Speaker 1: Control your class. You have so many stressors in your day, and lining your kids up quickly and quietly while building community and relationships is not something they taught you in college. They should have, but they didn't. Today, you are going to get some strategies on getting your kids lined up quickly and quietly while at the same time building relationships. What? Are you ready? Let's go. Hi, my name is Angie, and I was in the classroom for 25 years, so I don't even want to know how many times I had to get kids lined up, and I know what a hassle it can be. The first thing you need to think about is what exactly you want your students to look like, to sound like, to behave like when they are lining up. You are not going to leave it up to them what they sound like, because it will not, it will sound like the Super Bowl. You are not going to leave it up to them what they look like or what their behavior is like. You have to set that bar for them, so that is the first thing in your mind. What does this all look like? Practicing this is essential, because during the practicing and when you're doing it with your students for real, in real life, you are also rewarding them. What are some tools that will help you build these routines? Well, the first tool that you can use is not your voice. Don't use your voice. You use your voice way too much anyway. I mean, am I right? Do you go home with a sore throat? I used to go home with a sore throat until I figured things out. Use music to cue the lining up, all right, or some sort of audio device. Some people use the doorbell and ding-dong to get the student's attention, and then they tell them what to do. I had a song that specifically meant, it's time to line up. Okay, so when they heard this song, they knew time to line up. When they heard that song, it cued them, oh, we're lining up. I'm waiting for directions. I'm waiting to see what's happening. Should I just line up now? What's going on? Okay, they're waiting on me for more of a visual cue, all right, and when we got the routine down, I would just go ahead and say, line up, and they knew exactly how to line up. Now, one of the big things with kindergartners and first graders is that when they line up, they have no idea about personal space, right? So, you have to give them a tool for personal space. So, I'm taking one of the these little dots that have the velcro on one side. Because I'm a cheap teacher, because I'm a teacher and I don't have a lot of money, I used to cut these in half, and then in half again to make quarters and little pie slices, and then I would write numbers on the pie pieces, right? So, there's one, two, three, and all my students had a number. Now, if you didn't get the video about Happy Helper, go up here and get that Happy Helper video. Happy Helper was always at the front of the line because they were my line leader, but then the numbers went down from there. So, the number one person would be number one, two, three, four, five, except for the next week. Then number one would go to the back of the line and I'd move everybody up one. It would take me two minutes to rearrange these just by moving them up and having everybody in line. That way I could control who was in line. Everybody, I don't know about you, but my students were always like, either everyone wanted to be in the front of the line or everyone wanted to be in the back of the line, right? So, by assigning them positions, that eliminates all of that pushing and fighting and crying and everything, and that's just from me, right? The cool thing about these is that they're easy to remove. So, they can't say, well, I'm always in the back. Well, I'm always in the front. Nope. Every week, part of my routine was to move the line and I just simply put the person who was first in line to the back and then just moved everybody up, okay? So, this is a great tool on spacing them and making sure that everyone is in a spot. Then you can also see very quickly, oh, number 15. No one's on number 15. Who's number 15? Oh, yeah, that's Sai. Oh, where's Sai? Oh, we have to get him at this room. He's at speech right now. We gotta swing by and get him before we go to PE, all right? It's a nice cue for you to take attendance super quick while they're in line. Plus, it's also nice for like fire drills and things like that. I always used to have my kids get up quickly, go stand on their space in line, and then I could take attendance really fast just by visually going, oh, number 15. Yes, okay. They're gone today. We have everybody. Let's go, all right? So, it's a safety thing as well. Getting your kids lined up quickly and quietly and efficiently is a safety thing. So, how do you make it fun? You've given the audio cue that they are going to be lining up and every day I would have a different way for them to get lined up. One day it would be shoes. So, I would say if you're wearing shoes with laces, please line up. Push in their chair, get up from wherever they're at, walk over quietly to their spot, stand with their face forward and their hands to their side. You have to be that specific, all right? Do not touch the people around you. Hands to your side. If you have on red shoes, go ahead and get lined up. And this is the beauty of this kind of a system. You