This sounds trivial, but I can't get my class to walk in a civil line! They act like a herd of elephants. I've tried many, many techniques and nothing works. Any ideas for me??
Thanks,
Candy

Hi!

I teach 1st grade. Before we even line up, my children need to be quiet in their desks. When I see a child sitting quietly, I will quietly tell them to line up. There may be 4 or so children lined up, and the rest of them realize they need to quiet down and will do so. If the entire row is quiet, I will have the entire row line up.

My children are instructed to put their hands in their pockets (to keep hands of the walls) and to keep their voices turned off in the hallway. We don't leave the room until everyone is quiet, facing forward, and in a straight line. I often say "Show me you're ready to go", and they will get in order.

When we leave the classroom, I am in the front of the line walking backwards (so I can keep an eye on everyone - 19 angels in my room). If the children start to get noisy, etc. I will stop walking, then they must stop walking too - we don't start again until everyone is quiet and there's a nice straight line.

Sometimes, I will instruct a child to get to the end of the line for talking too much or being silly, etc.

Hope this helps!

This is far from "Trivial." I teach Kindergarten and strangely enough, my students spend most of the lesson time on the carpet. I only have 3 tables in my classroom. One is for my small group and the others are for centers/workstations. The carpet has rows of colors and I excuse each row systematically.

I say, "Blue row, stand up." and they say, "Stand up."
I say, "Line up." And they say, "Line, line, line, hips and lips."

The students put one finger over there mouth and one hand on their hips. They should stand in line quietly while I excuse the other rows. They have opportunities to earn happy's:) or saddy's:( .

When they have this mastered, I switch it up and may call on the girls to stand up/line up first, people with blue pants and so on. The key is to switch it up. Have fun make it interesting, but do not change the expectation.

NOW, the most important part, and to answer your question about walking in line. Yes, I am an expert at walking backwards. I make several quick stops on the way to my destination to offer feedback on how well, or how we need to improve walking in line. These are chances to celebrate and get OH YEAHS or 10 finger WOO's!

Then, when needed,I use the 2 greatest words...LINE CHECK! The students repeat LINE CHECK and Make sure they are standing directly behind the person in front of them(Hips and LIPS). I began using this verbal cue about one month ago. It has been so effective that I have "caught" other teachers on my hall using this technique.

I hope this helps! Good luck,
Christina

I teach third grade. When my students demonstrated that they can not walk in a line we practice outside by playing follow the leader. They repeat words that I say along with movements. They love to play and then every time we are going somewhere on the campus they can not wait to play follow the leader. I can now have a student lead the line and I will walk in the middle or at the end to reinforce behavior for those who might want to goof off.

Candy and others
Lining up can be a tricky thing followed by walking in line. Use the "Teaching Challenging Students..." ebook and read pages 67-68. This will help with lining up, but it will adapt to walking in also. Chris

I can attest to what Chris is saying. Since implementing the line-up procedure my students are all lined-up and ready to go quietly within 13 seconds. They want dearly to earn that mark on the scoreboard towards extra recess. While walking up and down the halls they are also trying to earn scoreboard points which keeps them quiet.

Chris, I don't get the procedure for lines after reading the book. Do the students walk in pairs down the hall? Or do the two lines then somehow merge into one line? Can you give me a better idea of the lines?

Your information has really made a difference for my students walking in the hallway. Every day they need that scoreboard point on the way to lunch to earn recess and they work very hard to walk in a quiet line to lunch. I am still wondering if your students walk in pairs, two by two down the hall or in a single line.

I teach third grade and have a very difficult class this year with behaviors. For lining up I have a line leader and I always say, make sure you're calling students that are quietly sitting and ready to go. When students do get in line, we have something called Line Basics which is 1.) Facing forward 2.) Hands to yourself 3.) Quiet 4.) Ready to walk ...I always remind students if they are in line, they are in line basics. If they are not doing one of those 4 things, they are asked to go back to their desk and must be re-called. We have had to practice this all year and I've found that consistency has worked immensely. I have also shortened the time it takes by using a timer. From the first person called I tell the students I'm starting the timer until we get to wherever we are going. Then we try to beat that time and if we do, we earn a smiley or 2 or whatever. They are always so excited to beat their time. I even offer to take 10 seconds off if people positvely encourage each other and I hear it, or if they help someone else get ready, or if they walk silently down the hall as a whole class. It has worked wonders for one of the most challenging classes I've had in 5 years!

I am having the same problems! I taught kinder for 2 years and always had them walking so quiet and straight with hands behind their backs. Now in my 3rd year teaching I'm doing 2nd and expected them to be even better, but they can't stop talking or make a straight line for the life of them! I try everything. I call them to line when they're quiet, make them go back to their seat if they talk, stop walking if the line's not quiet. But at some point we just need to get where we're going and I end up giving up. There are a couple more difficult/defiant students who cause a lot of the problem, and sometimes I'll make them hold my hands (tell them I'll have to treat them like kindergarteners). Today I even took them out early before school was over and said if they could walk the right way we'd be the first class out, but if we were talking or not straight we'd stop every time. We eneded up being out 5 minutes late and they had still never all quieted down! It's so frustrating!

It looks like Spitzer00 below has several excellent ideas about lining up that are consistent with WBT practices ... worse case scenario, you may have to start the Practice Cards earlier than you wished and have students practice Rule 5 ... then go to having the students who get cards, practice walking in lines ... don't give up ... correct repititions build brain circuits ... but so do incorrect repititions!

I have three rules with gestures. #1 Eyes Forward. pointer fingers in front of eyes.
#2. Voice off Pretend your month is a door knob and with you hand in front of your
month, turn off the faucet. and #3 Hands by your side. pat hands on legs.
They repeat it... Good Luck! You can just remind them of the rules if they are
walking like hears of elephants. Susan in CT

I use "lines" and they say "lines lines lines". I then say "Butterfly wings", and they put their hands behind their backs with their elbows out to the sides to form the wings. We are an outside school, so walking is a vocabulary exercise for us, emphasizing verbs. For example, "Let's STROLL" to lunch today. "We are STROLLING". What did we do? "We STROLLED to lunch". If we are going past a classroom whose door is open, we are extra quiet and "sneak" past the door. My class likes to set the timer to see how quickly, orderly, and quietly we can form our line and be ready to go. Our line leader records the time, and the next time we try to beat our record. Running DOES NOT help us set a new record, because then we have to sit down and line up again. This only happened twice, and now they monitor themselves. It's GREAT!

When I dismiss from the carpet, I have them walk on sounds (phoneme segmentation), syllables, rhyming words, or whatever we happen to be working on. Right now, we are working hard on phoneme segmentation, so I say, "cat", and they say /c/ /a/ /t/ while taking a step for each sound. The point is that transition time can be seen as a game, and the students are less focused on fooling around.
Adapt these ideas to your grade level. I'll bet you will see positive changes!

Deb Weigel
WBT Intern

Deb these are great ideas that I will pass onto my Kinder and 1 st grade teachers!

Dawn Nelson
WBT Intern

Hands, eyes, and mouth

We say a poem:
"With our hands behind our backs, we're lined up straight & tall. Mouths are closed, eyes look ahead, then we're ready for the hall."

This can be sung to the tune from "Gilligan's Island":
Our hands are right behind our back,
We're standing, straight and tall
Our lips our sealed,
Eyes look ahead,
We're ready for the hall,
We're ready for the hall.

and repeat song again.

Deb, I used these tricks you shared with last years group it was great! This way they can talk but with a purpose. My leaders loved syllable cutters, then we had them pace out the steps with their partner. Such fun:-)
Annette