A Flip Flop Kindergarten: Tuesday Tinkering

Hey Y'all! I hope your day has been swimming.

I thought I would tell you today about Time to Teach, my classroom discipline system. I know most of you use clips or cards and send home daily reports. This is something totally different and I love it. This will be the third year to use Time to Teach.

Time to teach is concept that is meant to save time lost due to discipline issues in your class. This is the very short version of how it works. Of course you have set up your procedures and model how you want them to behave. But the meat of time to teach is this. When a child misbehaves, and you know they will, you stop and look at them in the eye and say "We need for you to stop talking out." or whatever they are doing. They you go about teaching and don't draw attention to it. If the child continues to misbehave you say, "Johnny, I need you to go to refocus." And again go on teaching. The child will leave the group and go to a time out area. Yes there are steps for the child who will not go, but I swear to you 95% of the time they get up and march straight to the chair and don't say a word. I know right, it is a miracle. When I am finished teaching and have time to deal with the child, usually within a couple of minutes. I talk to the child about what they did wrong and have them tell me what they could do differently. I also make sure the child knows I care for them and want them to do well.

I do send a note home if a child has repeated times in refocus, but these are few and far between. It really is a wonderful system. It also lets the child know they do not have several chances to not behave. With the clip system there is usually a warning and then a clip is moved the second time. This can happen several times a day as the child makes there way down the chart. With refocus they have the warning and that is it. Usually the warning is all that is needed.

If you are interested in the details about Time to Teach, I will be glad to help. Just leave me a message. Oh and here is the form I made to send home to parents if needed.