know that student and student B should not even walk across the room at the same time, right? There's going to be trouble. So, you look at their shoes and you're like, student A is wearing boots and student B is wearing laces. So, you say, students with boots, please line up. Well, student B does not have boots. So, you know student A is going to get to their spot way before student B will get over there, all right? It's called controlling the chaos and it's part of excellent classroom management. So, what are some other ways to get kids lined up? Well, one way that helps them with their learning and knowing their birthday. I don't know about you, but for some reason my students did not know their birthdays. Sometimes they would be like, it's in November and I would grab my teacher binder and I would say, well, let me see here. No, your birthday is not in November. It's in August, all right? And I had this little chart here. If you're wondering about how to get this little chart, go ahead and I'm just full of stuff today for you. Check out that video on birthdays and how to make birthdays easy in your classroom. This is part of it, but this just goes in my teacher binder. But one way to get kids lined up and for them to also learn at the same time is if you have a birthday that is an odd number. You were born on a day that's an odd number. So, then they're like, what day was I born? Oh, I was born on the 22nd. Is that odd? No, that's even. So, I have to wait, okay? So, that's a fun educational way for them to get lined up. If your birthday month starts with a J or an S, you may line up. So, you can say like, Frida, you're born in March. What month were you born? March. Okay, that does not start with a J or an S. So, you have to wait for an M. Okay, so sit back down. Things like that. You're teaching them as you're getting lined up. All right, and if you want to know more about teacher binders, I will put a link in the description down below. Other ways to teach as you're getting kids lined up. If the number you were born on is the day you were born on is greater than 20, you may line up. If the number that you were born on is less than 10, you may line up. Okay, so they're always thinking, oh, let's see. I was born on the 5th. Yep, I can line up. Okay, or nope, not yet. So, if the day you were born on is equal to 7 plus 4. All right, now you can get like maybe one or two people in the line at a time. Depends on how much time you have. Sometimes you're looking at the clock and you're like, okay, we have eight minutes to get lined up. I have to do something with these kids for eight minutes. This is a perfect thing, right? If you were born on a day that's even, please line up. If you were born on a day that's greater than 10 plus 2, you may line up. All right, so fun. Gets them thinking. You have the answers in your teacher binder, so you don't have to remember everybody's birthday. And so, fun ways to get them lined up. They're engaged and they're paying attention. And then, what do you do with them once they're in line to make them quiet? Well, one way is to have a secret walker. I'm sure you guys have heard of this before. You pick one person in your brain and you say to your class, I have a person in mind, my secret walker. If my secret walker goes down and is nice and quiet and does an excellent job in line, we will get some warm fuzzies in our warm fuzzy jar. Or I had like a brownie tray and I would say to my class, another strategy is if we get a compliment in the hallway like, wow, look at your class, it's so nice and quiet, then we would get a brownie on our brownie tray. And when we got our brownie tray filled up, then we got a brownie party, okay? Another thing is quiet coyote. I got this from a substitute. He would just be like, quiet coyote. And the kindergartners and first graders, they were just like, and they would walk down the hall. Just like, oh no, it worked like a charm though. And then one of my favorites was put a bubble in your mouth. When they put a bubble in their mouth, they can still breathe. They're like, okay, breathe. Yeah, you can breathe. Breathe through your nose. Put a bubble in your mouth. Don't let it out. Don't let it go away. All right. So I would just say bubble in your mouth. Let's go. And another thing is that as you're walking out, you can do a chant. And I used to do chants all the time. So if we're going to lunch and everybody's in line, they're getting kind of restless. I'd say lunch, lunch, lunch. We're a hungry bunch. Watch us stay so cool. We'll walk in line and stand so fine. Cause we know what to do. Let's go. And when they heard that they knew turn around, eyes forward, hands to yourself, be ready. Cause we're going to lunch. Don't get left behind. Right? So chants are a great way to get the line primed and ready to roll. All right. I hope you love today's strategies on getting your kids lined up quickly and quietly and efficiently. And at the same time, teaching them and building relationships, because when you know their birthdays and their personal information, they feel seen. Remember to like and subscribe for more videos like this. And remember the creator of the universe loves you. And I think you're pretty amazing too. Thanks for watching. I'll see you later. Bye-bye.