How to Create a Classroom Checklist

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Pam, on behalf of Expert Village and now we're going to talk about understanding behaviors in children. Here's some suggestions of things that you can go through as a parent or a teacher to kind of get a head's up on how you think the classroom is going to do, behavior wise. So, think about time. Does the daily schedule provide enough for them to do, but also allow time for transitions? Is cleanup a leisurely process that's built in at the end of each activity and are the children participating? Now with program planning and curriculum, is there enough to do so that they have choices, but they also have alternatives? If you only give a child two choices, and they don't like either of those, they are going to have a problem. Is the curriculum changelling enough so that you're preventing boredom but you're also learning and you're keeping them interested and they're not getting restless. Are there enough activities for them to release tension? Some activities don't release tension. You need ones that do. Now, orginization and order. If the children are expected to put things away after use, are the cabinets low? Are they open? Are they labeled correctly? Is it going to make it easy for the child to do this? Children can get frustrated really easily. Are the materials in reach of the children? This should promote self-selection and independence. Are there enough materials so that sharing is not a problem? Now, obviously, you don't need to have eighteen different things of the same one so that every child can have the same thing, but you do need to have things that children don't need to be constantly sharing the same thing. Do children have their own private space? Do they have their own cubby? And then personal things, like are there enough teachers to give adequate attention to the number of children in the class. Are the group size and make up balanced so that this can happen? Do all the adults consistently enforce the same rules? That's a big, big important one. And then, are the teachers experienced? Do they seem comfortable? That's something that if an adult is not comfortable in their situation, that's going to reflect and the children are going to pick up on this. So these are just a few things that you can think about to kind of give you a head's up as to how you think the class is going to do."