Helping Children with Transitions

Helping young children transition from active times to more quiet parts of your lesson can be a challenge. You can create activities especially designed to give them a chance to calm down and turn on their listening ears. Here are a few suggestions:

• Give children a warning when moving from one activity to another. A couple of minutes before you want them to finish what they are doing, say, "This is your two-minute warning. We will start putting away the toys (or crayons) in two minutes." As adults, we get frustrated when someone interrupts what we're doing. Children often have the same frustration when we stop their activity abruptly instead of giving them time to finish what they're doing.

• If you want your students to move from an active to a quiet activity, provide a transition activity to help them calm down and get the wiggles out. This can be an action rhyme, "The Wiggle Song," a march around the room (getting slower and quieter each time around), or an action song such as "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" (getting faster and faster; then getting slower with each round until everyone ends by sitting down).

• Play a game such as "Follow the Leader" to get the wiggles out before your quiet time. Tell the children that in this game everyone must do what the leader does. Explain that everyone can have a turn at being the leader. Begin by having the children walk around the room following your motions. Then begin to hop, skip, or tiptoe and have the children imitate your actions. Give each child a turn to be the leader (do not force any child to do this). As the child leads say, "It's fun to follow a leader. [Kayla] is being a good leader. We learn by following good leaders." Conclude the game by having the children follow you one more time as you move slowly to the story rug and then sit down quietly for the Bible story.

• Do a fun action rhyme before the Bible story time, to help your students calm down and begin to focus their attention on you, the teacher. 

Here's a rhyme you can try with your class to help with the transition to your Bible story about Jesus dying and coming alive again. Before doing the rhyme together, hold your open Bible and explain that the Bible is God's Word and it is true. Show your students how to hold their hands together, palms up, to look like an open Bible. Now lead them in this rhyme (younger children will either say the words with you or do the motions but probably won't be able to do both, which is fine).

The happy birds sing in the trees.
     (Flap arms like a bird.)
The pretty flowers nod in the breeze.
     (Nod head and sway from side to side.)
The kangaroos jump up with joy.
     (Jump and hop.)
Why are they happy? Hear them say
     (cup hand behind ear and say together),
"Our Jesus is alive today!"

Giving Positive Feedback to Your Students

All students respond well to positive feedback. The key is to teach your point in a positive way, even when you feel like saying something negative. Following are a few tips for teachers:

• Positive feedback must be a result of student behavior. This tells students that you are aware of their performance individually and in a group. Students will begin to see that you give feedback to the best performance of every individual.

• Positive feedback should be given matter-of-factly. Flowery, emotional praise can embarrass students, especially preteens. Positive feedback should not imply that you are treating students any differently from the way you would treat an adult.

• Use descriptive statements that briefly tell students what was worthy of comment. Praise their accomplishments or their efforts, not their personalities.

• Positive feedback to individual students should be relatively private. Students can be embarrassed by comments that single them out as the “teacher’s pet.”

• Give feedback to student groups whenever possible. Frequent group praise helps establish a sense of cooperation and community among your student group.

• Eliminate pauses after giving positive feedback. For some students this can be very uncomfortable. Instead say, (Julie), good job on reading that Scripture, now let’s turn to…

• Be persistent. Some students feel uncomfortable with praise because they have had so little. But every student needs to learn that he or she has enough self-worth to accept recognition from someone else.

• Give students choices as much as possible. For example, "Would you like to do the craft first or the pencil puzzle?" Or, "You can turn in your project on time and I'll grade it this week or you can turn it in late and I'll grade it in a few months."

• After giving students lots of choices, you can ask them to do what you're asking as a favor to you. For example, say, "Now that I've let you choose the activities today, I'd like you to pick up these papers as a favor to me."

• When a student expresses anger, let him calm down before you respond. Let him know you're busy right now but you can talk tomorrow (or later). Show empathy toward the student. For example, you could say, "That's a bummer. Let's talk about it tomorrow. Don't worry about it." There is usually no need to take sides or make suggestions or give consequences on the spur of the moment. Often the students will come up with their own ideas after having a chance to think things through.

