Student Contributor: A. Bonnington
Practicing routines can be used to help the students learn their routines and how to best complete a task. The routines should be introduced in the beginning of the school year and used almost daily. By doing so, the students have time to learn and rehearse the routines, making them more effective.
The tool should be used from the day the routines are established to aid in mastering them. The purpose of practicing routines is so that the transitions between lessons run smoothly creating more time for learning. All the students have a task they should be doing and from practicing the routines they can do so efficiently. No student should have time to be goofing around. The idea behind routines is to provide direction for how tasks are to be completed. Practicing those routines is the idea of giving students a chance to feel comfortable in completing the task before instruction begins that they run smoothly during the lesson. The benefit of practicing routines is that it aids in speedy turnovers between lessons.
This tool best relates to the preventative phase. Having routines simply isn’t good enough if you haven’t given the students a chance to practice them. I placed practicing routines in the preventative phase because it should be done before the lesson starts as this is where it is most beneficial to the students. Practicing routines can help the students understand the behavior that is expected of them and they are given opportunities to rehearse them. I put this tool in a student-directed and collaborative classroom as well as a teacher-directed and collaborative classroom. I felt this was the case because practicing routines helps not only the students but the teacher. The teacher can see where the weaknesses in the routines are and the students can too. In a teacher-directed classroom, the teacher would make the changes whereas in a student-directed classroom, the students would help make the adjustments.
More Information –
Tool Source: Garrett's article on Establishing Routines
