My ‘sit back and wait’ approach took a turn for the worse today. Two children in Class 3 (who have a propensity for disturbing, taking control and drawing others into their little world) did what they are very good at, completely disrupting the majority of the lesson.

I expected the other, better-behaved, children to take it upon themselves and put these two in their place, but most of them just seemed resigned to the situation. This may have been my fault, scince I’d told them to ignore any stupid behaviour.

I’m trying to take a hands-off approach, hoping that the children can become a self regulating entity. I know this may take a long time, and may not even work; I need to come up with a solution so as not to lose the trust of those who are well-behaved.

This degradation happened in half-group English. The previous lesson we had together was with the whole class, where the self-regulation appeared to work. Was this due to the number of well- versus ill-behaved children being larger? Can peer pressure really be the solution to the problem? This is, in effect, what I am relying on.