Classroom Management Series: Part 5 {Teaching Transitions with Ease}

We're almost done with our 6 part Classroom Management series! I hope you are all learning some useful tips and tricks to use this year.

This week, I am back to share a few things to teach your students how to be transition quickly and easily. Transitions are very important in any classroom. If they are not taught consistently at the start of the school year and reinforced daily throughout the year, valuable learning time will be lost each day.

Last year, I purchased a wireless doorbell on Amazon. I used it as an attention getter, but the doorbell that I purchased had songs on it. It could be used as a way to transition your students from one thing to the next. There were 50 different ringtones and songs. There are holiday songs and regular children's songs. I think this would be a really fun way to have students move from one thing to the next.

In my school, we use Class Dojo. It has a built in timer that is perfect for everything! I use it all the time for helping students transition from one thing to the next. 

If you don't have Class Dojo, there are tons of other timers floating around the internet.

I saw this idea last year on Amy Groesbeck's Instagram and I personally thought it was genius. If your students are struggling with transitions, I think this is a great way to help students visualize where they need progress. You highlight the goal on the bottom of the chart and the objective is to stay below that goal. You may even throw in a little reward for them if they meet their goal a set number of times. 

Students LOVE a good challenge! This one kind of goes hand in hand with tracking their transitions. This is simple. Challenge your students to transition under a certain amount of time. If they continue to meet the challenges, let them earn a little treat. I would even continue to lower the transition time to increase the challenge.

Fourth and Ten has this amazing powerpoint of transition songs for different things! How cute is this!? Any time they need to cut something out, she clicks and plays the little song for that. There is a song for lining up, cleaning up, moving to your seats, and more. I LOVE this! You can click HERE to head to her blog and read more about it. Tell me you love this as much as I do! Totally making one for myself this year...

Okay, this is just an oldie, but a goodie. Just count back slowly from a number that you determine. Kids need to be where you need them to be and that's that. 

For all of these ideas to work, you need to have set clear expectations with your students for how it will work and also what will happen if they do not follow the expectations. That is up to you. These are just ideas for you to think about as you plan your year. 

I hope you were able to learn a little something new today! I'll be back next week with the last part of the series on ideas for Class Organization. 

Part 1 {Talking}

Part 2 {Blurting}

Part 3 {Tattling}

Part 4 {Following/Listening to Directions}

Part 6 {Classroom Organization}