Instructional Routines Open House

Teachers can spend countless hours putting up bulletin boards, setting up learning centers, and rearranging desks before the first day of school. So much time is spent with the objective to get things just right for students as they enter for the first time, but all too often teachers miss the mark when it comes to planning what matters most.

After our faculty studied Anita Archer’s book, Explicit Instruction, we wanted to be very intentional about how we set up our rooms to maximize student achievement. This meant carefully considering the why behind all of our decisions, with the expectation that teachers would be able to clearly articulate how their choices will impact learning and connect to the routines and procedures that they will be teaching their students during the first days of school.

Once rooms were set up, procedures were outlined, and everything was ready to go… The whole faculty went on a guided tour throughout the building to see how each room was set up for success!

Implementation

During a summer professional development session, teachers learned about how to set up a room in order to maximize learning potential. Not just the physical environment, but also the routines and procedures that teachers use to minimize the time that is typically wasted during transitions. We challenged teachers to think through the “time wasters” from past years in order to design a more efficient classroom structure.

Teachers worked together to come up with 10 routines and procedures that students will master within the first week of school. Once these were selected, each teacher wrote down the procedures so that students would know exactly what it would look like to follow the expectation. For example, instead of a teacher saying “Line up” our teachers might say, “One line facing forward, directly behind the person in front of you, your hands are to your side or to yourself.” In each classroom, students would practice each procedure until it was performed with exactness, and then teachers would mark which procedures had been mastered on a chart in the front of each room.

The day before school started, the entire faculty met in the library and then walked around stopping in each classroom. We spent a few minutes in every room while the teacher explained how she chose her room configuration and then reviewed each of her routines and procedures. When we got back to the library, we shared some of the great things that we had seen, allowed time for teachers to quickly clarify details about any great ideas they had seen, and then gave out awards to each teacher to celebrate the great work that they had done.

Results

Through this fun process of sharing ideas and explaining our rationale with our colleagues, teachers were challenged to be very intentional about their expectations, routines, and procedures. They realized that if they didn’t know exactly what they wanted it to look like, how would their students ever really know how to do exactly what they were asking? As the year started, it was amazing to see the difference in each of our classrooms and throughout the school as a whole. Transition time was cut drastically, which meant more time for learning. In fact, morning routines were tightened up so much that teachers agreed to set a goal to have students in their seats and instruction started by the time the tardy bell rang. In some cases, this meant recapturing 10-15 min of instruction each day. That’s 30 hours over the course of one school year!!!

Next Steps

Teachers continue to tighten up their routines and procedures. We have just secured funding to take a group of teachers to Portland where they will participate in Anita Archer’s week-long Explicit Instruction Academy. Their learning will be the focus of our Professional Development next year.