How to Make Classroom Transitions Simple With Clear Beginnings and Endings [episode 48]

Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today’s episode, we’re starting a three part series where we’ll be diving into classroom transitions.

We start our episodes with a morning message just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. In episode 35 of our podcast, we talked about the idea of surprise and delight, which is a term that comes from the business world. It’s the strategy of a business completely out of the blue treating its customers to a valuable act of kindness with no strings attached.

In the episode we talked about how the same strategy can be applied to the classroom. Planting small surprises shows kids that they matter to us, it helps them feel valued and loved. And this week’s morning message is what are your ideas for adding surprise and delight in the classroom?

Emily, why don’t you kick us off. Well, I recently saw a Plinko board on Amazon. So if you grew up watching The Price is Right when you were home sick from school like we did, you know what I’m talking about. But basically it’s a board with pegs on the front, you drop a round disc from the top and it slides down bouncing around the pegs until it gets into different landing spots at the bottom.

Each of those landing spots could be a different prize, like 10 minutes of drawing time, or five minutes extra recess or anything else. I’m obsessed with the idea of using this for surprise and delight with your students. It would be especially effective if you don’t use it very often, or have only one or two of the landing spots actually have prizes so that getting the reward would give a big boost of delight to the class. I will link to that Plinko style board in the show notes.

One of my favorite surprise and delight activities was to get out the seasonal books. And you know, thanks to years of Scholastic Book orders, I had a big assortment of seasonal paperback books. So every month I would put a bunch of books in this like little IKEA toy box that was supposed to look like a treasure chest. And a few times a month I would pull it out as a fast finisher and the kids always thought that was a treat.

I love that. We had some great ideas for surprise and delight from the teachers in our teacher approved Facebook group. So Emily had the idea of using game show buzzers to pull out from time to time in her math classroom. Oh, that’s fun. I’ve done that before we had some that the team shared.

Karen love the idea of a prize wheel that we shared in Episode 35. She said, “Kindergarten students are visual learners and the sound of a prize wheel spinning would certainly capture their attention and focus. The prize will could be used not only for prizes, but for lessons in all of our curriculum areas as well. I can already hear the students chanting time to spin the wheel and other such phrases.” Oh, they would love that.

Lisa had the idea of using one of those old school Bingo sets with the Bingo cage, you know, the ones that you turn with the little balls inside. I think that would be such a fun idea.

Jennifer said, “I do a random foodie Friday, where we learn about a culture that is represented in our classroom, and then try a snack from that culture. My kids love it. And because they know it could happen on any given Friday, even though I know which one it is of course, they are even more excited when they come to school on Fridays because they just never know if it will be a foodie Friday.”

I think that’s part of what makes the delight so magical is that that surprise, you don’t know when it could happen.

Yeah. Heather shared a couple of ideas including changing out your pencils for pens during writing time, adding fun seasonal glasses to reading time love that. And using slime for stretching out numbers in the lesson about expanded form.

She’s more of a fun teacher than I am. I was just telling my child yesterday how much I dislike.

Tina shared a couple of ideas. She said to add surprise and delight I have the kids write their answers with invisible ink pens, and they love to go back and check theirs and their partner is answers with the little light that comes with it.

I also ordered a button called 30 second dance party and I have all the names on popsicle sticks, along with a few dance party sticks. So when I draw a name to do the problem on the board, sometimes I draw the dance party stick. Then I push the button for an impromptu 30 second dance party so fun and it puts a movement in it.

Oh I like that. It’s just like it has that time limit built in so you don’t have to manage it. Yes

I am like, obsessed with that idea now that I’ve heard. So I found a link for you guys on Amazon. And I’ll put that in the show notes. And while I was looking for that, I also found a hype button that will do one of those air horns on fixing. Is that a good one?

Yeah, I think it would be so fun to have one of those that you occasionally hit, when the class has done something like super spectacular, just like hit that hype button. I’m obsessed with this idea. Now we need all of these. But I will link to all of that in the show notes.

We’d love to hear your ideas for surprise and delight in the classroom over in our teacher proof Facebook group. Or you can connect with us on Instagram at @2ndstorywindow and that is with the two.

Now it’s time for the feedback of the Week. This week, we’re sharing some amazing feedback we got on Facebook, about our fluency and comprehension reading passages.

