If you're a new teacher and you'd like to avoid behavior problems right from the start, take control of your classroom through strategic teaching.

What is strategic teaching?

It's simply planning every lesson to include three parts: a great beginning, an engaging middle, and a satisfying ending.

Great Beginnings

A great beginning to any lesson does a couple of things. First, it activates the students' prior knowledge. That is, it makes use of what they already know before any new information is presented to them.

Great beginnings include such activities as prediction exercises, anticipation guides, and brainstorming. Anything that will help the students become interested in the lesson or topic you (the teacher) are presenting is a great beginning activity. It sets the stage for the main part of the lesson which should be an engaging middle.

Engaging Middles

Once students have brainstormed or made a few predictions about what they will be reading or studying, it's time for an engaging middle to your lesson.

This is when students will start to read the text. An engaging middle activity might be to have the students take notes of any new information they acquire as they read. They might also make new predictions as they move farther into the text. And, they can also confirm or verify any of their earlier predictions.

Satisfying Endings

The last ten minutes of any lesson should help students become aware of what they have just learned as they reflect on their reading in an enjoyable and engaging way. Students can do this by answering the following questions:

· Name one or two surprising or interesting facts or ideas that you didn't know before. · Name one or two new vocabulary words. · Write a question you would like to ask the writer?

Alternatively, students can give a short presentation of what they have just learned.

If you are able to effectively engage your students through strategic teaching, they will be much more active in your lessons and as a result, fewer discipline problems will occur.