If you want to effectively manage your classroom, you need to teach your students routines and procedures. Routines and procedures are the daily tasks that your students do in the classroom from the moment they arrive until the time that they leave. They are essential for your classroom to run smoothly and for you to be able to teach.
So, how do you teach routines and procedures to elementary students? Here are 5 classroom-tested tips to make sure you’re effectively teaching your students the routines and procedures of the classroom.
1. Explicitly teach what to do in steps
We often assume that our students know how to do simple tasks like “unpack,” but everyone has different expectations! In order to get your students to do things exactly how YOU want them to, you need to approach routines and procedures like they’ve never done them before.
To do this, take each routine and procedure and think about all of the tiny steps that go into each one. Create a chart with each step outlined and a corresponding visual. Then, explicitly teach your students how to complete each step of that routine or procedure.
2. Model your expectations
Once you’ve broken down the routine or procedure into steps, don’t just tell your students what to do or point to it on the chart, actually model completing each step. While you’re modeling, have your students be active participants by sharing what they notice.
3. Have students practice and give specific feedback
Just because we taught something, it doesn’t mean our students know how to do it! After you’ve modeled how to complete the routine or procedure, invite a few students to model what you’ve taught to the class. Reinforce what they’re doing right by narrating and using phrases like, “I notice Dexter is ____,” or ask other students what they notice. Then… repeat! Give students plenty of time to practice and receive feedback.
4. Post for reference
It’s helpful for students to have the steps to your routines and procedures posted somewhere in your classroom that they can easily reference. When you post the steps, your students no longer have to rely on their memory to remember the expected behavior. Instead, they can refer back to the chart whenever they need to.
If you don’t have enough wall space, put the steps to your most frequently used routines and procedures on a chart tablet so you can flip to the page that you need.
5. Review every day
Instead of teaching routines and procedures at the beginning of the year and then moving onto curriculum, incorporate review into your lessons. Review the steps to a routine or procedure before your students are expected to use it to make sure your students remember what to do and how to do it. This will take just a few minutes, but you will gain hours of instructional time from not having to stop and redirect your students.
Download the free list of routines & procedures
If you want to proactively manage disruptive student behavior, routines and procedures must be explicitly taught and reviewed often. Use these 5 tips to teach routines and procedures in a way that actually works.
Click here to download my free list of routines and procedures to make sure you’ve got them all covered!