Amy said, “I love these passages and I use them as homework. I always get a few parents that tell me how much they love reading them. And a family even planned a trip to Yellowstone after reading. Thanks for the great resources.”

That delighted me because we wrote those passages based on our own experiences of visiting Yellowstone a few times in our childhood. So it just makes me so happy to think that it inspired somebody else to visit one of our favorite places. You can find a link to our fluency and comprehension reading passages at the link in our show notes.

This week, we are starting our three part series on classroom transitions. Emily, why don’t you kick us off by explaining what we mean by transitions.

Well, simply put a transition is just the ending of one activity and the beginning of another. But if you’ve ever had to direct a class of children through a transition, you know, there’s actually nothing simple about a transition.

Oh, definitely. On this surface, it seems like it should be so simple, just get from point A to point B. But transitions involve managing behavior, managing time, and then also often managing materials on top of it all. And then all of that has to occur in a very short window with maximum efficiency and minimum supervision. So easy, right?

Even if the teacher is actively paying attention as the transition unfolds, it is impossible to see everything that’s happening. And students whether intentionally or not, will seize on this opportunity to go rogue. So you can see why transitions become the point that can make or break your classroom management.

As we’re talking, I’m imagining a teacher in the middle of a tornado of activity. You’ve got some kids putting away one set of materials, some are already getting out materials for a different activity, and then they’re all moving to a new location in the room. But getting there at different times. If you’ve ever been in a classroom, you felt this feeling.

It really is a tornado of activity. So I guess that gives us a choice: we can either be blown over by transitions or learn to harness them. In order to harness them, we need to set everyone up for success. We do that by making sure transitions have clear beginnings and endings and that they minimize wasted time. Over the next three podcast episodes, we are diving deep into the world of transition taming.

Yeah, that’s going to be a new roll on your job description is that your transition tamer. It’s so important to note that several studies have highlighted three characteristics of efficient transitions. First, they have clear beginnings and ends. Second, they are rapid. And third, they minimize the amount of downtime between activities.

Since this is a lot of information to cover, we are going to break it down over the next few weeks.

In today’s episode, we will discuss ways to give your transitions clear beginnings and ends. Next week, we will address the time management component of transitions. And then in our third episode, we’ll share important keys that keep one activity efficiently rolling into the next one. So Emily, lead us into today’s discussion.

I would love to. The first thing to recognize that there are two types of transitions, routine transitions and prompted transitions. A routine transition is just what it sounds like it’s part of your daily routine.

Think of transitions that are like arriving at school in the morning and coming into your class or where students turn in their finished paper. Because these are part of your routine. You can teach them just like any other procedure.

Oh, you know what we love to talk about procedures.

We do. We always come back to our method of Tell, Try, and Tally. So you start by telling or explaining the transition. You walk through it, you model it you point out any tricky parts. Then as the students turn to try and complete the procedure. You have the class follow the directions you’ve just explained and then you tally or evaluate how it went.

You have probably done this already, yes gold star for teaching your routine transition so effectively already.

Just remember that tallying is an ongoing process. The standard of behavior in a classroom is whatever students can get away with. So if things are starting to slide out of place, make sure to take the time to address the issue and practice doing it right.

If you go back to Episode 32, we have a whole podcast episode that walks you through how to tighten up your procedures. And that includes all of your routine transitions.

But prompted transitions need a different approach. I think this is where a lot of teachers struggle, because prompted transitions require more guidance. Part of that is due to their nature, a prompted transition likely isn’t part of your class routine.

And also, they vary wildly from transition to transition. So a transition to getting out supplies for an art project is going to look really different from a transition to getting into groups of four for a discussion.

Right. So the trick to making these prompted transitions efficient, isn’t about standardizing each transition, it’s about standardizing your prompt. Exactly.

So to do this, you need two things, an attention signal and an action cue. You likely already have an attention signal. Maybe you change up your attendance signals each month, or maybe you do the same one all year, I just tend to pick one and use it all year. Yeah.

But whatever phrase or chant you use to get your class’s attention is the same signal that you just used to start a prompt to transition. It’s useful because the kids know exactly how to respond to it.

But an action queue might be new to your class. And this was actually one of our teacher approved tips in one of our first episodes, because action cues are just super handy. They really are so useful. Action cues work by telling students exactly when to stop listening and start moving.

