Classroom Transitions

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one area in the classroom to another. Transitions involve students finishing up an activity, readying themselves, and beginning another activity (Arlin, 1979). Organised and well planned transitions can have positive results on a child 's learning experience.

In many classrooms, during transition times is the time seen to be when things get a little chaotic which can later possibly result in poor behaviour, that can then be continued throughout the rest of the day. To help children transition, alternative communication systems, such
as those that use signs, symbols, or gestures, can reduce the frequency of negative behaviours like tantrums, biting, and hitting (Trief 2007). Sometimes, having an unorganised, cluttered classroom can make …show more content…

Teaching transitions is similar to teaching any other activity. Firstly, we have to observe the students to identify the skills in which the students are showing strengths and weaknesses. Secondly, it is the teachers responsibility to demonstrate or model appropriate behaviours to ensure the students know what is expected of them but also to put these behaviours into practice. Then if teachers continue with such observations and support their students, positive and effective results will start to show within the …show more content…

Using physical cues such as the teacher raising one arm in the air in order to gain the students attentions. A strategy that Campbell and skinner (2004) introduced was the Timely Transitions Game. This particular strategy has been proven to improve learner behaviours. It involves the class teacher giving verbal prompts at transition times. A stopwatch would be used to record the amount of time it took the children to transition. However, during any point of the transition period, children who were not meeting the teacher exceptions would cause the stopwatch to be restarted. Although this strategy had an element of punishment it also had a reward system. Transition times would be recorded on a chart and whenever transition times decreased students would receive a reward such as extra playtime etc. Training students to respond to their teachers prompts proved to be an effective way of decreasing the amount of time taken to transition from one activity to another. Taking the initial time to train the response to prompt will allow teachers to spend more time engaging students in active learning rather than losing time in classroom management struggles. (Ferguson, Ashbaugh and McLaughlin

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