Angela Kulcsar shares four strategies for easing students back after break: keep demands low for one to two weeks, use visual supports like taped cues, build in sensory breaks with fidgets, and schedule structured snack times. Patience and gradual ramp-up help both teachers and students find their rhythm again.
If you just got back from a break and it feels like your students forgot everything, well, you're not alone. It's a common occurrence, but it's a frustrating one. So let's talk about some tips and tricks to help you help your students be more successful and reduce that frustration in the classroom. The very first thing I want you to remember is how difficult it is for you to change gears and get going and getting back into school mode. It's even harder for your students. I know that when I'm on break, I like— I have very little demands. I live in my pajamas. I eat all the fun foods. I stay up late and I sleep in. Chances are your students did the same thing, and because of that, it's going to be even harder to get back on a sleep schedule. So the first thing I want you to do is keep demands low. It's going to take a week or two to build back up to where you were before you left for break. Especially if it was a long break. So give yourself some time, give your students some grace, and give it a week or so. Start low in the demands and slowly build back up to where you were. For me in the classroom, this typically took a week or two. So just anticipate it's going to take about 2 weeks, and maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised. The second thing I suggest is use visuals. Use them all. Use all the visuals you possibly can. Your students are processing so much more information being back in the classroom or back in your environment, and it's different than the environment that they were in when they were at home. So the use of visuals— I love these visual necklaces. These are great to just carry around, have tape these to students' desks. These provide great support for your students and help aid in comprehension so when you give directions they can follow. Build in sensory breaks. I don't care if you're using fidgets or toys, but meet your students' sensory needs. When there's more demand, we know that our students have a greater sensory need, and they are going to go from an environment to where they've had very little demands, likely, to very high or different demands. And so even if they've got parents who had them doing learning activities every single day, just being in a different environment, that is a demand. So let's make sure that we're meeting their needs and meeting their sensory needs. Build in more sensory breaks and allow more opportunities for your students to ask for breaks. If you need We have amazing visuals that ask— have helped students ask for breaks, and so they can simply use a Velcro piece to ask for a break or a visual, or we even have some on our visual necklaces. This might seem a little unconventional, but I promise it works. Offer snacks throughout the day. Give a snack in the morning and give a snack in the afternoon to help bridge the gap between breakfast and lunch and lunch and when students go home. I know this sounds crazy, but your eating schedule is probably very different when you are on break. Your student's eating schedule is probably very different when they were on break. They may have woken up in the morning and thought that they were not hungry, but in all reality, they're starving by the time they get to your classroom. If they didn't eat breakfast, well, you're going to have a hungry monster on your hands. So let's make sure that physical needs are met, not only with sensory needs but making sure that students have enough nutrition so that they are ready to learn. Obviously, offering food in the classroom needs to be done carefully and within the restrictions of your school setting and with the safety of students in mind. So obviously follow those guidelines, but making sure that those physical needs are met will definitely serve you as a teacher. With these simple tips and tricks, within a week or two you are going to be back in the swing of things and so will your students.
