00:00

Let's face it, being a STEM  teacher is so much fun, but you may have realized that compared to the general education classroom, time goes by even faster. Your transitions in between classes might only be a few minutes long or nonexistent. While you can't change the time that you are given, you can change how you use your time throughout the workday effectively.

00:26

 In this episode, I will be sharing with you strategies to help you manage your transitions throughout the day so you can accomplish what you have planned with students and have those awesome fantastic STEM lessons. 

00:48

Both behavior management and overall classroom management go hand in hand before even getting into the meat of your STEM lessons. Back in episode eight, we talked about behavior management in the classroom. If you haven't checked out episode 8, make sure to go back and watch or listen. 

01:29

Being a former classroom teacher myself, I was so surprised by how fast the time went in my classroom. I went from teaching third grade all day with all the subjects to being a K through Five STEM teacher teaching six classes a day, with only a few minutes in between each class to transition from one to the next. Everything flew by so fast, and I had no idea what had happened. 

01:59

Along the way, I have learned some tips and tricks and altered what I used in the general education classroom to make it work for the STEM space. Now, I am able to accomplish what I have planned for the most part in my K through Five STEM classroom. 

02:15

Here are three major tips that have helped me. I know that you're going to benefit from these tips, have an awesome year, and make what works best for you. 

02:25

The first tip for setting up effective transitions in the classroom begins with you as the teacher, and that is setting up your own time management and boundaries. I am a recovering yes person. I used to say yes to everything. I'm not saying that I am mean, but I have learned that saying no for myself is absolutely okay. So what do I mean by that? Well, first of all, I use my plan time to actually plan. I love chatting with people, don't get me wrong, I love my friends. I love getting to see everybody come through my room. 

03:04

Now, my planning time is so sacred to me. I use that time to research lessons that are coming up for the next unit, going through materials that I might need for a lesson, testing out robots, researching things, or planning my after school clubs. I'm really using that time to focus. 

03:24

With that, I am really lucky what time my planning time is in the day. Mine is first thing before I see any students. So I actually get to school really early before my contract time. That's just me. I'm not saying to do this. But I get to school really early. So the building is nice and quiet, and then it flows right into my planned time so I can get a big chunk of my work done. For me, at the end of the day, I am really brain dead. So at the end of the school day, I'm not as effective with my time. I will save things that I know I don't need a lot of brainpower for. Those first couple of hours of my day before I even teach kids, I get that stuff done so when it is the end of the day and the end of my contract hours, I can leave and feel successful for how I used my time.

04:12

When it comes to lesson planning, I really try to leverage digital tools in my classroom. No, the kids are not on technology all day, but I really try to think about how can I use technology to make my lesson planning and materials even easier. One tool that I love to use in my classroom is Seesaw. I use Seesaw K through Five to help students share what they're doing by taking videos, pictures, recording their voice and drawing what they are working on. This is also another great platform because I can share digital engineering design notebooks with them for each of the challenges and we will go through and work on those throughout the week. 

04:54

Another alternative, or one I might use sometimes as well, is Google Classroom which has a lot of similarities as Seesaw, but I feel like Seesaw in the STEM space can do a lot more since it has picture and video capabilities within the same platform. Another platform I also love to use when it comes to research is epic books. This is also a another free for teachers tool. I love using this because I can create collections with my students, share it with them digitally, and use it for each grade level. If you are going to use epic books with your students, create one class account and name all of the students in the epic books class with a number. So then you only have one class code to worry about. A lot of the classroom teachers have started using epic books as well, which is amazing. I don't use their class code. I just have students use my class code. It's a good skill for them to learn how to toggle between two different classes anyway. So that's my little hack if you want to try to use epic books in your classroom. 

06:02

Another boundary that I like to set in my classroom that has really helped with the transitions throughout the day is that the end of each class, I actually close my door. This is also partially a safety thing as well. I might need to go to the restroom in those couple minutes of time in between classes, so closing my door just ensures that I don't have students running into my room when I'm not there. There are lots of different materials that they can get into.  That way, if a class comes early, I still have that time to set up any last minute materials, change out what is on my screen and be ready to go as well. Sometimes you might also be speaking with another student for behavior, so just having your door closed can be really helpful. 

06:48

In episode one, we talked about things that you should work on when you're a STEM teacher. One of the main things we talked about was systems and routines. One of those routines is where do you want students to line up at the end of class. Now based on the layout of my building, what works with my classroom is I have kind of like a dead hallway right outside my door. I used to have students line up in my classroom against the shelves near the classroom door. However, this became a problem because when students needed to put their supplies and work away, the students who were all cleaned up were in the way so it just created a lot of chaos in traffic. 

07:25

Instead, I have students line up right outside my door in this dead hallway. There aren't any other classrooms right there, but they line up in this hallway, and they are ready to go for their teacher. They can be ready for the hallway, especially when I have an overlap of class, then the class who I just finished with is in the hallway and the new class can come right in. So this has really helped with the transitions, especially when teachers are early or late picking up the kids are in the hallway and they're ready to go. Really think about these time management hacks and different types of boundaries that you can set for yourself so that when you don't have students, you can really be productive in those pockets of time and not have to stress throughout the day because the bulk of your work is done. You have all these little tips and tricks to help you be productive. 

08:48

The second biggest thing to help you with the transitions in your classroom are your systems and routines. You are going to hear me talk about systems and routines all of the time because these are the backbone of my productivity in and outside of the classroom. I wouldn't say I'm the most clean person and if you know me, you know me. I am fairly organized when it comes to physical products and also digital things. This helps me do all the things as much as possible. The same is true in your classroom. 

