Blog – Needs Focused Teaching

The Top 5 Reasons To Include Games In Your Lessons

9th October 2019
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The inclusion of games and activities in the classroom provides us with an array of invaluable benefits that mostly gravitate around providing your students with a sense of belonging. Regularly including

Three Creative Positive Reinforcement (PR) Strategies You Might Not Have Thought Of

25th September 2019
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Positive reinforcement isn’t just about praise and encouragement; it helps if there is some variety in the way you acknowledge appropriate student behaviours. With that in mind, here are a couple of

The secret to making your lessons more appealing and engaging

10th September 2019
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I like to use an analogy that simplifies the task of engaging students considerably – I call it the ‘emotion rucksack’. If you’re faced with students dragging their heels and groaning as they

Effortless classroom management

10th September 2019
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This is an extract from one of my books – Take Control of the Noisy Class. I believe this to be THE most important message in the book. It holds the secret to ‘effortless’ classroom management. A

How to learn 40+ students’ names FAST

3rd September 2019
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You can easily learn a class of 40 names in one lesson with this method. It’s all just a matter of concentrating for a few minutes at a time on this single task and you’ll be amazed how powerful

How to create a seating plan that works

27th August 2019
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A properly thought out seating plan is an essential tool when you’re faced with a very challenging class. I remember, early on in my career, what it was like trying to change the seating with some of

Four steps for delivering consequences effectively

15th August 2019
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This four-step script can be used as a framework for delivering consequences without fights and fuss in response to most forms of disruption in lessons. 1. Give a clear warning State very clearly what

5 strategies to deal with the disruptive joker

9th August 2019
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The joker is desperate for attention. His smart remarks, rude comments, smutty gestures, witty retorts and wisecracks may be funny (unfortunately, some class comedians really are!) but they are often

7 tips to manage pupils who have no interest in your lesson

7th August 2019
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A student who has no interest in lessons and a negative attitude towards anything you say and do can have a terrible impact on the rest of the class. But what you must remember is that this student

The number one secret to effective classroom management

2nd August 2019
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After 25 years of working with emotionally damaged and ‘difficult’ children, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is just one true key to successful behaviour management. It really doesn’t matter

The Top 7 Creative Positive Reinforcement Methods

31st July 2019
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Positive reinforcement isn’t just about giving verbal praise and encouragement; it helps if there is some variety in the way you acknowledge appropriate student behaviours. With that in mind, here are

The Two Fundamentals of Dealing With Motivation Problems

29th July 2019
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It’s a fact of any teacher’s life, no matter how fluffy and positive you’ve made your classroom, no matter how many preventive strategies you’re using – kids are kids; there will be problems!

The Top 2 Ways to Create Intrigue in your Lessons

26th July 2019
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By creating some intrigue we can often win round students who have preconceived notions that the lesson won’t interest them; we invite attention rather than demanding it. Intrigue can be created simply

The Best Way to Use Rewards if You Want to See Positive Results… FAST

22nd July 2019
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Here’s a much better way to use rewards as true motivators: offer them spontaneously as occasional surprises. One of the most effective reward systems I ever saw worked entirely on this basis. Unlike

The danger of using rewards

18th July 2019
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I just want to briefly mention the issue of rewards here because they are often considered, along with praise, to be an effective strategy for positively reinforcing good behaviour. The Needs-Focused Approach

About Rob Plevin..

As a new teacher in a comprehensive school, I really struggled to maintain control in the classroom before finally discovering how certain key strategies would lead to an immediate improvement in the way challenging students responded to me. Using these principles as a foundation I went on to develop a complete system for preventing and dealing with behaviour problems and improving student motivation in the classroom.

The ideas are easy to implement and work FAST. I've spent the last 10 years teaching these techniques and concepts to literally THOUSANDS of teachers and lecturers in schools and colleges all over the world and their comments on this site should convince you that this system works.