In my classroom, the first fifteen minutes of the day can be crazy. Some students struggle with “arrival adjustment,” and others are at their most disruptive.

I have given tasks to students that they were responsible for completing upon arrival, but some have a hard time getting down to business. As new arrivals trickle in, the urge to greet and strike up conversations or activities together seemed irresistible. Many of them want to casually visit with classmates, either at their desks or in the locker area.

Too much socializing wasn’t the only problem. Due to the way my room was built, I was unable to greet students at the doorway, monitor the hallway, and still keep an eye on the classroom.

The goal
I knew the routine I wanted students to follow: They needed to make their lunch selection, respond to the daily message, correct their math homework, and check in with me. This year, my goal was clear: Students will follow the expected routine. I knew that I would have to model the routine for them, let them practice, and use language that would both encourage them when they got it right and redirect them when they didn’t.

The work begins
I started on Day One with modeling. I gathered students into our circle and went through the following steps:

1. I framed the routine to be modeled. “When we arrive in the morning, there are several jobs we need to do to start our day in a productive way. When these jobs are completed, you will be able to make some choices about how to use the time remaining before we move to grade-level work.”
2. I demonstrated the behavior. Before starting, I told them what was going to happen: “Watch what I do when I enter the classroom. I’ll ask you to comment on what you saw me do as soon as I’m finished.” I demonstrated the behaviors exactly the way I wanted students to do them:
   • Without speaking, I walked to my desk and put down my materials.
   • Next, I visited the morning message board. I silently read the message and responded appropriately to it.
   • I went to the lunch selection area and quietly put my card in the appropriate pocket.
   • I then went to my desk and corrected my math homework, using the key provided on the SmartBoard.
   • Then I moved my name onto the board, indicating I was ready to check in with the teacher. While waiting, I chose to move to the “quiet conversation area” to chat with a friend (I later modeled the other choice, which was to draw quietly at my desk).
3. At this point, I stopped modeling. I wasn’t completely through the routine yet, but I wanted to keep what had already been modeled at the fronts of their minds: It was a lot! To gather their observations, I asked the following questions, one at a time, and fielded their responses to each before moving on to the next one: “What did you notice about what I did? What about my voice? What about the flow of my movements from place to place? How did I look as I was correcting my math?” The students responded, and as we talked about what they noticed, a clear set of expectations emerged.
4. Then student volunteers demonstrated the behaviors. Two modeled how to do the same set of tasks I had modeled, while all watched. This time, we added the final part: Checking in with the teacher and getting a final, open-ended assignment. I asked the modelers: “How did you feel when you were able to check in with me?” I asked the class, “What did each student do after they checked in with me?”
5. Then we all practiced. We lined up at the door and quietly did a “dry run.” This wasn’t exactly realistic, because we were all arriving at the same time, but it gave everyone a chance to try the process. I stayed a few feet away, carefully monitoring the way things were flowing and making reinforcing comments.

Reminder chart
The next day, after trying the routine for real, we made a look, sound, and feel chart. Students described how it should look, sound, and feel, and we posted this collaborative chart in a central location and referred to it many times throughout the next few weeks. I took photographs of students doing each step correctly, and we displayed these photos on the wall near where each task was to be done. The photographs were used later both to reinforce positive adherence to the routine and to help students who had forgotten.

First assessment
In October I needed to know how we were doing, so I decided to take a step back and objectively watch the routine. I also gathered student input about how they thought we were doing. The students assessed themselves more critically than I did. On a scale of 1-5, five being the highest possible score, five students felt the class was doing poorly (they gave the group a 1), five gave the class a three, nine gave the class a four and only three gave the class a 5. I was more generous—things were far better than they had been in previous years, but there was room for improvement.

Problem-solving meeting
To maintain the positive momentum, I conducted a quick problemsolving meeting. We discussed what wasn’t working, and the students said the biggest problem was they felt they could delay doing the routine if they arrived a few minutes early, which led to too much noise and disorder. They decided they could fix that by making signs that read “Stop, Listen, Do It Right Away!” as a reminder. Each student made her or his own sign, and included sketches of what properly completing the routine should look like. We taped them on their desks, and from then on I saw many students self-correcting by reading their sign. Others gently encouraged their “delaying” neighbors to read their signs, too. This solution proved very helpful. Because they owned it, they truly wanted it to work.

The power of their own ideas
At the end of the problem-solving meeting, a student suggested that I check in with students at their desks rather than having them come to me. Through all of this, I learned how important it is to include students in the problem-solving process. Maybe I or another adult could have come up with a better set of ideas, maybe not, but I’m convinced students would not have improved their behavior as much because the ideas would have been imposed upon them. In November, we repeated the assessment of our morning routine. This time, the students and I both graded the group much higher. No one gave the group a 1, only three gave the group a 2, eight gave us a 4, and eleven gave us a 5. Comparing the October and November numbers was startling. Although I hadn’t assessed the group as low as the students did in our first assessment, I agreed that things were much better now. The ideas generated in our quick problem-solving meeting helped us stay on track and refine our skills.

Next year, I will establish the morning routine in a similar way, and I want to take what I learned in this context and apply it to other daily routines.

Kris Haagenson teaches fourth graders at Zachary Lane Elementary School in Plymouth, Minnesota.

This article first appeared in Origins: A Newsletter for Elementary Educators, Fall 2011