Procedures and routines

As well as introducing rules, it is also important for teachers to establish procedures and routines with a new group of students. Having clear expectations benefits both the teacher and the students. Once consistent procedures and routines are established and the students know what is expected of them, classes become easier to manage and this makes for a much more positive, productive classroom environment. Research has confirmed that when teachers establish and rehearse routines in the first days of school, it permits instruction to proceed more efficiently (Leinhardt, 2014).

Routines and procedures can be established for things that happen every day in the classroom or special activities or occurrences, such as greeting special guests. Here are some examples of some everyday routines that can be established and practiced.

• Welcome routine – smiling and saying good morning to the teacher and other students
• Entering the classroom – having a warm-up activity (e.g., word game) that students work on upon arrival
• Using the restroom / Moving around the classroom – having procedures in place to minimize disruption and make transitions as efficient as possible
• Cleaning up – singing a clean-up song to signal it is time to tidy up
• Leaving the classroom – developing a system where different groups have a color assigned to them and they are allowed to line up when the teacher holds up a card with that color

In an English language classroom, having procedures and routines in place also helps to reinforce some basic and useful phrases in English.