Managing Impulsivity

MANAGING IMPULSIVITY OVERVIEW
One of my year-long goals is for students to reduce the number of demerits they earn for poor impulse management by 50% over the course of the year. My students are less than two years away from high school graduation, so self-impulse management is essential. My students need to learn to manage their impulses, so that they can make informed and mature decisions. To improve impulse management, I explicitly teach and reinforce managing impulsivity in my classroom through classroom routines, independent work, and behavior tracking. At the start of the school year, our class discussed “triggers or specific situations that make it difficult to manage impulsivity” (Johnson et al., 2005). Then, we agreed on movement, voice, and position impulse management expectations and practice through interactive modeling. Expectations are reinforced every day verbally and visually, and are tracked so that students are aware of their improvement. 

Please scroll down or click on the table of contents below to learn more about how managing impulsivity is explicitly taught and reinforced in my classroom each day.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Impulse Management Vision
Impulse Management Presentation
Impulse Management Classroom Visuals
Impulse Management Tracker
Teacher Reflection 

Impulse Mangement Vision
At KIPP, my students regularly earn merits or demerits for the exhibition or lack of exhibition of KIPP habits & mindsets traits, respectively. In addition to counting merits and demerits earned in my class, I make note of the most prominent habit and mindset behind each earned merit and demerit. For several weeks, I noticed that poor impulse management was the number one reason for earned demerits. Therefore, I decided to more intentionally teach the habits and mindsets of impulse management, because it will help my students achieve long-term success. Before interactively modeling how to manage impulsivity through classroom routines, I created a vision document of what students and I should be doing during each part of the lesson. As I worked on this vision document, I managed my own impulse to create inconsistent classroom routines. I root each classroom routine in its ultimate purpose, to create a more urgent, rigorous, and joyful learning environment.

Impulse Management Presentation
As my students and I interactively modeled how we would manage impulsivity through classroom routines, I used the below presentation as a visual on the front board, and as student handouts. Below are several slides from our lesson. On the first slide, students reflected on how they currently manage behavioral impulsivity. On the second slide, students discussed how they "think before they act" (Costa & Kallick, 2000). They managed their impulsivity to socialize upon entering the classroom, and instead worked on the Do Now. Students also discussed managing their impulsivity to ask questions during the Do Now, and instead working independently to recall what was learned yesterday by reviewing notes. Students reflected on how non-academic questions during notes slow down learning, and the usefulness of a hand signal system. On the third slide, the hand signal system for bathroom, tissue, pencil, and trash requests is outlined. On the fourth slide, we created a classroom list of dos and don'ts. Finally, on the fifth slide, students completed an exit ticket and showed mastery of how to manage behavior impulses. To continue mastery of these expectations throughout the school year, we review this presentation on the first day back from any longer school break.

Impulse Management​ Classroom Visuals
To support and reinforce my students' growth in managing impulsivity, classroom visuals remind students of our impulse management norms and goals. For example, I consistently use our voice levels chart, so that my students have a visual reminder of voice level control. Students have developed norms around when it is appropriate to use certain voice levels. For example, during presentations, students manage their impulsivity to speak quietly in front of an audience, and instead project their voice to a level 4, so that all can hear clearly and learn. However, during ACT drill, students manage their impulsivity to ask their partner questions, and instead are silent at level 0 to practice for the real ACT testing environment. My students have shown growth in managing impulsivity by controlling their voice level, and knowing when to ask questions and share thoughts.

Impulse Management​ Tracker
Throughout each of my classes, students are reinforced to managing impulsivity by earning merits and demerits. I verbally tell students when they are earning merits and demerits, and students receive a merit report every week. Merits earned for strong impulse management include writing down questions to ask after silent practice, planning all assignments in an agenda, and waiting until after class to use the restroom. Demerits earned for poor impulse management include blurting out answers, speaking unkindly to another classmate, and being unproductive. In the first three pictures below, managing impulsivity is tracked through the "work hard" merits and demerits, as my students manage their impulses in order to work hard on learning. The fourth picture is a behavioral tracker for a student with a behavioral plan, to especially incentivize the student to manage their impulse to walk out of class.

Over the course of the year, my students have shown significant growth in impulse management. In all my Algebra II classes, students earn more positive behavior points than negative behavior points. In the week shown below, my students earned a total of 1,373 positive behavior points, versus 430 negative behavior points. At the start of the school year, the ratio was about to 2:1 for positive to negative behaviors, but by the end of the first semester, the ratio is over 3:1 for positive to negative behaviors.

Teacher Reflection
As my students grow in impulse management, they will not only achieve more in my class, but also build valuable life skills. Strong impulse management leads to higher work efficiency and productivity. My mission is to prepare my students for college, careers, and choice-filled lives through urgent, rigorous, and joyful learning. Habits and mindsets of impulse management create an urgent learning environment. Fewer classroom disruptions mean we are able to learn more and cover material faster. Through the explicit teaching and reinforcement of managing impulsivity, my students are on track to complete the entire Algebra II curriculum two months before the end of the school year. 

This year, I have made it a goal to give students space for at least ten minutes of silent, independent work each day. In addition, I asked colleagues to make observations of my teaching, as I work on not over-scaffolding new material. At the start of the school year, students struggled with independent work time, raising their hands for help seconds into practice time. In particular, students were afraid to persist through word problems on their own, and had a strong impulse to ask me for initial direction. However, as we have practiced managing impulsivity through explicit instruction and reinforcement, I noted my students’ tremendous growth over the course of this year. In every class period, over 85% of students are managing their impulse to first ask for help, and are instead working urgently and with persistence throughout independent practice time. They use impulse management skills we modeled and practiced as a class, such as referring back to notes, setting up the problem, annotating text, and writing down questions. My students’ impulse management has increased the breadth of their learning, since they are able to independently practice more problems in class and for homework. 
REFERENCES
Costa, A. L., & Kallick, B. (2000). Describing 16 Habits of Mind. Retrieved from http://www.habitsofmind.org/sites/default/files/16HOM2.pdf
Johnson, B., Rutledge, M., Poppe, M., & Vermont Consultants for Language and Learning. (2005). Appendix C: Pre- and post-assessments of Habits of Mind. In Habits of Mind: A curriculum for community high school of Vermont students (pp. 101–104). Retrieved from http://www.chsvt.org/wdp/Habits_of_Mind_Curriculum_VT_WDP.pdf ​