Unlocking the Magic of Student-Led Classroom Transitions: Master the Art of Time-Saving and Empowerment
Apr 01, 2024Season 1Episode 86
Helena Hains
Wondering how to create smooth classroom transitions from one activity to another?
Here's a breakdown of not only what classroom transitions are, but also how to do them effectively. In this video I share my secret to getting my class to transition from one activity to another without me saying a thing.
This strategy to smooth classroom transitions will help you confidently minimize disruptive behavior, save time in the classroom, and be confident in your classroom management skills.
I’m Helena, a coach for new and first-year teachers sharing knowledge on how to have a thriving career and personal life.
The Present Teacher Podcast is a resource for classroom management, classroom organization, time management, and teacher wellness. Follow along and learn how to thrive in the classroom and in life.
Subscribe to The Present Teacher Podcast to get inspired by new weekly podcast episode
Wondering how to create smooth classroom transitions from one activity to another?
Here's a breakdown of not only what classroom transitions are, but also how to do them effectively. In this video I share my secret to getting my class to transition from one activity to another without me saying a thing.
This strategy to smooth classroom transitions will help you confidently minimize disruptive behavior, save time in the classroom, and be confident in your classroom management skills.
I’m Helena, a coach for new and first-year teachers sharing knowledge on how to have a thriving career and personal life.
The Present Teacher Podcast is a resource for classroom management, classroom organization, time management, and teacher wellness. Follow along and learn how to thrive in the classroom and in life.
Subscribe to The Present Teacher Podcast to get inspired by new weekly podcast episode
Speaker 1:
According to a study done by Cornell University, it takes anywhere from nine and a half minutes to get back into a productive workflow after switching tasks.
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Now, it's no secret that teachers are struggling to fit all of the curriculum and activities they have planned into a typical school day.
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But the question is how much time are we losing in a school day because of transitioning from one task to another? Well, let's say, for example, that in your classroom you switch to 10 different activities, lessons or assignments a day on average. Now, using the statistic from Cornell University that they found, that would mean that teachers are losing, on average, around 100 minutes each day, each time they switch to a different activity. So if you add that up, 180 school days, that's the equivalence of 18,000 minutes a year, which is a lot of time that we're spending transitioning from one activity to another. So the question is how can we make this time shorter? Well, three years ago, I had to step out of my second grade classroom to go to the office to speak to admin about something. Well, at the time, the special education teacher was in there and she agreed to watch my class, while I stepped to the office to go talk to my admin about a situation that had occurred While I was leaving. My students were in the middle of doing centers. So when I was gone, apparently the students had did three transitions of centers, from switching one group to another, and when they were done, they went to whole group reading. Before I got back and they were sitting at the carpet with their books and they started the lesson without me. Now, when I got back, I talked to the special education teacher and her mind was completely blown away that my students did all that without her saying a thing. You see, I had. Some of my students have specific jobs that helped aid during centers, including transitioning centers and transitioning from centers to full group reading. Well, you might be wondering what's the secret to having your classroom run without you there, and how do you get your students to transition from one thing to another without you even being there to facilitate it? Well, that's what we're going to be diving in today. Today, we're diving into how to get back time into your schedule by cutting down the amount of time you are spending on transitions from one thing to another, and how to do it in a way that your students can run it without you doing a thing. So, with. That being said, let's dive in. Hey Teacher Bestie, my name is Helena and I'm the creator of the Present Teacher Podcast. I'm a first year teacher coach and in this podcast you are going to learn everything from simple, actionable classroom management, social learning and teacher wellness strategies. You know that impact you want to make in the classroom. We're going to make it happen here.
Speaker 1:
Now, before we dive in, let's get clear on what classroom transitions are. Classroom transitions are whenever a student moves from one activity to another or from one subject to another. Some examples of classroom transitions could be going from whole group math to working independently, lining up to recess after finishing an activity, or when you go from cleaning up the room to lining up to go to recess or to pack up to go home. All of these are different examples of what different transitions can be, or classroom transitions can be in the classroom. The biggest thing that these transitions do is they take a lot of time, especially if you're not doing them correctly. So let's dive into what does a good transition look like.
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Now that we talked about what a classroom transition is, let's talk about what a good transition looks like. A good transition entails your students going from point A to point B in a short amount of time, ideally in under a minute. Also, a good transition, in my eyes, is when your students move quietly and quickly from one activity to another. Typically, I like my students to be at a voice level zero or voice level one, just in case I want to add any extra instructions while they are transitioning. It's also where your students are cleaning up or finishing up the activity they're working on now, so then they can have a clean break and go into the next thing. A good transition is where your students know exactly where they're supposed to be, what they're supposed to grab, and they can do it without asking you what they should be doing. All of these make up what a good transition may look like.
