One thing that teachers stress about with their first year of teaching students in resource is how to keep the classroom under control. This is pretty common with every teacher, but it can be tricky when you don’t have the students with you the entire day.
I’m going to go through my top 6 routines that are vital when starting the school year. Teaching these routines will help maximize your instructional time with each student by helping the flow of the classroom and reducing the amount of distractions.
Here are the lessons that taught me why these six routines are a “need to” within every resource class setting:
HOW TO COME IN THE CLASSROOM
During my first year teaching resource, one of my first graders would come in my class crawling and shouting, “I’m here!” Wow! That was totally unexpected and it interrupted the group of students that I was working with. That day and the following 3 days, I spent teaching her how to walk into my classroom appropriately. Soon after, I started noticing that there were other students that were coming in and asking what to do or talking to another student or just simply sitting at a table with nothing in front of them. That’s when I knew that I needed to make a change with my entire classroom. I spent the time teaching them how to come in appropriately and I also added an independent practice for them so that they had something to do right away.
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE TEACHER IS TALKING
“My dog is sick!”, “I have a new pair of shoes”, “I’m tired”, “How much longer until lunch?” Those are just a few of the things that I would hear while trying to teach the students. Of course, there are times when they need to share something, but I was getting exhausted shutting down comment after comment.
HOW TO GET THE STUDENTS’ ATTENTION
I taught a whole school year in resource without having an attention signal! What the heck! I remember the school psychologist came into my classroom to give short little social story lessons once in a while and she taught my class an attention signal “Get Ready”. That’s all she had to say to them and they had their eyes on her, hands down, feet on the floor and mouths closed. I quickly immersed this concept to every group in my classroom. I saw the immediate results of having to say that one simple phrase of “Get Ready” and I could begin my instruction.
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR PENCIL NEEDS TO BE SHARPENED
What would be the number one reason a student sharpens their pencil? If you answered “because it was dull” then YOU. ARE. WRONG! My experience with students that have learning disabilities is that they are sharpening their pencil to avoid work that is hard for them. The noise, the act of sharpening the pencil until all that is left is the sharp end and an eraser, breaking the lead on purpose and the constant asking me was starting to become an irritating part of the day.
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU NEED TO ASK A QUESTION OR MAKE A COMMENT
To raise your hand or not to raise your hand – that is the question! I love it when a student has an insightful comment or meaningful question, but the more I allowed all of the comments without being called on, the more the chaos in my room increased. I was having a hard time getting my point across and the students were becoming less engaged.
HOW TO LEAVE THE CLASSROOM
When you are using the separate setting for your resource services, you will find that you have students coming in and out all throughout the day. Another important part of this that you need to consider is if the students do not put their stuff away, then you have to do it. Where does that leave you? It leaves you with about 5 minutes less of instructional time for your next group of students.
Again, these are just the most helpful routines within the first few weeks of school. There are so many other routines that I encountered later in the school year that needed to be addressed, but these gave me a great head start for the school year.
So, with my personal experiences to justify why I needed to put those routines together for my class, how do you tackle this within your classroom? Here are some things to consider:
- Visualize what you want the end result to be for that routine – In my classroom, I decided that I wanted my students to leave my classroom with all the materials put away and ready for the next student(s) to sit and begin their learning time. I compared this to being a ninja. I told the class that when they left, they had to leave like a ninja which means that no one would be able to tell that they were there.
- Break the routine down into steps – I decided that when my students came into my classroom that they would first, have voices off. Then, grab the items they needed for class. Next, sit quietly. Last, work on independent practice until instruction begins. This helped me realize exactly what I was expecting and how I could teach this routine.
- Have a discussion with the students why this routine would be an important part of the classroom. When the students discussed the importance of the pencil sharpener remaining untouched during the day so that they would not be interrupted, then they were much more agreeable to allow me to be the one to sharpen pencils for them after school and they can exchange dull pencils for sharpened ones.
- Give examples and nonexamples of what the routine looks like. I would role play how to come into the classroom. I would also have a couple of students role play that also. They can really get into it at times! I would also role play a non-example of how to come into the room. It is important that only you as the teacher show the nonexample and not the students. We want them to practice this correctly and they may also make this too silly.
- Have a visual support available. This would have a picture along with a short 2 or 3 word phrase provided for each step of the routine. Most of my students would claim that they did not need this support, but I did have a few that really needed that as a prompt towards independence within my classroom. This did not need to be a large bulletin board size, but a small quarter size piece of paper that was near the door or anywhere that would be convenient for the students to refer to.
- Practice, practice, practice! I would spend the majority of my 30 or 40 minutes class period teaching and reinforcing these routines the first day of school. This routine would be practiced at least once a day for each group explicitly for a whole week. After that, I would enforce the routine and teach it again if a group struggled or if I had a new student in my class.
Maybe you’re thinking “this is going to take so much time!” I would argue that the time spent at the very beginning of the school year ensures that all the students understand how the class runs and what the expectations are. This ground work will save you so much time throughout the year. I also found myself talking a lot less about telling students to “stay on task” or “stop talking” or “put your stuff away” and found myself focusing more on instruction and asking questions – this is where I wanted my energy and efforts to go!