Overall

Transitions
- Modify your lesson plan template to focus on transitions
- Have your transitions planned beforehand - how you will dismiss them to task, etc.
- You move on too fast when talking. Make sure all students are listening before you move on.
- Remember you can move someone to work somewhere else if they are not working well
- Also “show me your ready” works better than “put your heads on your desks” for some reason

Ideas for transitions

- For example, your directions might sound like this:
- “When I say go, I want you to quietly put your math notebooks away and take out your science journals and
coloured pencils. I'll know you're ready for our next steps when your voices are off and you've got the materials
on your desk….”
- Challenging students with brain teasers or a Word Problem of the Day activity is a great way to build critical
thinking skills during these short chunks of time.
- When I say 1 - push in your chairs, when I say two put your stuff away
- You could number students at the table to have them have different tasks
- Count down 3,2,1…
Closures
- Make a list of different closures so you can just pick one out of the list
- Time how long students take so you can have accurate time for closures
Goals
- Make exit slips and red/green/yellow cards

Class Specific
Art 1-5

- Turn cleaning up into a game

- Have the best listener competition between the classes
- Creating a callback / having their attention early
- Clapping?
- "Macaroni and cheese!" Students: "Everybody freeze!"
- "1, 2, 3, eyes on me!" Students: "1, 2, eyes on you!"
- Quiet Coyote’s
- Have them stand by their chair and then I will dismiss them from there - just like lunch
- Creating smoother transitions into the activity
- Timer set on your watch for clean-up time / TImer for the students in all activities - this really hurries them up
- Have a timer up for each section of the activity
- Wear the microphone
- Have an activity for them to do when they are in the line-up
- Build-a-Drawing
- This is similar to the idea above. Instead of a story, start a collaborative, large drawing on the
whiteboard. One at a time, students get out of line to add elements to the picture. Kids will stay focused
on the evolution of the drawing, rather than on weak behaviour choices.
- Art Memory
- Show students in line a piece of art for 10 seconds. Ask kids to name something they saw in the piece
one by one until you run out of things remembered. Talk to students about focus and observation being
“art muscles” to strengthen. Track their progress and see if the class can improve over time!
- “How’s yours?”
- One students steps outside while the rest of the class agrees upon and item, like a paintbrush. When
the student returns, he or she asks each student in line, “How’s yours?” Each student answers: “Bristly,”
 “Soggy,” etc. until the student guesses the secret item. This game will really help with critique skills
when looking for better descriptive words.
- Simon says
- Have clean-up slides when there are lots of steps
- Idea from UC - From video to the tables…this posed some challenges for the students. What could you do to
ease the transition?
- Possibilities
- Wearing a certain colour, birthday, eye colour, etc.… something for them to focus on other than being
distracting.
- Don’t get to move till they are quiet… put them in small groups and the quietest group goes first
- Have the group organize as a shape, be quiet and then they get to go.
- I just started handing them coloured sheets to go to each table
- Ideas from Teacher Mentor
- You had a couple of kids finish before the end of class,
- These kids would walk around and make sure the floor is cleaned up
- They could clean off tables of scrap paper that need to go in the garbage
- They could help someone who missed last week and is further behind.
- There was a lot of talking and kids not listening when you were giving them instructions to clean up.
- Things I do are to have kids go stand at their spot with their group and then tell them if I am
okay with what they have cleaned or if they need to clean more.
- This way I make sure that no one gets away with doing nothing and that they work together to
clean up the space, this is their space as well so they need to be responsible for it.
- It helps to make sure that the kids sit while you are doing this.
- Things like “I'm looking for the quietest group to call” or “the student showing me they are ready
to go”

Sr. Art
- Make sure you are clear about your project expectations when you begin a project
- Have examples and a rubric for all levels
- Make sure you check in during the project
- You can make them hand in practice assignments for participation marks

Grammar / Spelling
- Remember that if you have too much repetition they will get bored
- Double-check that Jadyn, Gray, Tristan, and Parker are on track
- Parker has his own orange folder
- Make sure you have things for students that get done early to do
- Do corrections with a pen
- Have them put names on the board for when they are done with their morning booklet
- You need to start having them hand in things / or go around and check all of them
- Have them show you the work when they are finished
- Ideas from Heather
- Great using the popsicle stick method to choose students to answer, it keeps them on their toes. The
students seem to enjoy finding the errors. If a student doesn’t know the answer, can they ‘phone a
friend’ for help?
- To speed them up, you could have a stopwatch on the board that gives them a certain amount of time.
For those that struggle with reading/grammar, etc. you could give them fill-in-the-blanks letters with
hints. (ie. Copy to ___ ___ ___ ies)
- Use a sound meter for noise levels Bouncy Balls
- Create a slideshow for trashketabll for smoother transitions and more content
- Take pictures of the booklet and put them on board to speed things up
- Put answers to pretest and transfer sentence questions up on the board to speed things up
- An incentive to finish the morning booklet - Smarties for every day they finish. Missing trashketball if they don’t
finish.
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Social
- Make sure that groups are knowing what to do and staying on task - listing things on the board more often
- Create a small closure for every lesson/exit slip

Notes from Administration Observation

- Consequence for Morning Work - Stickers

- Have everyone freeze before giving points to those ones working

- Say they will get a point before they do something

- Really work with visuals