"How to walk in a line" There's an anchor chart for that.

Lately I have been thinking about how to best make visual representations of common classroom and school routines and rituals for my students. A lot of thinking has gone into this because it needs to be easily accessible, multi modal (reach multiple student's through their learning style), and something that can be referenced as needed.

One of the most common school routines is walking in the hallway, and it's one of the hardest skill to master. This is an important skill to learn though because not only does it translate into a safety routine (like with fire drills) learning how to walk through the halls is an important community access skill (like for going on field trips) Walking through the halls is hard, there is a lot going on; people and things to look at touch and hear, the excitement of where we are going, talking to friends, a lot more then you realize if you're not a student with sensory needs or ADHD. So when we ask them to "line up" and quickly go over the rules of walking in the hallway (by speaking them most likely), they have already forgotten them before they step out the door. The other problem with this is my student's don't do auditory processing well. Either they are not paying attention, can't process the information fast enough, or can't internalize it. It's not the best learning modality for my students to retain information.

So what do I do about this? Well, after a lot of thought the idea ended up being pretty simple.

I made an anchor chart! Now, I have seen anchor charts used for behavior management before, but there are some special elements in this one that I have included, and for a reason.

All of my students are verbal, they are able to use expressive language, and most of them are cognitively ready, or to say they don't have any cognitive impairments. That being said, they still need a lot of visual support. I love visuals and for many reasons:
   
     1. They are interesting - they capture the attention of a student, and in order to learn a student has to be attending.
     2. They are easier to process - Simple visual images are easier to process than words (both spoken and written) for those students with processing and sensory disorders, or whom are just upset. I also find that visual are less of a trigger for a lot of my students over spoken directions.
     3. They help make sense of the words - visuals help because they are context clues, they help students comprehend the written material (like ELL and SPED students)
    4. They give the student a way to communicate when using words is hard - we can all relate to this, even as adults we find it hard sometimes to "use our words" to express what we really need. (for me this is about the time I start interjecting some colorful language into what I am saying, but more on using visuals to support communication later)

Even though the anchor chart is simple looking there are two key elements. The fist key element is that it is multi modal. It has written language, pictures, and when the teacher goes over it, auditory information. To a certain extent it is also kinesthetic because the students should be actively practicing the skills as we go over the poster. The second key element is that it is concrete. It is something the students can see and refer to. When posted by the door it prompts the students as to what behaviors are expected in the hallway. It also allows for fading of the support, you may start off with going over it every time the student's leave the classroom, then only twice a day, then once, etc, until it is just posted by the door as a reminder.

I also made a sister anchor chart to this one about how we line up at the door.

With these two posters by the door I can now in a concrete manner teach the expectations of how to line up and walk through the hallway. This gives my students a better grip on the expectations, and hopefully leads to better understanding of the hallway routines.