Student Contributor: R Ruff
Afternoon check out is when students meet together before leaving school for the day. This check out is meant to discuss how we felt during the day, how we felt the class did behavior wise and how we feel on the new material we learned today.
Afternoon check out is meant to be used at the end of the day before students grab their backpacks and leave for the day. This is the very last thing that students will be doing every day. This corresponds with the Morning Check in but is meant for debriefing the day and how we could do better or what we did well. When doing the afternoon check out there will be a talking stick, that can vary such as a stuffed animal, a fidget or anything based off of preference. The talking stick will travel around the circle the student created on the carpet. When students have the talking stick, they are able to reflect on the day and how they feel it personally went for them and their peers.
The Afternoon Check Out falls under the supportive phase, but also works for the preventative phase and the corrective phase. I would put this under the Supportive phase because it supports student voice. I can also see this as the preventative phase because it allows for us to deal with problems before they become a big deal. This tool is the student/collaborative theory. The students are leading the discussion and not the teacher. The teacher becomes one of the collaborative members in this tool. We can use this tool to work on student leadership and class collaboration.
More Information –
Tool Source: Mentor Teacher: Tim O'Halloran
I was actually using two tools together, students love to go first so whoever won the dirtiest wipe sat next to me and shared first during afternoon check out. I asked them how they felt about today or they could share what they learned. I actually started by only asking students to share what they learned but some students would always say ahhhhhh I do not remember. Only some would share/remember what we worked on, which made me happy when I taught a lesson and they talked about it!!! But because of those few who didn’t remember, I started asking too how they felt about that day. I feel like this helped a lot in many ways because students could quickly choose which they wanted to share and well share. As well as a few times actually students shared whatever was bothering them from that day. One student said “ I feel sad today because so and so yelled at me today and it made me feel bad.” The said student then apologized and they worked through it, which I think is very important for kinder students, to be able to communicate what is wrong and fix things on their own. Even though I am there with them all day, sometimes I do not notice everything and the afternoon circle really helps me to see what is going on in my student’ s mind or see how their day actually went for them.