Transitions: Classroom and Home Tips
Transitioning to learning or a new activity is often the most difficult time of the school day. The challenge most of you are facing now—whether you are a teacher or a parent or BOTH—is transitioning your student(s) to learning when they are at home.
Let’s take a quick look at best practices of transitioning and think of a plan to help your students to transition to learning :
Engage multiple sensory modalities—The more senses you can engage in getting a child’s attention, the easier it is to bring their minds into learning mode.
Visual schedule—If they know what’s coming, their brains are already primed to take in some information.
Wait time—Wait time doesn’t mean you sit there and wait, it means you have a transition activity that is desired in order to allow the mind and body to get used to the idea of the new activity. Adults are the same way—enter any conference and you have coffee and food waiting for you!
Incentives—What’s in it for them? Why should they be motivated in this super strange situation they’re in?
Clear expectations—What are they supposed to do? Tell them at the beginning and remind them in the middle and the end!
I used WonderGrove Social Skills lessons as a transition in my classroom every day. Many of my students came after announcements with their aides, maybe even finishing breakfast, and many were carrying emotional baggage from things that happened outside of my classroom.
They knew what they were going to do when they walked into my room though. They got their behavior sheets and coins and sat down to watch WonderGrove. WonderGrove gives them an incentive (they love cartoons), wait time (they can adjust to learning), clear expectations (they know how they have to enter and sit in order to watch the video and the video gives them behavior expectations), and we are engaging them auditorily and visually (if you do the extension lessons you can throw kinesthetically in there too!).
Here’s Ms. Flowers to tell you about using the videos as transitions.
This is a great option for your online learning as you can play a video the first few minutes of your online classes!
Janelle Vargo was an elementary intervention specialist for over ten years in Dayton, Ohio. She has been using WonderGrove Social Skills animations and lessons for her students both in the resource room and inclusive classrooms since their creation. She currently works as the Education Director for Wonder Media and as an educational consultant. Janelle has written lessons and articles for private educational companies as well as consulting with companies and school districts looking to make their interventions simple, efficient, and meaningful to children.
She can be contacted at jvargo@wondermediagroup.net.