Strategy: Greeting Students at the Door
Check-Up Menu > Greeting Students at the Door
Use this strategy to improve these areas:
Overview
Building relationships with students and making them feel like welcome members of the class are essential to creating a positive classroom climate. Greeting students at the door using noncontingent attention is one method for connecting with students at the beginning of the school day.
Purpose
The purpose of greeting students at the door is to welcome each student individually and to set a positive tone for the beginning of each school day. It also gives you advance warning if a student is having a bad morning and is in need of extra support.
There are four elements to using greetings with noncontingent attention:
1) It is important to be genuine and sincere in your greetings with students. They need to feel that you are really interested in them.
2) It is also important to allow students choices of greetings that make them most comfortable and feel welcomed. Visuals assist students to know the available choices and make them quickly.
3) Teach and practice the greetings in the same manner as you would teach any other important classroom routine.
4) Monitor students’ moods and responses as they enter the classroom. Check in with any students who seem down and spend some time providing extra attention and/or problem-solving.
How To
How To Greet Students at the Door
There are many different ways students may enjoy being welcomed into the classroom. Creating your own menu of acceptable classroom greetings is a way to personalize your students’ classroom experience. Not all of your students will feel welcomed by a simple “hello” and will respond better to individualized choices.
Example Videos:
Hug
Video Prompts:
- This teacher greets every student as they come in the door in the morning.
- Notice how the teacher states each student’s name.
- Notice that students choose how they want to be greeted by receiving a hug or high five. This allows all the students to feel comfortable with the greeting.
- What did you like about how this teacher greeted each student as they arrived?
- How might you go about greeting each student?
- What do you think the benefits are to greeting students every day?
Teacher Interview
Video Prompts:
- This teacher discusses the struggle between getting through academic work and building relationships.
- She reflects on how building relationships can actually save time later on.
- How important is relationship building to you when working with your students?
- What are some ideas for what you can do in your classroom to build positive relationships with even the students who are hardest to reach?
Strategy Tool
Use the Classroom Greetings strategy tool to help you identify how to best use noncontingent attention with your students at the beginning of each school day.
Reflection
Take a moment to make sure your plan is going to work.
Goal Setting
Set a goal for greeting students at the door with noncontingent attention.
References to Other Relevant Resources:
Allday, R. A., & Pakurar, K. (2007). Effects of teacher greetings on student on-task behavior. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40(2), 317-320.
Patterson, S. T. (2009). The effects of teacher-student small talk on out-of-seat behavior. Education and Treatment of Children, 32(1), 167-174.
