Oh, January. How I dislike you. Not only is it the coldest month of the year where I live, but it’s also the toughest for me as a teacher. It’s hard for me to get back into the routines of teaching and grad school after the break, and my kiddos are usually a little off the wall for a while after we come back. I have to miss a few days each January for ACCESS testing and a Kindergarten literacy test, so my kids have a substitute teacher while I’m gone. All this leads to a lot of chaos, which I hate!
This year I’ve really been slowing down and trying to re-teach the routines like I did at the beginning of the year. I have a tough class, so I’ve been taking things reeeeeeaaal slowly. On the first day back, I focused on reteaching basic routines, and each day since, for each part of the day, I’ve had a focus objective that I wanted the students to work on. (For example, the first day back during our readaloud and comprehension mini-lesson, I JUST focused on appropriate behavior and hand-raising during readalouds. The next day, I re-taught how to share with a partner. And so on.) I feel like I still have so much to teach my kiddos by May, but hopefully this time will be well-spent and it will help my patience last a little longer than it usually does! 🙂
Do you re-teach procedures in-depth at the beginning of the new year? If so, do you find it helpful?
Yes! I have to reteach. I had really hoped that my kids would come back from break being a bit more mature, but alas. I have had really frustrating reading and writing workshops lately, so today was all about reteaching management. It was honestly the best writing time I have had with them in ages. My struggle is, will they maintain it tomorrow? I don’t want to reteach TOO much, but I know that it is valuable. I guess it is a decision from day to day. People say you have to go slow to go fast, and that is… Read more »
Glad I’m not the only one! Good luck to you too, and hopefully the kiddos will be back in the routine soon.
Yes! I have learned it is never too late to start teaching or reteaching classroom procedures. A wise woman once told me that most behavior problems stem from not following the correct classroom procedure. My neighbor teacher repeats the same thing to her students daily. They know her expectations and she has a great classroom learing environment. Treat tomorrow like it is the first day of the rest of the year!