So let’s say you want your class to get a pencil, take out their math books and turn to page 86. If you start listing your instructions, the kids will act as soon as they think they know what you want them to do.

Pretty much without fail, they are going to start moving before they actually understand what’s expected of them.

Yep. And that’s why you end up with 18 students asking what page they’re supposed to turn to. But this changes if you start with a cue. So what does that sound like Heidi?

So that would be something like when I say go, that’s your action cue. And you use it to preface your directions. So when I say go, I want you to get out of pencil, take out your math book and turn to page 86. That way check go. This makes it much more likely that kids will listen to your whole list of directions.

Yes, knowing they have to wait for your action to help students relax and focus on understanding what you want, instead of jumping into predict what you want. Plus after a few weeks listening for an action cue becomes a habit. Every time you students hear when I say go, it alerts their brains that something important is coming and they better pay attention.

You have probably heard us talk about student engagement as a balance between routine and novelty. The structure of when I say go is adding that predictability to our routine. Kids know what to expect every time they hear it. And that’s the key to making an action cue successful.

But even with this predictable routine, you can add in a little novelty by using a different cue word. You can substitute go for something seasonal like when I say football, or use it as a chance to be silly when I say gobble gobble or when I say a gooba booga.

Very good demonstration. Mixing up your action cue is an easy way to add surprise and delight to an otherwise mundane task. Plus it also works to keep kids actively listening.

I almost always use go as my action cue. But if it seemed like my students were a little checked out maybe sometimes like to trick them and the kids got a kick out of it. It wasn’t anything mean.

So they’d be listening for go and I’d surprise them with gofur and half the class would start moving and the rest of the kids would be whispering she said gofur, she said gofur, so everyone sit back down and maybe like you know laughing and we do it again.

Ghost and they laugh and I laugh and by this point they’re just hanging on my every word. So sometimes I would just say go right after that and sometimes I have a drag it out as long as I could think of words that started with G-O. You know, I had quite the repertoire goes gold gold goat going. That’s like a tricky one.

And then when I actually said go like whispered softly and they would also think it was funny. I’m hilarious in the classroom. Maybe it sounds like I’m belaboring the point. But that 20 seconds of surprise, bought me a class that was 100% on task and enjoying themselves while they did it.

And you know, they were walking off to do their task with a smile on their face. We love that. It’s not something you’d want to use everyday. But getting silly with your action cue every once in a while can give you and your students a moment of shared fun. It really speaks to the power of surprise and delight. It’s like a spice you don’t need much to create a noticeable positive impact.

So let’s put our attention signal and our action cue into a larger sequence for standardizing prompted transitions. Whoo, you know, we love a step by step system. We live for a checklist.

So step one is to get their attention. If you are setting them up for the transition in the middle of a lesson, you likely already have their attention. But if you are interrupting an activity to prompt a coming transition, always, always, always, always make sure you have their full attention before you start giving directions.

Then once you have their attention, it’s time for step two, explain your action cue. When I say go, or in a moment when I say banana.

Because you’re telling them what to listen for, they will continue to pay attention while you do step three, which is to give directions. This is the point where you prep them for what’s to come, whatever you want them to do lay it out step by step.

I also like to tack on my expectations for how I want it done. When I say go, I want you to quickly and quietly tuck in your chair and come back to the rug. Or when I bawlk like a chicken, I want you to quickly and quietly get a paper and number it from one to 10 for a spelling test.

If you had a nickel for every time you said quickly and quietly, you probably be retired in Hawaii by now, no joke.

But after you’ve explained what to do, step four is to check for understanding. If your directions are straightforward, like come to the rug, you can probably just do a visual scan to make sure everyone seems to know what to do. It gets trickier though if your directions have multiple steps. We know kids struggle with those multi step directions.

And haven’t we learned that the hard way? If you need kids to keep track of multiple tasks, you want to make sure everyone is on the same page before you turn them loose. And one way to do that is to ask someone to repeat back what you said.

Just make sure you’re not using that as a punishment to catch someone off guard. That’s not the point here. No, we really want to make sure everyone is getting the information they need. You also could make a list on the board for reference if you’re asking them to remember several steps.

Some other ideas for checking for understanding are having students turn and tell a neighbor what they’re supposed to do. Or even a give me a thumbs up if you know what to do. I like to end with a raise your hand if you have any questions so I can clear up any misunderstandings before they become problems.

