Routines provide security because they provide a sense of order and predictability.
T H E S K I L L F U L T E A C H E R 107
PART TWO | MANAGEMENT | ROUTINES
Procedures and routines minimize downtime and delays and maximize time for learning. In Ms. Conley’s chemistry class, students enter the room, pick up their name cards on a side table (this serves as attendance taking) and place them on their desks (which enables the teacher and classmates to learn names quickly at the beginning of a semester, thus contributing to a more personal classroom climate and sense of community); work to be submitted goes in the “in-tray” on the windowsill; extra handouts from earlier in the week are in col- ored and labeled folders on the supplies table for students to access; completed homework is on the right side of students’ desks; planners or notebooks are open to today’s date; the focus question or learning target of the day and the assignments due for next class are posted on the board and students are copy- ing them into their notebooks while those who finish first are copying their solution to a homework problem on the board. If it is a lab day, students are reading over the lab with a focus question that they will be answering at the end of class as their “ticket to leave” and gathering the materials they will need for the lab. In either case, three minutes into the class period we haven’t heard anything from the teacher, yet all students are settled and either reading, writ- ing, or comparing their solutions to those put on the board by classmates. This whole procedure is aimed at saving both student and teacher time, eliminating the “what do I do with . . .” or “where can I get . . .” time-killer questions at the beginning of class, maximizing engagement from the minute the bell rings, and freeing the teacher to circulate, gather data about homework (Has it been attempted? Is it complete? Where are the struggles? What needs to be reviewed or retaught?), and touch base with individual students.
Routines can be used to teach and help students develop self-regulation skills such as self-management, self-control, and self-direction. These skills “help students engage in behaviors such as attending, participating, following direc- tions, organizing, managing materials and time, and completing assignments— behaviors associated with increased academic and social performance across a variety of subjects and school levels” (Korinek, 2016, p. 232). For example, when students are taught how to routinely use organizational tools (schedules, plan- ners, notebooks, checklists) where they regularly record and monitor assign- ments or keep track of books read, steps they have completed in a project, time spent on tasks or assignments, and so on, they are learning transferrable organi- zation skills. We can help students develop time management skills by teaching them to use a visual timer to pace themselves in completing a task or to monitor when it is time to transition from one center (or one activity) to another.
Some teachers use a piece of music to signal the beginning and end of transi- tion time or the time within which a task has to be completed with the expec- tation that students will learn to pace themselves accordingly. High school art teacher and author Michael Linsin (2014) makes the case for using music when
Routines can be used to teach and help students develop skills such as self-management, self-control, and self-direction.
T H E S K I L L F U L T E A C H E R108
PART TWO | MANAGEMENT | ROUTINES
implementing routines as a way to “add energy and bounce . . . a productive whirl of movement, of intent and purpose . . . and promote a spirit of coopera- tion and liveliness among (our) students.” In his blog post How to Use Music to Make Routines More Fun and Effective (Linsin, 2014), he elaborates on the importance of choosing the music to fit the particular routine:
What’s so cool about this strategy is that the music both cues the start of the routine and sees to its conclusion . . . It acts as a timing device, mov- ing students along as they hustle to complete their responsibilities before the song ends.
While there are many sources of free downloadable music available on the web, Linsin mentions three sites he uses as resources for this purpose: Sound Project 2014, freeplay, and Televisiontunes.com.
Routines can be curriculum by virtue of their particular purposes and the learn- ing embedded in them. Designed thoughtfully and deliberately, they can sup- port what many would call the hidden curriculum: the indirect personal and social learning students receive just from being present in a particular class- room where the teacher has what we like to call “Overarching Objectives” (see Chapter 22). Personal learning refers to students learning something about themselves or some ability that might be described in terms of character devel- opment rather than skill. Social learning refers to students’ learning something about others, groups, or people together (e.g., cooperation, sharing). Programs such as Responsive Classroom (www.responsiveclassroom.org) and Open Cir- cle (Wellesley College Stone Center at www.open-circle.org) are full of routines where students learn and practice personal and social skills such as how to greet each other, how to compliment and receive compliments, how to apologize, and so on. See Chapter 16, “Classroom Climate,” for more about these programs and how we make this type of hidden curriculum an explicit agenda in our classrooms.