Footprints on the Floor

Attach traced feet to the classroom floor. This gives students visual boundaries and clearly defines the expectations of lining up for a transition, and should therefore reduce the amount of behaviors.

This simple strategy of placing foot shapes on the floor in the classroom provides boundaries for students who experience difficulty with transitions.

• Child's Age: 3-5, 6-10
• Planning Effort: Low
• Difficulty Level: Easy

Access to construction paper and packing tape

1. Trace, cut, and laminate outlines of shoes standing on construction paper (making each pair a different color may be helpful).

2. Velcro (or fix to floor in another way) feet cutouts in left/right pairs in front of the classroom door where you have children line up to leave the classroom. Arrange the pairs of feet in a line as you would like children to line up. (Some teachers prefer to laminate feet cutouts in a line and cut laminate out in one long piece, creating a line up mat that they only put down when they need children to line up.

3. As you call them to line up, teach children to stand on the pair of feet closest to the door that is not already being stood on by another student. (If you color code classroom items a certain way for each child, i.e. Ted has a yellow schedule; it may be easiest to teach each child to stand on the feet that correspond with his/her classroom color).

4. Provide specific positive verbal reinforcement to each children at the beginning of learning.