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Now that we know what a good transition may look like, now that we know what a good transition may look like, let's dive into what a good transition may not look like, or a clear indicator that you might want to work on your transitions. For me, this looked like my students talking a lot when we were transitioning from one to another and completely forgetting what we were transitioning to go do. Another indicator that I need to work on my transitions was my students would stop in the middle of transition and ask me what they were supposed to be doing. I wasn't clear on what they should be doing from getting from point A to point B, so they had to come up to me as to get a reminder on what they should be doing. Another clear indicator that my students need help with their transitions is it took a lot of time. They use this time as an opportunity to talk with one another, to visit with one another, and oftentimes they would forget their materials or whatever we needed to go from point A to point B. All of these are clear indicators that you might want to work on or, in my case, I definitely need to work on my classroom transitions.
Speaker 1:
Now that we know what a good transition looks like and sounds like and what they don't look like and sound like, let's talk about how can you have a quick transition in your classroom. So the first and I want to say the major reason you may want to work on your transitions, or that you should work on your transitions, is you need to have clear procedures. Now let's talk about what a procedure is. A procedure is how you want your students to interact with each other or with different objects throughout the room. Now, procedures I teach them a different way and I have a ton of material that I've talked about in weeks past on what a good procedure looks like and sounds like. But here's just a general breakdown of what a procedure, how I teach a procedure. So the first thing I do is I introduce the procedure. For example, today class we are going to talk about lining up for recess. Then I get up and physically model what it looks like and sounds like to them. So I will get up and model what it looks like and sounds like and then we'll have a discussion and I will ask them what does it look like and sound like to line up for recess? And then we'll discuss. And then this is the extra caveat I like to add, because growing up I was that student who always asked why? Not because I wanted to be mean, but because I wanted to understand why things worked and if I had the why, I could buy in and remember why it's important. We then discuss about the why. Why is it important that we have the transition or we have this procedure set up the way that we do? After we discuss that, I physically model what it doesn't look like and sound like. And again, we have an open discussion on what it doesn't look like and sound like, and then we discuss why it's important that we do it the way the first way that I modeled and then we practice Some different ideas of some transitions that are procedures that you might consider in your classroom is switching centers or stations.
Speaker 1:
If you do that in your classroom, lining up for recess, packing up to go home, going from independent work to whole group or going from whole group learning to independent learning. Now I specifically like using different areas of the room to help facilitate the different types of expectations my students should be doing. But again, that's content for a different day. Besides the fact anytime you have your students move from one thing to another, that's not only a transition. Besides the fact anytime you have your students move from one thing to another, that's not only a transition, but it can also be a procedure. So typically during the first couple weeks of school, I'm specifically targeting these transitions and I'm modeling what it looks like and sounds like. I like to focus on anywhere from three to five each week until my students make it a habit, because when they make it a habit, it's something that they do naturally and I don't have to remind them and it doesn't take energy or an uphill battle by any means. They just naturally do it on their own.
Speaker 1:
So, as a recap, the first step to having really good transitions in the classroom is to first treat them like procedures and to model them and introduce, like you would, a procedure. The second thing you want to do in order to have really good transitions in your classroom is I personally like to use music. Now, music is one of the most amazing things. I love working to music. I know my students do too, and it's a great way to connect with them when you play a song that they like or that they can connect with.
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So how this works is, after I model the procedure, I then model it with music and I have a set amount of time or a certain point in that song that the students need to transition from point A to point B before that time hits. So, for example, if we go back to practicing for lining up for recess, I would model to my students. Let's say, we play happy. I think it's by oh, I can't remember who it's by, besides the point, but they move from one place to the other and they have to show me what it looks like and sounds like. And maybe they're standing in line at a zero facing forward by a certain point in the song. Now this is a good indicator because what happens is if I suddenly need my students to do a certain transition, I don't have to tell them what they have to do, they'll just start to memorize. Whenever I do this song, I need to be doing this and it's a great non-verbal cue to get your students to follow expectations. So some examples of some songs I have used in the past are Count On Me. We used Frozen, let it Go, a lot of the kids bop songs my students particularly like in primary.
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If you're in upper elementary you can always use instrumental music but kind of gather the kind of music taste your students might like and incorporate it into these transitions. And, like I said, whenever you are introducing the procedure you want to pair it with the song. I like to use the same song consistently for the first couple months. Typically I switch them about once a quarter and then we move to something different and I let them know ahead of time. Our lineup song is now this song.
