IMPORTANCE OF CLASSROOM ROUTINES

Classrooms -- particularly those with young children -- need to have routines.

These routines help you maintain order and also help the kids stay calm. If there is
a set activity for every part of the day, you will be able to focus more on your
teaching and less on giving instructions and generally controlling the class. This is
just one of many reasons routines are important for teachers.

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"Routines are the backbone of daily classroom life. They facilitate teaching and
learning…. Routines don’t just make your life easier, they save valuable classroom
time. And what’s most important, efficient routines make it easier for students to
learn and achieve more."

—Learning to Teach…not just for beginners by Linda Shalaway

When routines and procedures are carefully taught, modeled, and established in
the classroom, children know what’s expected of them and how to do certain
things on their own. Having these predictable patterns in place allows teachers to
spend more time in meaningful instruction.

Go inside 16 classrooms from across the country to see how other teachers have
successfully established routines to manage important times of the school day.
Each of the slideshows below takes you on a visual and audio tour explaining how
to establish similar procedures in your classroom

Arriving in the Morning

Teaching With Technology

As children start trickling into the classroom, they need to know exactly what to
do. What should they do with their homework? Where should they put their book
bags? Where do their coats and other materials belong? What should they do
while they wait for the rest of the class to arrive? When does class actually start?
When kids know the answers to these questions, they can move smoothly
through the morning routine and get straight into learning.View The Slideshow

Taking Attendance and Displaying Schedules

Teaching With Technology

After the bustle of putting away book bags, coats, and homework, taking
attendance and discussing the schedule can help bring students together and
build community in the classroom. View The Slideshow

Throughout the Day

Teaching With Technology

Students move through many activities during the course of a typical day, from
whole-group lessons to small-group work, from reading time to math time, from
in-class work to specials outside the classroom. It’s important to plan for these in-
between times just as carefully as you plan your lessons. With predictable
routines in place, students can move smoothly from one activity to the next
without losing learning time. The teachers in this section share some clever ideas
for signaling transition times and keeping track of students as they leave the
classroom for various reasons during the day.View The Slideshow

Ending the Day

Teaching With Technology

Just as a morning routine helps set the tone for the rest of the day, an end-of-the-
day routine helps get children and the classroom ready for the next day. You may
want to enlist some children’s help in tidying up the classroom while others
gather their belongings, including homework.

Routines—also known as classroom procedures—rid students of distractions that

waste time and interfere with learning. Guesswork is minimized. Minor
frustrations and inconveniences are fewer, as are opportunities for misbehavior.
The students, then, are left to focus on learning.

If your students know what to do and how to do it during every transitional or

procedural moment of the school day, they can more easily attend to what is
most important. Furthermore, adding more responsibility and purpose is a
surefire way to boost morale.

Well-executed routines also save time and lessen a teacher’s workload.

Instead of giving directions ad nauseam and talking students through transitions,

passing out papers, leaving and entering the classroom, and dozens more, these
tasks are automated into routines, allowing you to merely observe and focus your
thoughts on the next activity.

For everything your students do in your classroom repetitively, there should be a

routine.

Diverse Learners

One of the biggest challenges that teachers face is to find ways to succeed
withdifferent types of learners, not just those with whom they have a natural
affinity.
After writing my first lesson plan, I realized that it should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable,
Realistic, and Time-bound or SMART. One thing more, into this age of globalization where
everything steps up into a higher level, we should adapt into these changes, we should make our
lesson plan student-centered so that we can engage our students more in the teaching-learning
process. The more they are involved, the greater the probability of higher learning and the longer it
will retain. I realized also that making lesson plan is important because this serves as a guide
towards targeting your goals. It is the roadmap intended for achieving lesson’s objectives.  With
careful planning, you are assured of an effective procedure and a complete coverage of the subject
that you aim to teach.  A good and reliable plan can definitely enhance your self- confidence
together with relax and authoritative poise.  Your plan can be submitted to your cooperating
teacher for comments and suggestions, thus adding to your learning experience.  Experience
gained from your daily lesson planning task conserve us well-earned qualification for future
classroom activities.

Zeichner (1992) has summarized the extensive literature that describes successful teaching approaches for diverse
populations. From his review, he distilled 12 key elements for effective teaching for ethnic- and language-minority
students.
1. Teachers have a clear sense of their own ethnic and cultural identities.
2. Teachers communicate high expectations for the success of all students and a belief that all students can
succeed.
3. Teachers are personally committed to achieving equity for all students and believe that they are capable of
making a difference in their students' learning.
4. Teachers have developed a bond with their students and cease seeing their students as "the other."
5. Schools provide an academically challenging curriculum that includes attention to the development of higher-
level cognitive skills.
6. Instruction focuses on students' creation of meaning about content in an interactive and collaborative learning
environment.
7. Teachers help students see learning tasks as meaningful.
8. Curricula include the contributions and perspectives of the different ethnocultural groups that compose the
society.
9. Teachers provide a "scaffolding" that links the academically challenging curriculum to the cultural resources that
students bring to school.
10. Teachers explicitly teach students the culture of the school and seek to maintain students' sense of
ethnocultural pride and identity.
11. Community members and parents or guardians are encouraged to become involved in students' education and
are given a significant voice in making important school decisions related to programs (such as resources and
staffing).
12. Teachers are involved in political struggles outside the classroom that are aimed at achieving a more just and
humane society.