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Essay On Classroom Transition

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The number of children participating in a group care setting has drastically risen over the past decade (U.S Department of Education 2007). In an Early Childhood setting challenging behavior may arise during transitional times (Hemmeter, Ostrosky, Artman & Kinder, 2008). Transitions cause students to stop what they are doing, perform long chain of tasks, and begin a new activity, all without breaking classroom rules (McIntosh, Herman & Sanford, 2004). Dealing with transitions multiple times a day in my own classroom setting has led me to the question: What strategies can teachers employ to decrease transition time and increase the amount of student time on task?
Review of the Literature
In 2004, Yarbrough, Skinner, and Lee investigated the …show more content…

If the students’ transitional time exceeded the time on the card, students would not receive a letter for that day. Thus, the dependent variable in this study was the students’ transitional time from the hallway to the classroom; the independent variable was the use of the TGG; and the measure was the duration of each transition. A withdrawal design was used to gauge the game’s effectiveness. During the three-day baseline phase, it took students more than 2.5 min to transition into the classroom each day. After the first intervention phase began, transitional time decreased to an average of 59 s, and no transition exceeded 2 min. (There were still 3 days, however, in which the students did not meet the criteria on the transition card.) The treatment phase ended when students earned their first party, and then the teacher withdrew the TGG. The first day without the TGG showed a minimal increase in transitional time, but the subsequent days showed a return to baseline levels. When the teacher reinstated the game, transitional times reduced again—even to below initial treatment levels (range: 33 – 55 s). A short withdrawal produced a return to 7 baseline levels before the teacher permanently reinstated the TGG.
Buck (1999) conducted a survey of teachers that used music in their classrooms to help students transition. Of the 360 teachers surveyed, Buck found 81 used music during transition times. Some teachers used music as a way to let students

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