Starting the Year off Right
During the first week of school, we will focus on teaching the school-wide rules, behavioral expectations, and routines to all students across all settings in the school. The PBIS team is organizing a set of events that hopes to provide students and staff with an entertaining, memorable, and positive first week of school in which everyone learns the rules, expectations, and routines throughout the entire school. To truly start the year off right we will need participation and support from the entire staff.
Why teach the Rules, Expectations, and Routines during the first week of school?
One of the major reasons to teach behavioral expectations and routines across settings is that so all staff agree on what is expected. This will improve consistency across staff in enforcing the school rules. Surprisingly often, staff have different expectations about what behavior is acceptable in different settings which can confuse the students.
A second major reason is that we cannot assume that students know the expectations and routines.
What are Routines?
Routines are the procedures and processes that students are expected to follow to keep things running smoothly and prevent problems. Examples of routines include entering the cafeteria, the lunch line process, the dismissal process for classes from lunch, process for sharpening your pencil in class, etc. Choosing routines should be a thoughtful process since some routines can inadvertently set up students to engage in misbehavior. Routines should be taught and reinforced during the first week of school so that everyone in the school is following the same set of procedures.
Our Mustang Round Up will take place the first week of the school year. Students will have an opportunity to view various areas on campus to go over expectations and routines. The areas include cafeteria, library, office, playground, and bathroom. Each area has a presenter who will go over Being Safe, Responsible, and Respectful expectations.
Booster Sessions: Re-teaching the Rules, Expectations, and Routines.
Like all good teachers, we must remember that we cannot simply teach the expectations and routines once. It is important to hold booster sessions to review the expectations. Booster sessions are especially helpful after returning from a long break, during times in the year when you anticipate having more troubles, or in areas that continue to be problematic. Booster sessions may include re-teaching expectations, increasing the number of acknowledgment tickets, or having a contest between classes to award the class that does the best with the identified expectations or in the specified area.
