Ofsted has cited dull teaching as a cause of poor behaviour. I think it could be the other way around.
When we are concerned about how a class might behave, one thing almost always happens: we play safe.
When planning a lesson, we make choices about risk all the time:
It is obvious that one of the best ways to build relationships — alongside a fair and robust system for managing good and poor choices — is to deliver lessons that students actually want to join in with. But what happens when we face challenging behaviour day in, day out? Our energy is drained. We are often not able — and sometimes, honestly, not willing — to pour hours into planning an exciting lesson we fear will go wrong anyway.
The myth is that good lessons solve all behaviour problems. They do not. But they do help.
What we can do is turn up the dial on some of those choices — slowly moving from safe to a little less safe. We do not have to do it for the whole lesson or in every area. But when we take a small risk, we build relationships just a little too. Good relationships are built on trust, and there will never be any trust without a little risk.
Behaviour management makes better lessons possible. Better lessons, in turn, make behaviour management easier. Start with the foundation.