• Give negative feedback in private, and make sure it's constructive and the student has ownership of the situation. For example, "I'm sorry you decided to turn in the project late. What were the consequences for a late project? That's right, you won't get a grade for a few months. I'm sorry about that. But don't worry. You can decide when to turn in the next project. Conclude in prayer with the student.

Discipline Basics

Discipline tells a child that you care enough about a child and want him to behave in a manner that you know to be right. Be sure your youngsters know what kind of behavior is acceptable, and set limits and boundaries for them while they are with you. It’s unfair to punish them for breaking rules they didn’t know existed.

Here are five guidelines for maintaining good discipline:

1. Establish the necessary standards and limits at your very first meeting, and make sure everyone knows what they are. Keep the list short!

2. Consistently enforce the standards. If they’re not worth enforcing always, for everyone, they’re probably not worth having.

3. Be reasonable in your expectations. “No talking” is not reasonable. “No talking during prayer time or when someone else is speaking” is a reasonable rule and should be enforced. Simply stop talking until the offender realizes he’s the cause of the problem. Your silence should be sufficient. The second time it might be necessary to say, “Ricky, you’re interrupting our story. Please stop talking so I can continue.” If it happens a third time you might say, “Ricky, the next time I have to stop this story because you’re talking, you’ll have to leave the group.” Then be sure he’s removed (quietly) if it does happen again.

4. State your expectations before transitioning to a new activity. Let children who attend regularly repeat the expectations for visitors to hear and as a reminder to everyone else. Be sure to restate the expectations each week and before each activity. Don’t expect children to automatically remember to raise their hands before talking if you haven’t reminded them.

5. Be logical about punishment that must be administered. Don’t make a federal case out of a minor infraction, or you’ll have to send a major offender to jail! If a child smears glue in another child’s hair during craft time, separate the offender from the glue for the evening, or have him work alone at a table. Children do bizarre things at times on impulse — usually to get attention!

Once you’ve established your standards and enforced them firmly and fairly for awhile, the best rule to follow is to assume that each child can be trusted to handle his own behavior until he proves otherwise. Let the youngsters know that this is what you expect now. Then, when a child misbehaves, you can let him know that you’re disappointed that he isn’t ready to be in charge of himself in the group, and that you’ll have to help decide where he should sit, and whether or not he can work with others. Make it clear it’s the behavior you’re disappointed with — not the child. When the child and you determine that he’s ready to try to be in charge of his own behavior again, emphasize how much you want him to be successful this time.

Children who have serious problems at home will test you to see if you really care about them. Some will try your patience to the limit before they’re convinced you really like them. You can usually spot such children during your first meetings. They’ll be doing everything possible to get you to notice them.

Love and discipline are inseparable. Love wants what’s best for the loved one. The product of no discipline during a child’s early years is irresponsibility, which leads to lack of self-respect, and can mean unhappy, unproductive adult life.

Find some strength or asset in each child that you can commend him for. If you’re sincere they’ll know it — and your efforts will be rewarded. Make a point of emphasizing the positive qualities of every child, no matter how hard you have to look to find them sometimes! Reward the positive behavior and try to overlook the negative as much as possible.

One primary goal of your time with the children is to provide opportunities for leadership training, but you can’t develop leaders out of children who don’t believe they have worth, or who have a poor self-image.

While these basics will not solve every discipline problem you may encounter in your class, they will go a long way to making sure your classroom is a happy, fun environment where the children can effectively learn about their heavenly Father.

Think Positive!

Keep your expectations high and hold students accountable for their behavior with this letter-writing campaign. When a student’s behavior needs improvement, write her parents a letter predicting what her behavior will be like after a complete turnaround. Write the letter as if the turnaround has already happened.

Next, meet with the student and read the letter to her. Discuss what needs to happen to improve her behavior and agree on a target date for when the behavior will be completely changed and the letter will be sent home. Pray with the student, asking God to guide her behavior and the necessary changes.

Place a sticky note (with the target date on it) on the letter and give one to the student as a reminder of the date you’ve agreed on. When you and the student agree that the behavior has changed and the letter is now worthy of mailing, celebrate by having her address the envelope to her parents and decorate it. Pray together, thanking God for helping the student make the change. Then add the date to the letter and mail it. What a great way to encourage your students!