Student Contributor: S. Weger
The classroom drive-thru is helpful because it keeps the movement around the classroom run smoothly without chaos happening. When there’s a structured line implemented for moving around the classroom in a certain area and direction, it helps prevent kids from running into each other, ripping over students desks/chairs, and prevents the classroom from becoming too crowed in one area. It forces students to learn how to be patient and wait for their turn as well.
This tool should be used when students are asked to gather materials like a ruler, whiteboards, markers, crayons, clipboards, etc. and they are in one essential area of the classroom like in a closet. Students will have to go through the “drive-thru” in a single file line going a certain direction that is already set up by the teacher ahead of time by practicing this routine. Students will walk through and grab their materials from the closet and go back to their seats. If a student goes the wrong direction and starts to enter the drive-thru from the front of the line, then they will be running into other students so it physically doesn’t work if students don’t follow the directions. I have experienced students using a classroom drive-thru procedure and it goes very smoothly. The teacher doesn’t have to deal with all the students rushing to one area and fighting or cutting each other in a line. You also don’t have to worry about calling on students one by one to grab materials. This allows for students to hold responsibility and accountability for themselves and helping their classroom run smoothly, along with it allowing the teacher to use this time to gather/prepare for the upcoming lesson since they are hands-off.
I placed this tool in the Preventative phase because that is where I thought it fit best. It helps prevent arguments and disputes between students by removing the possibility of them running into each other, grabbing things out of their hands, and cutting others in line. This fits student-directed theories of influence best because it is ultimately up to the students to decide their behavior and if they are going to let their classroom movement flow smoothly. If a student decides that they aren’t going to go through the drive-thru correctly, then they are deciding to make that choice that will face the risk of consequences with disputes between other classmates. It causes students to form responsibly for themselves and their classroom nature.
More Information –
Tool Source: Personal Mentor teacher in Spokane Elementary School
Conscious of traffic flow
In my first grade classroom, we use the preventative phase tool of classroom drive-thru. The school I am FaceTime is a suburban Title 1 school. In our morning, we begin the day with a morning meeting. This is where students come down to the carpet and we start our literature for the day. We eventually have them go to the back of the room to grab whiteboards to practice their writing skills. At the beginning of the year, we would have students chaotically one to the back, grab their whiteboards, and meet us at their desks. Often this would cause collisions, and would waste our precious learning time. After using the tool of classroom drive-thru, we created a system in which students were successfully able to grab their whiteboards, markers, and erasers without the chaos that had originally occurred. We established that students would walk around table group four before they go to the back table to grab their whiteboards, then proceed to their desk. We would always excuse table group four last, so that way they were not in the way of all the other students. This tool created success in our classroom, and I will be using it again in the future.