ORGANIZED CLASSROOMS ARE EASY TO RECOGNIZE
Routines and procedures are established so that the classroom seems to run au- tomatically. Students know exactly what to do and when to do it (Stronge, 2002, p. 28). When classroom procedures are poorly thought out—or not thought out at all—the results are seen in disorganization, poor momentum, and often discipline problems.
Most important of all, valuable instructional and learning time is lost. At the end of one day in Ms. Conway’s first grade classroom, a substitute teacher wrote the following note: “Anytime you need a sub for Ms. Conway’s room, call me. I didn’t have to do anything. The kids ran the whole day: they knew what to do, how to do it, when to do it. I just followed their lead.” On a scale of 1–10, that’s a 10 in this area of performance!