Lining up students! How do you manage? How do your students manage?
When you are taking your students to specialists or to different areas of the playground do they start in a line and end up all over the place?
Do you find yourself ‘growling’ and becoming frustrated with the line up process?
When do you need students to line up and what’s the purpose?
Here are some ideas.
Browns Cows:
Scenario:
Students are in a line but as you move off the line usually disintegrates and they end up like ‘browns cows’, all going in the right direction but making their own path.
Brown’s Cows – all heading in the right direction!
Try This:
Tell your students you are going from Point A to Point B like ‘Browns Cows’.
Discuss with students the way cows walk to the dairy to be milked. Google a few photos to show.
Explain there is no set leader, you all wander and walk together as a group to where ever you are going.
This eliminates the ‘jostling’ to be the leader or second in line or partner problems. ‘I haven’t got a partner or no one will be my partner!’
This issue often bobs up with younger students
You walk along at the back. There is generally no need for you to lead, they know where they are going if you are moving about in the school environment.
Dangle About:
Lining up to leave the classroom? Rather than line up tell your students to ‘dangle about at the door’.
When I first told students to ‘dangle about’ at the door they looked at me with a quizzical look on their faces but quickly understood what I meant.
They ‘get it’ and again this stops the ‘I am the leader’, ‘I was here first’, the pushing and shoving that can occur.
I watched a group of young students line up. The teacher had a ‘Leaders for the Week’ list written up and students still argued, pushed and shoved. It was not creating leaders. The leader thought that being the leader gave them the right to shout at and push others. If you were not ‘the leader’ you became a lesser person – you’re not the leader, I am!
Yes, there are times students need to line up – getting on the bus, on an excursion, checking numbers and there are also times when they can ‘dangle about’!
Leading a line does not make a great leader! 