3-Part Strategy to Help Students Learn Respectful Behavior

TL;DR

(full transcript and prompts below)

Many teachers struggle with students not showing respect in class. The problem often isn’t that kids are intentionally rude: it’s that they don’t really understand what “being respectful” means.

To fix this, teachers can break the idea of respect into clear, concrete behaviors, explain why respect matters, and give students tools to monitor themselves.

The Problem

Students often act “disrespectfully” because they don’t fully understand what respectful behavior looks or sounds like.
Telling students to “be respectful” is too vague.

Part 1 – Define Respect Clearly

Give a kid-friendly definition:
“Being respectful means listening when others are talking, using kind and calm words, following directions, and taking care of people and property.”
Be consistent with the message and repeat it regularly.

Part 2 – Explain Why Respect Matters

Use an analogy kids can understand:
“Respect is like oil in a machine—it helps everything run smoothly. Without it, the class breaks down, people get upset, and learning stops.”
Help students see that respectful behavior helps them and the whole class succeed.

Part 3 – Teach Self-Monitoring with a Rubric

Create a rubric with 4 categories (Listening, Kind Words, Following Directions, Caring for Others and Property) and 5 levels.
Add a column where students write: “I think I’m at Level ___ today.”
- Include reflection prompts: “Something I did well today,” “Something I can do better tomorrow”

Conclusion

This 3-part approach gives students a clear understanding of what respect looks like, why it matters, and how they can take responsibility for their own behavior.

Transcript and Prompts

If only kids would behave themselves. Just imagine how much they would learn and how happy the class would be and how much we could teach. Everybody’s having a good time and performing at a high level if only the kids would learn how to behave.

The number one thing that I hear about student behavior in a classroom is students do not act respectfully. It’s the thing that I hear from new teachers, from teachers who’ve been there for a while, and from teachers who are more veterans.

These kids didn’t used to act like this. Well, they always acted like that. It’s just that our definitions and our expectations have changed over time.

Why Some Students Aren’t Respectful

But here’s the real problem. A lot of kids don’t know what it means to act respectfully.

They don’t know what it looks like. We say, “Hey, you need to be respectful to one another.” Okay, what does that mean? And what does that mean on a moment-by-moment basis so they can gauge their own behavior?

Because ultimately, we want them to take responsibility for their own behavior.

So, with that in mind, we’re going to turn to our AI and use three quick prompts to help kids understand what appropriate behavior looks like and begin to develop those pro-social skills, as well as have the ability and the information and the tools that they need to monitor themselves.

Part 1: Define Respect Clearly

So, let’s start here with prompt number one.

And we’re going to use sixth grade kids because they always get a bad rap, you know. um some of my sixth-grade students.

Prompt

Some of my 6th grade students are having a hard time acting respectfully to classmates and to me. I need a clear, concise definition of respectful behavior to share with the class. Use kid-friendly language.

So, we got some context in there. Hard time acting respectfully to classmates and to me. So, all of that is context. That’s the problem that we’re trying to solve and what we need to know.

So, what is the first thing that we need? Well, what does it mean to act respectfully and to use respectful behavior?

Then we can create a single, consistent message that all the students can hear and they can hear it on a daily basis or however often they need to.

The more clarity that we have and the more consistency we have, the better the students will be able to understand what it is that we expect. So, let’s start there and let’s put it in kid-friendly language.

So, there is my prompt. Let’s see what we get, and go.

“Here’s a kid-friendly definition you can share.” Okay. It means doing this, doing this, doing this.

So when we tell students, “You need to act respectfully,” that’s kind of a subjective term. What we should be saying is “When somebody is talking, you need to listen and you need to use calm word, kind words, and a calm tone, following directions.”

This is actually what we’re looking for. Respectful behavior, or “respect”, is just this blanket term that we use, but here is what we actually want to see the students do.

Taking care of classmates, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Okay.

Hmm. “Do you want a short classroom poster version?” Yeah, that’d be great. But not now.

