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By Christopher Towle After a revitalizing summer, I was fired up last fall to start working with my new seventh grade students. My goal was to maximize their learning time at the beginning of each class. I wanted students to enter my classroom in an orderly fashion, read the news board, write homework assignments into their academic planners, and get to work without having to be directed by me.
Establishing the routine
I started on the first day of school implementing a routine for an efficient start of class. I wanted my students to transition from socializing in the hallway to setting to work on specific tasks. As they entered the classroom for the very first time, I welcomed them and watched carefully how they acted and behaved. Once they all sat down, I raised my hand and waited for them to become silent. Next, I told them to watch me carefully and quietly as I modeled a complex procedure. I then exited the room, reentered immediately, and enacted a smooth transition to work. As I walked in, I calmly greeted students, walked to the news board, and read it. I wrote down the homework, and then followed the directions at the bottom of the news board. After my modeling, I asked students how what they just saw looked, sounded, and felt, and collected their comments in a chart.
The chart helped us define a step-by-step routine for entering the class:
Entering Routine - Be prepared—have your science binder, planner, homework
- Be pleasant—smile, greet each other
- Read everything on the news board
- Write down all homework in planner
- Follow other directions as indicated
- Sharpen pencil
- Sit down, get to work, or socialize quietly (whichever is appropriate)
The students then practiced this procedure by leaving the classroom and coming back, following the routine. They did a great job.
Reinforcing the new routine
The next day, as the students entered the room, I paid close attention to how they came in to see if they remembered what we had worked on the day before. As soon as they settled down, I asked, “Who can remind everyone how we enter science class?” After a short discussion, I asked, “How did following the routine go? What was unclear?”
Over the next ten weeks, I consistently monitored the students’ entering routine, redirected behavior, and made them redo it whenever needed. Sometimes I supported them by pointing to the Entering Routine poster, used “routine” as a one-word reminder, and/or asked students to remind the class of the expectations for entering the room.
Measuring results
The routine appeared to have become second nature to my students, but I collected some data to confirm my observations. On three different occasions during the first semester, I recorded how many times I had to remind students to follow the routine. In September, the average number of times I had to remind someone in a class to follow the routine was 5.25 times. In October, the number of reminders had fallen to 1.5 times; it dropped further to 1.25 times per class by November. In addition, I asked my students to complete a survey. 100% of students responded “yes” to the statement: “I think the start routine is beneficial to me as a student.”
I look forward to using these strategies to introduce other routines such as small-group work time, whole-group work time, and end-of-class time. There’s a lot left to accomplish!
Christopher Towle teaches 7th grade science at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School in South Burlington VT.
This article first appeared in Developmental Designs: A Middle School Newsletter, Fall 2009
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