10:09

In episode five, we talked about Makerspace organization. So even the way that you set up materials that are presented in your classroom can help prevent you from scrambling for projects. Once I have my Makerspace set up, I don't really touch it ever again. The only thing I have to do with my Makerspace is restock supplies when I receive them. So it is set up for the whole year. I can even pull out drawers for specific projects with specific things that kids might need. But this has really helped with those transition times where I'm not scrambling in my cabinets looking for specific things. I have everything out ready to go labeled with pictures and words. So being prepared even before the unit even happens, like a Makerspace, is extremely helpful along those same lines when you're thinking about planning your lessons. Yes, a Makerspace has a lot of materials, but think about your lessons going forward. How can you use the least amount of materials as possible? It eases up on your cleanup time with students and the amount of time you need to explain things for kids. Kids can be productive when they have to be creative with constraints, which is a really great challenge for them to learn. 

11:26

I like to give kids this example: when I bought my townhome years ago, I didn't have unlimited money or unlimited supplies to make it beautiful. I had to be creative with what I got. So that's a great lesson to teach kids. And again, it will really help with transition time. 

11:47

Also with those transitions, think about those routines in your classroom that will stay the same all year long. I have a lot of different units that I like to teach kids, which is the whole point of STEM: to expose them to lots of different areas of what STEM can be in their world. However, those routines that stay the same are how the kids enter my classroom and sit on the floor, how they go sit at their seats, how they gather supplies, and where supplies go at the end of class, and, of course, lining up. I keep these things the same throughout the year so we can be productive. The kids know what to expect in a general sense, and the only thing that is new that they have to worry about is the awesome lesson that they're going to attack. 

12:33

Finally, to help with the transitions in your classroom is how you can have students be responsible and independent within that time with you. You don't necessarily have to do classroom jobs. I know a lot of STEM teachers try implementing this in their room, which I think is amazing. For me that hasn't been super successful. I might have kids help me with specific projects for the time being, but as a whole, I really want students to be responsible within our space and create opportunities for them to be independent and have ownership over their work. So here are some ways that I like to do that. 

13:08

One big thing is to really keep my goals for my lesson at one or two things I want students to attain. It can get overwhelming in STEM very quickly and you will want to throw a lot at the kids. When you're throwing a lot at them, it's hard for them to manage what they really need to focus on. So when I have students at the beginning of class, we have our short mini lesson. I will show them the one or two things I really want them to focus on, review really quickly what we did the day before, if it's applicable, and then I'll go into our lesson and ask any questions. So keep that mini lesson really short. 

13:47

We can have future episodes about how I like to structure my STEM lesson and how I teach that. But for now, when you're thinking about how you are focusing your kids, and those transitions, have one to two goals in mind for that lesson. Also, for that student independence and responsibility, you want to have specific rules for specific materials. We've talked about this in past episodes as well. Again, a lot of these relate to each other. But if you have those specific things you want students to do when they're using materials like robots, for example, this is going to help students know how to use that tool successfully, and how to use it the right way so that other students in the future can use it and things aren't getting broken. 

14:32

Also think about things that students might be able to bring from the outside into your classroom to help with those transitions and the independence. My classroom, before it got remodeled, used to be a computer lab and there were a lot of desktop computers lining the classroom. Now I've told you before I was so lucky that when I got this job being a K through five STEM teacher, I was gifted a brand new classroom and a brand new job at the same time. I didn't have any computers left in my room once it was converted to a classroom. A way that I've been able to problem solve this, and it's actually worked really well with that independence, is students in second through fifth grade actually bring their devices from their classroom when they have STEM. We might use them, we might not, but it's really great to have kids bring those in, because they are used to logging into them. They know where their usernames and passwords are in their classroom. It subconsciously helps students connect that this same device that is used in STEM is the same one used in their classroom. These skills can actually transfer back and forth. STEM isn't really an isolated subject. It might feel that way, since they are going to a different location to learn the skills. This has just been a great little hack as well. 

15:47

Another thing that I like to do with the younger kids, and also the older ones, too, depending on what the project is, is I have a cart of iPads that I can use. You can use Kindles for the same thing. But I have a cart of iPads that I like to use when using Seesaw and specific apps that are related to maybe LEGO education or different coding apps or even robots. This has made logging in a lot easier when I use the iPads for Seesaw. With seesaw, you could use a QR code to quickly log in. This has also helped with that independence. If you can, try to use some tools that classroom teachers might be using because students might be familiar with those things back in their regular classroom. They can apply the skills in a new way. 

16:34

When I send my engineering design notebooks for the older kids, I like to share them in the form of Google slides through Seesaw. That way, students are still practicing their Google skills, but they're using it within the STEM space and they might actually learn something new that they can use back in their regular classroom. So really trying to make those connections within their other learning opportunities in your classroom can be so beneficial and really help with that transition time. This way you're not always reteaching something new. 

17:04

These transitions in your classroom are definitely going to take time as you figure out your students and how you like the flow of your classroom. These three major tips definitely are going to help set you up for success. If you are diligent with them, and really making them work for you, you are going to have even more time than you can ever imagine. 

17:27

So as a recap, here are those three big things that we talked about to help you with those classroom transitions: First, is time management and boundaries as a teacher. Next, is setting up those systems and routines. And third, find ways to build student independence and responsibility. Thank you so much again for listening to this episode. I can't wait to chat with you soon.