Transition Time

"The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot."

                                        -Michael Altshuler
Time is unavoidable. It's everywhere. It determines when we wake up, what time we need to be somewhere, when we should move from one thing to the next. Time management is an important part of our lives.

This year, we've placed a large emphasis on efficient transitions. When our transitions are smooth, we create more time for teaching and learning. My hope is that students will become more aware of their own time and understand how they can use that time productivly.The picture above is an example of one way we are tracking two common transitions that have proved to take longer than necessary. For example, when the students come back from recess, they need a drink of water after working hard on the playground. The first time we began tracking our transition for getting water it took the students 13 minutes. The students identified that as being too long and thought they could improve their time. As transitions continued to be recorded, students would discuss trends and reasons for longer or quicker transitions. After multiple attempts, the 5th graders have improved their time to an average around two minutes. In the grand scheme of things, this is a small example however, the students are realizing that every minute counts!




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