Teach Practice Reinforce

Circle Time Magic: Teach, Practice, Reinforce

Kristin: So, let's say that your classroom, you are wanting to teach children to listen to each other more. We're at Circle Time, a child is talking, we want other children to listen to them. Okay, so you might have a plan before you do Circle Time. You've got some visual support, some pictures ready, different pictures of children looking at each other, listening to each other. You're going to demonstrate what these look like. Maybe you're going to do puppets, model what it looks like. Maybe you'll have children come up and role play what it looks like to listen to your friend. And then, you as a teacher, you're going to really reinforce all the times when you're seeing the expectation happening, the children listening to each other. All right?

Dawn: So Circle Time's a great time to teach some expectations, demonstrate and model them, practice them, and reinforce it when you see it happening.

Kristin: Absolutely. Circle Time Magic. [Laughter]

Dawn: All right, so then, transitions. It's another common problem. How can the environment support that?

Jordan: Yeah, transitions, the environment can help you a lot, right? So like we said, having that idea of where to go for the next spot in my schedule. It's Circle Time, we're going to go over here. Maybe also having carpet squares out so each kid knows this is where I'm going to go and sit down, this is my defined space. And so, there's less that the teacher is having to do. The environment is telling kids, I'm going to sit, this is where I'm going to be, I'm going to have this space to myself, and the teacher's not having to say as much with that, right? Lining up is always a big one, right? So, having a spot that's really clear for this is where you line up, here's your own space, this is where you're supposed to be. The environment is telling and giving that direction to kids.

Kristin: Right, so I'm just hearing you say that so much of what you want to do in your environment helps you as a teacher not have to keep verbally reminding, reminding, reminding, because it's a clear visual for children in cleaning up, in transitioning, where to line up, that kind of thing. So, the environment can help you. Yeah, that's great.

Jordan: With clean-up, too. Right? Yeah. I don't want to stop what I'm doing. That transitioning time, that cleaning up, I don't want to stop what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm supposed to do during clean-up time. So the environment can help you with that, too, right? If I'm not done with what I'm doing, having some construction zone signs in the block area. So, you can put a construction zone sign on it and leave it there and then come back to it later. Or if I'm drawing and I'm not quite done with my picture, I have a "not done" bucket and I can come back to that later on. Talk to the child about when they can come back to it, right? We're honoring the fact that they want to come back to it. We're not just saying, you have to go, you can. Here's what you can do in between, right?

Dawn: And that makes that separation a little bit easier.

Jordan: Right, right. And then having buckets with visuals on it or clean-up areas that have pictures of the materials exactly where you want to put them, right? Having that defined space. I know all the writing stuff goes over here. If there's a cup that has pictures of all the markers on it, I'm going to be able to do that without a teacher giving me a direction of what to do in that moment, right? Because we're increasing independence there, too.

Dawn: Yes. And you can also do that during mealtime. So if they're at the snack table, actually having labels there where children are supposed to go sit, that helps tell them what to do and engage them there. And then if you've got younger children, you can put their pictures on the sippy cups, because I know I need my sippy cup and I would like mine. So if I can find my picture without having to necessarily read the words, then that can be a visual support to help toddlers know which cup is theirs. So just to review, most of the work on addressing challenging behaviors starts in the prevention phase. There's lots of teaching we can do then, not much that we can do at the peak of behavior. And a very proactive way to do it is to teach about it.

We can practice it, we can model it, and then reinforce it so it will continue to happen. Thank you, Jordan.

Kristin: Thanks, Jordan.

Jordan: Thank you, guys. Thank you.