always want them to look at things with a critical or thoughtful or curious eye and so we want to pour gasoline on that fire but it's about letting students know when an appropriate time to do that with so the um the classroom and I'm gonna have to look right on my notes for this our class is about Community it's about the collective so

we can't stop for every single question that a student may have in the moment right we'd never get anything done in some classes you all know what classes I'm talking about right um but we can absolutely make time for those questions right saying not right now is not saying no that's a really big distinction saying not right now is not saying no it is giving a time and a place where we can honor that question and give it the thoughtful response that it deserves now some of you might say be saying like what if this

all comes down to like that kid that's just trying to get you off track right and that's all they care about is like how can we how can we like I don't want to do this so like I'm just going to ask questions especially kids ask about something you care about like oh did you see the Barbie movie Mr Reynolds did you go and see like did you see Oppenheimer or the Barbie movie did you see new Indiana Jones did you did you ever watch this show at Mr world how did you meet your wife

right there's all these kind of rando questions that kids will ask because they're trying to get you off track so the way that we stop kids from getting off us off track is the same way that we answer kids that are asking thoughtful and relevant or or or questions that they actually want to know the answer to using these techniques helps solve the same problems whether a student is seriously curious or serious about getting you off of your game giving them acknowledging the question letting them know when and where you will answer it is is

the same move because here's what's going to happen if a kid really is they're seriously curious right they are going to write the question down they're going to ask at the end of class they're going to show up in the hallway later they're going to ask you when the bell rings they're going to come to lunch and ask you they're going to show up after school they're going to do the research overnight they're going to do the presentation tomorrow one of those things if not many are going to happen and the student that is trying

to get you off track gets acknowledged gets treated with kindness and they're just not going to do any of those other things so you don't have to worry about it anyway so sometimes that is that kindness that acknowledgment is the answer anyway but it's letting students know we need to get through this thing before we can get to that thing right there's an order of operations here so I hope that helps you I know that in the beginning of the year there there's a lot to plan for but these are the things that kind of

keep us up at night what do I do if kids ask questions and I don't know the answer to it what do I do if a kid tries to get me off my game what do I do if people aren't behaving and so we want to try and help you move through that um and look if you are a new teacher we have a free resource it is this new teacher's summer to-do list and it is a list of like 18 things or so that are easy but man I didn't know them when I started

teaching and I really really wish I did that's completely free you just have to go into the link below in the description we'll send that to you if you're not a part of our Facebook group also please please please consider joining it is real rap with Reynolds teacher talk on Facebook and that's it gang we'll see you next time peace