#28 ENTRY ROUTINE
#29 DO NOW
#30 TIGHT TRANSITIONS
#31 BINDER CONTROL
#32 SLANT
#33 ON YOUR MARK
#34 SEAT SIGNALS
#35 PROPS
Having a scholarly entry routine is key to moving students quickly and seamlessly into classroom mode. I am not always the best at this. With three different classes in the morning, I'm scrambling to change up the board and arrange my technology (even with my morning prep where I try and make it all as seamless as possible). But here is what I will do next year: greet kids at the door by shaking their hands and making sure they learn to do this properly and engage with me. Have packets or handouts on a table for them to pick up, or already at their desks.
The DO NOWs are short activities between 3-5 min. that engage kids in the lesson for the day and give them something to focus on immediately. Next year I will teach my 9th graders that being ready and on time means sitting down and working on the DO NOW before the bell rings. Students have an all together different attitude if you don't teach them this. I've been using different reading strategies in the DO NOW's to mix up the vocabulary words I had for most of the year. Doing vocabulary this way was all right, but I think it should be diversified. Creative prompts are fun starters–writing down the time track, or from a different perspective, or with alternate endings for characters, etc...I also see this as a good place to do sentence corrections and grammar warm-ups.
Having TIGHT TRANSITIONS is a way to gain back precious lost minutes that add up to hours over the course of the school year. This strategy needs to happen in the first week of school; it is much much harder to teach students this later, as I should know. The key to TIGHT TRANSITIONS is having a starting and stopping point with the action clearly defined. The best way to enforce these transitions are done correctly is to have them repeat until they get it right. Just keep the framing positive. I found this can work for other classroom behaviors as well. On Friday, I was feeling really frustrated about how little students listen to each other when we are sharing from the DO NOW. I did a round robin around the room, and if anyone spoke out of turn, we started over again. It only took about 3-4 tries on average and they finally were self-monitoring. Definitely something to repeat next year very early on.
BINDER CONTROL. Don't get me started on this one. The only students failing my classes this year have been the product of extreme disorganization. Even with my simple folder & notebook stored in class system, these kids still manage to lose everything and complicate the situation. What this shows me is that I'm on the right track, but I still need to teach this explicitly in the beginning of the year. I will have a binder for class and a folder for homework next year. I'm going to have students separate sections for vocabulary, DO NOWS, and note taking.
SLANT is something I wish our whole school would do. Many kids suck at this, and it puts into concrete actions those intangibles that make a good scholar, a productive classroom, and a school culture of success. SLANT comes from KIPP schools and it is an acronym for: Sit Up, Listen, Ask and answer questions, Nod your head, Track the speaker. Use this, that's all I have to say.
ON YOUR MARK is being explicit about what to do when class starts. Kids really don't know this if you don't teach them (except for the straight A students). In a nutshell, figure out no more than five unchangeable expectations to start class:
- Paper out
- Desk clear (bags under table)
- Pencil sharp and ready
- Homework in the upper right corner of your desk
Have a time limit of when this needs to be done and a standard consequence for those who don't. Provide tools for those who need things and ask for them before class–I have pencils by the pencil sharpener for them to borrow, for example. Include homework as part of the ON YOUR MARK routine so that students get in a habit of turning it in at the beginning of class. Consequence for not doing homework is staying after school.
SEAT SIGNALS are nonverbal ways of requesting things so as not to distract from learning. We've all had the raised hand right in the middle of instruction that was a totally irrelevant request for bathroom or water. This means teaching when it is okay to request certain freedoms and give students simple signals–two fingers crossed for the bathroom, pencil up if you need a new pencil, pinch nose if you need a tissue, circling finger to get out of seat to pick something up. Sounds militaristic, but it creates structure. I know from how much time I spent this year dealing with these things that it's worth developing these cues.
PROPS means giving props to work well done. Quick, percussive sounds are good. Everybody needs to join, they should be enthusiastic and fun, and students should have a voice in what they want the props to be. Keeps the pace moving and students rewarded for participation. I like snapping fingers and will do more with this next year. Clapping gets out of hand unless you monitor two claps etc...
Kind of dry stuff, but helping take stock of simple improvements that will be a lot of bang for the buck next year. Just organizing myself more as a person right now and seeing how a lot of my frustrations come from the lack of clarity in my classroom structures. Students will always need to be told how to do these things. This is part of being a teenager (especially hard for some teenage boys). So, instead of getting mad, I just need to see this as a big part of my job. A little boring, but structure creates the freedom that creativity needs to flourish. I'm seeing the science behind the art of teaching: the pedagogical golden mean.
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