There are two procedures that have caused me the most grief over the past five years (see! I have so much to learn) and those are: morning and afternoon procedures. This year, I decided to shake things up a bit and make a change - for the better! Instead of creating a procedure for the kids to memorize and follow... we established a procedure as a class. Which, I must add, coincidentally was exactly what I wanted them to do anyway!
Using another idea, and quality tool, presented in our district-wide kick off meetings, I asked students the following questions:
What is YOUR job in the mornings? Specifically from 7:50-8:12 AM...
What is MY (the teacher) job in the morning?
What is our job as a classroom in the morning?
Each student was given the opportunity to answer the questions on their own and stick their post-it note on the front board.
As a class, we read through and grouped similar responses under the "Your Job, My Job, Our Job" categories. Some of the "Your Job" responses were: filling out planners, sharpening pencils, unpacking backpacks, using the restroom, etc. As for "My Job", students wanted to be greeted, wanted me to prepare for the school day, drink my coffee (hah!), give hugs, and talk to them. For "Our Job" students felt it was important to get prepared for the school day.
Umm.. NAILED IT.
We drafted our morning procedure and hung it proudly on the whiteboard for all to see. It would have been easier to iron out this procedure for me to write this on my own, but seeking input from my students was far more powerful. When students came in Friday morning, the morning ran like clockwork. It was ah-maze-ing.
Now... let's hope they remember over the weekend! If not, we can always practice the procedure they created. :)
What tips do you have for establishing classroom procedures?
Brilliant! Thank you for sharing ... those little superheroes are lucky to have you as their sidekick!!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great idea! I'm going to give it a shot for the first week of school. :) Something that always worked well for me was having students do their classroom jobs. To name a few, I have a homework checker, weather person, and someone to update our classroom twitter board. They come in, unpack and get right to their jobs. While all the morning business is being done I put on some classical music and as the students finish they get in some independent reading time. After a week of practicing this, my kids loved the routine so much I could barely get them out of their books to begin class.
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