Imagine walking down a Parisian street in the hustle and bustle of activity; it's your first trip overseas and you're lost in terms of where the best local fare will be. So, naturally you decide you will use your innate ability to connect with your fellow human beings (because you've got mad teacher skills) and find out what the best option will be for lunch. But, you find when you approach individuals and attempt to find out all of the local information, although your French is absolutely impeccable, individuals still do not seem willing to help. And, you're confused. Very confused. Quite simply, you may speak the language of the land, but you're lost in terms of their routines. And I'm guessing you won't learn the information you need: looks like the local McDonalds for lunch.
We hear the word all the time in education-ease: Routines. So what are routines and where do they belong in the classroom? As a teacher just entering the ranks of public education years ago, I heard the words used in walk-throughs, professional development, and more. "Make sure you have rituals and routines in place," said almost everyone. But in reality, for many years, I just carried a superficial understanding of what they were. In their basic form, routines are quite simply patterns of activity and/or behavior for both individuals and group members that help guide learners and scaffold learning. In their best form, they are firm, fair, and consistent and reduce confusion in the classroom, paving the way for student engagement. In Ritchhart's Creating Cultures of Thinking, there are several forms of routines that we follow in the classroom: Management routines are what teachers generally consider to be their routines in the classroom. They help students understand what to do and how their behavior aligns to expectations. For me, I used three simple directives for a management in the classroom and deemed them "Expect Respect." Students understood the following: 1. One person speaks at a time. 2. Positive Language is used at all times and 3. Touch only what is yours and what you are permitted to touch. For me, these routines worked well because they were placed in a positive context, emphasized consistently, and were simple enough for students to internalize. As I've noticed in the Academy and in our own faculty meetings, teachers raise their hand in order for students/teachers to know it is time to settle down. Some management routines are not as explicit. Lights in the classroom can become directives. Is the opening and closing brightly lit while the work session is dim? Is the individual writing environment different lighting than the group environment? You don't have to "one, two, three, all eyes on me" them, but it's important to have some signal for drawing their full attention back to you. In fact, if "any task has to be done over and over again in a classroom...it is generally helpful to have a routine for it" (Rictchhart 191). But, do make sure that positive student relationships serve as foundations for these routines. Instructional routines include teacher styles and approaches as well as practices and procedures that take place when carrying out instruction, and they often mold to the teacher's personal preference. Here at Beach, the instructional framework is the consistent routine we use in our instruction. Our openings excite students and hook them into the learning that is to take place, while aligning with our Essential Question (EQ), our standards, and student learning target (such as an I CAN statement). It is important to place this framework implicitly into the class session, and explicitly on the board so the students can track where they are in the framework for the day. Work sessions are our routines for allowing students to direct their work, guided by teacher modeling and support. Closings, student-led of course, allow them to raise questions and share findings about what they have learned for the day, allowing teachers to assess learning. Essentially, if students have been creating a bracelet of thought in your class, with the opening represented by the first knot and the individual beads standing for all of their thoughts and understanding, you've got to tie another knot to keep that learning together so they don't lose the beads of understanding. That final knot is the closing. Interactional routines give structure to student-teacher interactions as well as student-student interactions in the classroom. Of course, raising hands is a simple interactional routine, but there are others such as Think-Pair-Share that allow students to first think on their own, then share with a partner, then share out as a class on a particular subject. Another interactional routine that builds class relationship and teammanship is a feedback routine. It might be a "boom-boom-clap" after someone reads or shares an answer or perhaps your own created feedback response. Students could even create a feedback routine for their class. Regardless, these interactional routines are important because "students' social and emotional learning is also supported ... by providing them structures for positive interactions rather than leaving those to chance" (Ricthhart 193). Yes, as teachers, we must even teach students how to interact positively with one another and adjust themselves to different environments, learning time and place. And finally, thinking routines are similar to cognitive strategies and can involve tools that facilitate student thinking. If we think about a common thinking routine we use here at school, the thinking maps curriculum certainly comes to mind. These maps provide students with an internalized and explicit way to see their thinking. They help students describe, comment upon, classify, analyze, synthesize, and draw analogies in the content they are learning. We shouldn't think of the maps as yet another item on the list to implement, but rather thinking routines they can use throughout their later education and life. In fact, "as we create opportunities for thinking, we must also provide our students with the tools they will need to do that thinking" (Ritchhart 194). And while you are creating other routines, let this question direct your planning: "What kinds of thinking do I need students to do with this content, and how can I best scaffold their thinking?"(194). Let these routines "demystify" the process of thinking and make it a visual for students. What routines have been especially effective for you in your classroom? Which routines would you like to know more about? Keep up the good work! -LDE Ritchhart, R. (2015). Creating cultures of thinking: The 8 forces we must master to truly transform our schools.
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