Then it is time for the transition. Step five is use your action cue, go banana pants, whatever your cue was. That was a good chicken call there I’ve been practicing.

Once kids start moving, step six is to monitor. Likely you have your own tasks to complete during a transition, which is just going to add a whole other layer of complexity to transition time.

Yeah, it’s so tricky because good teaching doesn’t magically happen, you might be setting up for the next lesson or getting ready to pull small groups. But do your best to keep at least one eye monitoring how things are unfolding.

And if you are noticing a common misunderstanding, like everyone is getting glue bottles instead of glue sticks or a few kids are starting to get out of control, don’t be afraid to just shut it down.

Yeah, if that happens, start the transition over again, jump in with your attention signal, make sure you have everyone’s attention, and then work your way down the list. Explain your action cue, give the directions but this time make sure to firmly address the behaviors that need to change and your expectations.

So here is an example of how it sounds all put together. I start with my attention signal. Emily, do you want to tell about the pirate themed one we used to use?

I just heard somebody say this the other day and I needed like my heart like Rose. It’s like back in the classroom. Okay, so when we had a pirate themed classroom, we both used to use the signal of all hands on deck and the kids were supposed to stop and salute within I captain.

So I’d start all hands on deck and then I’d wait to make sure I had all eyes on me. And then I would start when I say yo I need you to do four things: quickly and quietly clean up your phonics game and put the cards in the bin on the counter, put your pencils at your desks, put your papers in the inbox and come sit on the wreck. Got that? Cards pencils papers, rug.

What’s the first thing Yep, card One second, pencils good. And put your papers in the box. And now point to where you’re going to sit. Good. Raise your hand if you have any questions. And if no one had a question, and I still had everyone’s attention, I’d say your hoho and then monitor how well things unfolded.

So as a reminder, the steps for a prompted transition are: one signal for attention. Two explain your action cue. Three, give directions and say how you’d like them completed. Four, check for understanding. Five give your action cue and six monitor.

We hope that’s given you some good ideas for how to structure your transitions to have clear beginnings and endings. At the very least, we hope you’ll give action cues a try. And please come visit our Facebook group to let us know how it went. We’d love to hear if you stuck with go or if your students got a kick out of you bawlking legged chicken.

We’ll be back next week with part two in our transition series, where we’ll talk about how to make speedy classroom transitions.

Now let’s talk about this week’s teacher approved tip. Each week, we leave you with a small actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week’s teacher proof tip is use icons when listing steps to follow.

One way to really help students follow directions is to make your directions visual. I think teachers with young students do this often because they teach non-readers But it really helps clarify things regardless of the abilities of your students. Everyone can benefit from visual cues. If you are like me, and you are not blessed in the artistic department, trust me when I say that this does not have to be fine art.

So if I want my kids to clean up their place value blocks, turn in their papers and get out there books, I’d list of three steps on the board. And then you know I’d use a blue marker and draw a square with some lines on it for a hundreds block. I’d use a magnet and stick a paper on the board next to step two. And then I just draw a simple book icon.

To make this even simpler, you could project your list from your computer then you can use clip art or even photos no drawing require. That is definitely a win. That’s such a great idea.

To wrap up the show we’re sharing what we’re giving extra credit to this week. Heidi, what are you giving extra credit to this week? My extra credit goes to Systane Ultra Eyedrops. So a few months ago my eye doctor pointed out that my eyes were dry. You know what everyone wants to hear.

And she recommended this brand of eyedrops. They are really very nice and they do a good job even in this cold dry winter air. I think I have gone through a whole bottle probably just this month, but my eyes are very happy so well. That’s good. Good job gel eyedrops.

Emily, what is your extra credit? I’m giving extra credit to our teacher approved Facebook group. That is much better than eyedrops. Well, the eyedrops are helpful too.

We have some really amazing educators in our group I so enjoy the conversations that come up in there. And whenever we post about a morning message, we get such amazing responses from the group members. If you’re not in our Facebook group, we’d love to see you there. You can find it at the link in our show notes or search for the teacher approve group on Facebook.

That’s it for today’s episode. Remember to add an action cue to your prompted transitions. And don’t forget our teacher approved tip to add icons to your direction list. Be sure to check out our show notes for links to anything we’ve mentioned. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a teacher friend. Recommendations are one of the top ways people discover new podcasts.