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Another reason why transition songs are going to be really important or music in your classroom is. If you are not there, you don't have to then worry about having the teacher tell them where they need to be and what they need to do. Instead, you can have a teacher helper and set up or push play whenever it's time to transition. So what this looked like when I refer back to the story I mentioned earlier is I had a playlist set up where I saved all the tabs on my Chrome and every morning I would just open all the tabs at once and I had all of the songs I would need for that day for our transitions. What would happen then is, whenever my students finished the rotation or the timer went off, what my student teacher helper would then come up and play the song for transitions. Again, this is something that was really great, because if I was pulling students back for small group learning, I didn't have to physically get up and go to the computer to play the song. My teacher helper was in charge of that, and this helped give my students autonomy in the classroom and help them be, you know, independent and prioritize their own learning.
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Now, depending what kind of teaching style you may have, you may want to add a little bit of fun to this. For example, towards quarter four, I like to do the Cupid shuffle. I like to do the Cupid shuffle with my kids because I'm personally just that kind of engaging teacher that likes to move with my kids, and so my students would actually do the Cupid shuffle from one center to another and it was a lot of fun. Feel free to make this your own, but I'll make sure to put a list of some songs and transitions I use in the description down below. So you might be wondering but what do your students feel about this? Well, my students actually loved that I use music for transitions and I related it back to their interests. It was one of their favorite things because they got to dance and have fun while still following expectations, and it was a clear guideline of what they should be doing, so there's no confusion going on. So if you haven't tried this, I highly recommend incorporating music into your transitions to save time. I personally found that when I started using music for my transitions, transitions would go from taking anywhere from five to ten minutes, like I mentioned earlier, to now taking less than a minute, and I loved it, and my students loved moving around and it was engaging overall. This definitely transformed my teaching after the first couple years of teaching.
Speaker 1:
So, as a quick recap, the three things you need for good transitions in your classroom is, first, clear procedures. The second thing you're going to want to use is music, having different songs for different transitions you're going to do in the classroom. And the third thing is to practice. I mentioned this earlier when I talked about procedures, but I would have my students practice that procedure or that transition over and over and over again. Now there's this common saying in the teacher world that you can't smile until December. I personally don't believe that's true. I'm more of an up. I try to be a positive, engaging teacher and it's okay to have fun with your students, but there's a difference between, you know, not smiling and being serious versus having high expectations of your students while being engaging and fun, and I choose that path for my classroom because it works best for me. So, with that being said, feel free to have your students practice over and over again until they get it right. You're not being mean when you're doing this. If anything, you're actually setting them up for success and you are practicing this until it becomes a habit. I again recommend only focusing on anywhere from three to five procedures a week. If your students have mastered that procedure, feel free to move on to another one, but when you do this, you're really cementing and getting down that habit, so your students will do it naturally by the end of the year. That wraps up the ways that you can have amazing transitions in your classroom.
Speaker 1:
I hope you found this helpful. If you did, I would really love it if you could share where you're listening from with others. Send me a DM on Instagram letting me know that you found this helpful and then let me know if you use transitions in your classroom, including music. Let me know what songs you are using, because I'm always adding to my playlist for my kids. Again, I will put my favorite songs that I pair with different transitions in the descriptions down below.
Speaker 1:
If you want more classroom management advice, I have some free resources for you. The first one is the Ultimate Classroom Management Guide. This wraps up the top questions I get in regards to classroom management and I put it in one free guide so you can just go to one place to get your questions answered. The second thing I have is the ultimate classroom management challenge. This is a three-day challenge that walks you through how to manage disruptive behavior, like when your students are talking a lot or they're moving around and out of their seats. Both of these things are things I personally struggled with my first couple years of teaching and once I got it down, I really wanted to share with other teachers who are having the same difficulties I was on how to manage that behavior. The third resource I have for you is the present teacher circle.
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Now, when I first started teaching, my district didn't exactly have a place for new teachers to go to get support other than my co-teacher. That's why I wanted to create a resource for new teachers to go to, where they can support one another and cover different topics and learn about different topics like how to manage your classroom with ease, how to curb disruptive behavior and be proactive about it, how to plan ahead of time so you're not staying late like I had to, that you're planning and prepped weeks in advance in case you have a sub. How to grade quickly and effectively so you're not staying up late before report cards. How to have good communication with your family and admin. And, most importantly, how to have a fulfilling life overall inside and out of teaching. This is everything I cover inside the present teacher circle through the writing teacher framework. So if you want to learn more, I will make sure to put the link to the present teacher circle inside the description down below. As always, remember we are stronger together and I will see you in the next one, teacher Bestie. Bye.
Speaker 1:
Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. I hope that you were able to take away some value that will help you thrive inside and out of the classroom. It would mean the world to me if you could take five seconds right now and leave a review on this podcast. And if you found this podcast especially helpful, make sure to take a screenshot of this episode right now and tag me on your socials to let me know you're listening. As always, remember that we are stronger together. With all the love in the world, helena, aka the Present Teachera the present teacher. See you next time, teacher Bestie.