Part 2: Explain Why Respect Matters

So, having come up with a definition, let’s turn to the second half of that question.

First half, what is respectful behavior? And the second question is why? Why do you care?

Well, let’s create an analogy to help answer that question because just saying “It’s important” or “Because I expect it” or “Because I told you so” doesn’t really work. So, let’s give them a nice analogy that they can grasp.

Prompt

Provide an analogy to help my students understand the importance of respectful behavior.

It’s like oil in a machine. All the parts machine everything moves smoothly. If oil is missing…okay…respect is the oil that helps everything run smoothly. Without respect, things break down, people get hurt, okay, etc., etc.

So, as we are reviewing the expectations with the students, maybe even avoiding the word “respectful” altogether, we can say, “Look, this is why it’s important. This is why I’m asking you to demonstrate these behaviors because we’re doing it for you and for your classmates and for the class as a whole so that we can all get along, learn something, and enjoy our time together.”

All right, so that’s one and two.

Part 3: Use a Rubric for Self-Monitoring Behavior

Now, that’s just presenting the idea, but we need to give students a way to monitor their own behavior. And we need a way for us to be able to objectively and consistently evaluate their behavior also. And for that, we’re going to turn to a rubric.

So, let’s take a look at prompt three.

Prompt 3

I want to give my students a rubric to help them monitor their own behavior. The rubric should contain 4 categories, 5 levels each. Include a column for the students to rate their own behavior for each category, using the statement “I think I’m at level ___ today.”

Format the rubric as a table.

After the rubric, include a space for student reflection about something he/she did well and what he/she can do better tomorrow.

Okay, so I want to give them a rubric to help them monitor. So, we’ve got our end goal. We’ve got the purpose. Now, what does it actually look like?

Four categories, five levels each, and put a column at the end.

This is a best practice because this isn’t something we use after the fact. This is something we give them before the bad behavior starts, or any behavior for that matter. This is something we introduce early.

And then they have this as a tool to rate and monitor their own behavior. Put it in the format of “I think I’m at whatever.”

Create it as a table because there are different types of rubrics. We want this one to be a table.

At the end, we need something nice and positive.

Okay, we want the student to reflect, and there’s two things that we want them to reflect on. First, here is something that I did well. Because it’s not all just about how awful you are, you terrible kids. Every kid does something well, and we need to start finding those successes to build a sense of self-efficacy, self-confidence, and self-respect.

All right, what she has done well, he or she has done well, and where do we want to go tomorrow?

So, let’s see what help our AI tools can give us.

And I’m doing this all in the same discussion because it’s all building from that very first prompt and all the context and all that. So here we go.

Let’s get a rubric that the students can use to understand the expectations and monitor their own progress towards meeting them, just like we do rubrics for content areas and everything else.

All right: listening, using kind words, following directions, caring for people and property. Level one, two, three, four, five. Let me see. One, two, three, four, five. And there it is over on the far side: “I think I’m at level blank today.” So, the student can do it.

I already see something that I need to add to this. Let’s get back where we were. There we go.

Student reflection, something I did well, something I can do better. But one thing I’m not really seeing, I’m going to add this, “Add another category for how students act towards one another.”

It’s kind of in there: Kind words, listening, following, direction. But let’s see if we can get some additional information.

So now we’ve got listening, kind words, following, caring, acting towards classmates. I was unkind, left people out, argue. So this is some new stuff, which is going to fit within that general category of respectful behavior. All right. Fantastic.

And then at the end, something I did well, something I can do tomorrow.

Conclusion

There we have a nice sort of three-part strategy for introducing and defining what we mean by respectful behavior that avoids subjective terms and vague “pie in the sky” language, and so on.

We are defining it as a series of concrete, observable, measurable behaviors, which we will use and the students will use. And then a nice tool that they can have on a daily basis, if needed, to help them understand what’s expected to monitor their own behavior and to help build that sense of improvement over time.

So there you go. I hope you found this technique useful. Take care.