The large group or “circle time” setting in a preschool classroom is always an important time for student engagement. Large group can be a valuable setting for instruction, whether it be focused on a theme, early academics, or social skills.
While keeping a large group of young children is important, it can be difficult. That’s why I always look for things that increase engagement during this time. One of these ways is to utilize photographs of the students. Especially helpful is using what I call student silhouettes.
Student silhouettes look like this:
They are trimmed photos of the students in the preschool class that are laminated with magnets on the back. In my classroom, they “live” on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom, and we use them often.
Why Use Student Silhouette Pictures for Preschool Student Engagement?
There is one main reason to use student silhouette pictures: Preschool students love to look at pictures of themselves, and I have found that cutting them into these playful silhouettes increases the students’ interest in them.
Here are five easy ways to use student silhouettes during large group time to increase engagement.
Show Who Is At School & Home
The next way I use the pictures is to show who is at school and who is at home (or not at school). I start with my whiteboard divided down the middle, with “at home” and “at school” labels on the board. I give everyone their picture and ask them one by one, “Are you at home? Or are you at school?” They then place their picture in the correct spot. I then will hold up the absent students, asking, “Is Jonny here at school? No – he’s not here. We’ll put him under ‘at home'”. After everyone is accounted for, we count the number of friends at school and those at home, writing the numerals on the whiteboard. (Later in the year, we will use this to talk about whether there are more or fewer friends at home or school.)
Interested in free “At Home” and “At School” labels? Download below.
Boys and Girls
You can also use the silhouette pictures to sort boys and girls. For this sort, I use my “boys” and “girls” labels, and have everyone put their picture under a label. An extra challenge for students can be placing other students on the chart (instead of just putting their own picture up).
Interested in free “Boys & Girls” labels? Download below.
Working on Student Names
Another great way to use the student silhouettes in a preschool classroom is to work on “who” questions. This is a great activity for the beginning of the school year. In my preschool special education classroom, some students continue to need this skill (both understanding what a “who” question is and knowing peers’ names) throughout the school year.
Interested in free “Who is This” labels? Download below.
Working on Answering “What is _______ Doing?”
Another great question to work on with these pictures is “What is _____ doing?”
One thing to remember is that to meaningfully work on this, you need pictures that show your students doing more than just standing.
During large group, teachers can show each silhouette and ask what student is doing. Students can answer at the stage of language development they are at, which might sound something like this:
Beginners: Bike
Intermediate: Ride Bike
More Advanced: Riding a Bike!
Interested in free “What Are They Doing?” labels? Download below.
Using Student Pictures to Count and Compare
Any time you sort with your student pictures, you can bring in the possibility of counting and comparing. Counting the pictures might look like this:
You can add printed number labels, regular magnet numbers, write the amounts beside the pictures on the whiteboard, or have students write the numbers. Either way, this process adds functional counting to your large group time.
For my preschool special education program, comparing two sets of students comes later in the school year. This is another regular, functional way to work on “more”, “less,” and “the same”.
And that’s it! Five ways to increase student engagement during preschool circle time using students’ own pictures!
