Sep 4

So much time is lost during transitions, it continues to drive me crazy. All the time -- even at home with my children. This class is no different. Each morning we want them to come into class, open up their assignment books, and start their Daily Oral Language, which is correcting some sentences on the board and on their sheets with incorrect spelling, grammar, capitalization, punctuation, etc. This is every day but Friday, and they still do not have it down. We need to tell them every single time, it seems, although some do have it.

So what if we had stood beside their desks every single day as they came in, had them get out their papers, and get to work? Then we could fade this. The problem is that we've allowed intermittent reinforcement to go to work; in other words, because they only "have" to get to work some of the time, the first thing they want to try is to goof around, because sometimes they're allowed to do it, or at least they're allowed to do it until a teacher tells them to get busy.