Routines

Procedures are the guidelines for accomplishing daily practices that frequently occur in the classroom. Overtime the procedures become routine and instinctual, therefore, minimizing potential misbehaviour.
Students need to know what is expected of them in your classroom. Routines ensure that you have smooth transitions throughout the day. It is important to discuss with students why the routines are in place and how they should be carried out. Students should help to create procedures with the teacher to promote a democratic classroom. This process creates a sense of ownership and community in the classroom.

In establishing procedures or routines, it is important to:

Ensure that students understand the reason for the routine.
Clarify the procedure through modeling.
Allow students opportunities to practice the routine through rehearsal.
Try not to overwhelm students by teaching too many routines at once.
Revist this process as you see the need.


Beginning the day
Entering and exiting the classroom
Labeling papers
Collection and distribution of papers
Signaling for quiet and attention
Appropriate times for moving around the room
Emergency drills and procedures
Going to the restroom
Moving throughout the school
Late arrival
Grading and homework policies (including make-up work)
Asking questions
Finishing an assignment early
Dismissal

Camp translates well for Koreans

Camp translates well for Koreans

By Callie White - Daily World Writer

Wednesday, August 1, 2007 10:59 AM PDT


When seven kids from Korea got their first taste of the YMCA’s Camp Bishop, they were overwhelmed by the rambunctiousness of the other campers and a bit alarmed at all the noise being instigated by the camp counselors.

“They all were homesick,” said John Jugenheimer, the Korean kids’ adviser and teacher at the American Home School in Pusan. “They were all begging, ‘Please, don’t make us stay a second week.’ ”

Doubtless, there was a shortage of kimchee, too.

But then they got to be pulled on an inner tube behind a boat, learned camp songs and bonded with their cabin mates.

“Now they want to stay here,” Jugenheimer said. “They are having the time of their lives.”

The point of the trip was for the children to improve their English skills. At home, they attend Jugenheimer’s American-curriculum, English-language classes as an after-school program. But Jugenheimer said, it’s hard that far away to get a sense of American culture, and being immersed in an English-language environment is key to developing their speaking skills.

“They have improved exponentially,” Jugenheimer said. Not only are the kids chattering away with their camp buddies, they are writing better on the journal entries he assigns each evening.

The kids almost didn’t come to Camp Bishop, which is on Lost Lake in Mason County. Initially they were supposed to go to a camp near Vancouver, B.C. But that camp closed suddenly and Jugenheimer and his wife, Jessie, scrambled to find a replacement. They e-mailed camps all along the West coast.

Jan Simons, the director for the YMCA of Grays Harbor’s Camp Bishop, was one of the first to respond and more importantly, Jugenheimer said, the friendliest. The trip was back on.

This isn’t the first time the Jugenheimers have accompanied their students to an American camp. But it has been perhaps the best trip yet.

“The staff here is just phenomenal,” Jugenheimer said. “They have made everyone feel so welcome.”

That includes the Jugenheimers, who are looking to move to the U.S. in the next year and, due to Camp Bishop’s hospitality, have found themselves considering Aberdeen.

Meantime, “We have kids going home telling their parents they have to go back to camp because their Korean friends will only be there two weeks,” Simons said. And indeed, enrollment is up.

The Korean kids have all settled into the routine — they are all in separate cabins, to better mingle — and even the few who have been to camp in Korea are experiencing new things.

“They had never swum in a lake before; they’d never been tubing. They love singing the songs,” Jugenheimer said. “It’s a lot of fun for them.”

Connect with Each Student

Connect with Each Student

Greet all students
Use eye contact will all
Ask each student about his or her life
Laugh with students
Solicit student opinion on the effectiveness of activities, tasks, and assessments
Give students a voice on appropriate issues
Ask students for help with classroom tasks

These are fantastic suggestions that enable the teacher to gain referent power in the class and build a close knit classroom community. Every day the teacher took ten minutes of class time for news sharing time. This allowed the students to discuss their lives outside of class and ask each other questions. It allowed the teacher to better understand the students interests and get to know them on a personal level. It also helped manage the class time because there are many times the students have 'important news' that they are itching to get of their chest and until they do are unable to concentrate on the work of the day. The teacher used a talking ball that was passed which signified the person with the floor. All other students had to actively listen and could raise their hand to ask questions, but comments had to be left for later. The students loved this activity and the day we missed it they consistently asked, "When is news?" I will definitely use this idea to start each mornings' class.

Attention Grabbers

Transitions: Orchestrating Change
Transition time between class events is challenging to manage, and empty minutes between activities set the stage for students to jump off task and misbehave. Attention grabbers keep the students with the teacher for those vital seconds or minutes.

Attention Grabbers

Rhythmic hand-claps
Gesture (hand in the air which all the students repeat)
Repetitive phrase (Ready, Set, Stop)
Chant or song (Eyes on Me-Eyes on you)


What worked the best for me was a simple "Freeze" were all the students stopped and put their hands in the air.
We practiced this as a PE lesson at the beginning of the second week and made a game out of it. Then we continued to use it in class as an attention grabbing technique.

It worked awesomely- Is that a word?

In addition I would call out the number of minutes or seconds left in an activity to prepare the students for the next event and allow them to finish what they were doing and clean up their mess.

Thank You Albany Primary School

I have completed my second practicum and I am almost half finished with the program. I have learned a lot so far and the experience is inevitably making me a better teacher, whether that will later be in New Zealand or another country we will have to wait to see. But I am using my strengths to help better educate students and present the material with clarity and interest. I can tell that the students are generally engaged with my lessons and are interested in learning from me.

I am continuing to work on my teaching tone to save my voice and force the students to actively listen to my instructions. I am also working smarter in lesson planning to better utilize my time and energy in teaching. I really like the integration of subjects to foster deeper learning and more independent learning from the students.

I witnessed first hand the usage of routines for management and learning. If the students have a clear understanding of what to do next then there is a greater chance that they will work on task and misbehaviour will be minimized. My associate teacher believed that all children are capable and that the teachers job is to find what they are good at and make them better. I think this is a great philosophy and by doing that you set positive ideas in the students and give them self motivation.

My associate was a great mentor and I hope to one day follow in her footsteps to motivate and inspire the children of today and tomorrow.

Sports Lessons

While I was at Albany Primary School Kiwikick an outside sports program put on some classes for the kids. I thought most of the activities were fun and athletic and the kids really enjoyed their time playing and learning new sports. Sports is my passion and I really feel that I can offer a school much needed athletic and coaching skills that will create an active and athletic student body. I played high school and university level soccer in America and although it might not be La Liga I think I have some skills. I was a coach at the International School of Busan where we won some soccer tournaments and while in Auckland I started coaching rugby, field hockey, basketball, and soccer for Kelly Sports. In fact, my associate teacher was impressed by the games and activities that I taught her students and was glad to add some to her bag of tricks.

Relevant, Hands-on, Meaningful

Year 1 students need much first hand experience to add richness to their lives and to give them ideas for their language and writing. During my practicum I helped to add to their experience by performing hands-on experiments with the students, which we used as a basis for our daily writing assignments. Two such experiments were making Hokey Pokey and the Catch a Rainbow. The students ohhed and ahhed as we performed the steps of the experiments and were dazzled at the results. Both of these were very visual and even delicious and the students got a lot out of the experiences.

Notice the principal of the school watching, I think she was impressed, as well.