The First Days Are Critical

“The First Days Are Critical.” This is a chapter subtitle from Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong’s famous The First Days of School (2005), a book that every new teacher was handed in the first district I ever taught in. While in retrospect I calmly agree with this advice, when I first saw it in print as a brand new teacher, I was horrified. Horrified because I didn’t read that particular chapter until the second week of school, and I thought for sure all hope was lost.

I said that in retrospect I agree with the advice, and I do. However, I also think we need to pay attention to the book’s title, The First Days of School, emphasis on days. Plural. Now, as I type this it is officially the fourth day of school in the district where I’m an instructional coach. So, my advice is – don’t despair. Don’t despair if you haven’t set up all your expectations, procedures, and routines just yet. Believe it or not, we are still within the first days of school. Now is the time to dive in to some critical work that will help shape up how your classroom runs for the entire school year.

(Note: Sometimes we don’t get off to a wonderful start with our procedures, routines, and expectations. I’m here to tell you that, although it is honestly much easier to begin such work at the very beginning of the school year, you can establish such things at any time during the school year. But that’s a story for another blog post.)

So, what types of things should we be focused on establishing during these first, critical days of school?

Procedures & Routines

Now is the time to establish with your students how they will pass in homework, where they will sit – or stand – during certain portions of class or of the school day, how transitions during a lesson or between lessons will function, how they should interact with one another and with you, how they should participate in class….

But my biggest piece of advice is not what your procedures and routines are, but how you teach them to your students. Yes, I think you need to teach these to your class, not just tell your class about them. This means you need to discuss the purpose of routines and procedures with your students, model behaviors for them, practice (and practice, and practice, and practice) using a gradual release of responsibility structure. All too often, we tell our students what the routines and procedures are, and then briskly move on to the content we’ll be teaching, expecting that they all understand the routines and procedures and can follow them perfectly. We wouldn’t expect this kind of super-quick mastery of content knowledge, so why do we expect it in other areas such as this?

Discipline

I’m going to let you in on a secret: if you establish really strong procedures and routines, you’ll deal far less with discipline issues. The same goes for having strong, detailed lesson planning: if you’ve thought out your lesson, ensuring that, within it, students have opportunities to actively engage with the material and if you’ve anticipated any potential bumps along the road, you’ll again deal far less with discipline issues.

But even in the most ideal of classrooms, every now and then a discipline issue may crop up. If it does, it will behoove you to discover ways to deal with consequences without stopping the instruction and learning that’s occurring in the classroom. Often when dealing with a discipline issue with one student, a teacher can lose focus on the lesson, and can find him- or herself losing precious time engaging with this one misbehaving student. Finding ways to avoid this trap are key. Are there non-verbal cues or signs you can give to this student? Can you use teacher tools like proximity to send a message without stopping your instruction?

Consistency is Key

With procedures and routines, and with discipline when it pops up, we must be consistent. Sometimes this is easier said than done. Sometimes being consistent requires a lot of effort and attention to detail on our parts, and some days it just feels easier or more manageable to slide away from the systems we’ve created. Avoid this temptation! Our students need to experience consistent procedures and routines, or they will very quickly get the message that these structures are not really all that important and they’ll begin to stop adhering to them. Which will most likely bring up some discipline issues, or at the very least, waste some of our precious classroom time.

The Structure of Lessons

Establishing a structure to your lessons that both you and your students can depend upon can really enhance the learning that occurs in the classroom. Will there always (or, at least, quite often) be an activator that will either review previous learning or that will scaffold students towards new learning? A summarizer that will help both you and students assess their comprehension of that day’s lesson? A workshop structure for particular parts of the day that will always allow time for direct instruction, gradual release, work time, and debriefing?

None of these suggestions are made with the intent of a stale classroom where everything is the same, day in and day out. Mixing things up can often engage our students’ minds and interest levels. But there’s a LOT to be said for consistency within the structure of our lessons. It can keep us teachers on our toes, determined to stick to a structure we know works, and it can be very helpful for students to know what to expect and to establish a pattern for learning. Rather than “mixing up” the entire structure of a lesson in order to allow for some variety (it is the spice of life, after all!), try instead, for example, to vary the types of activators and summarizers you use (don’t get too stuck in the “ticket to leave” rut, but explore some other options).

All of the above suggestions are really quite broad, aren’t they? 

If you’re looking for more detail on any of the above, including specific examples and suggestions, let me know. I’m happy to dedicate future blog posts to this, or to provide one-on-one coaching in these areas.

Enjoy these first days of school!

Model Behavior

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     Looking for model behavior from your students? Then why not model the behavior?

Modeling has become (thankfully) a fairly common practice in today’s classrooms. Teachers model via think alouds what to do when encountering a challenging text. They model the writing process by projecting sample paragraphs and essays for the class to look at together. They model which steps to take and in which order to take them in order to solve an algebra problem.

     We do all these types of modeling as educators because we understand that, often, our students need to see what the process looks like, or need to see what an end product should be, or need to hear what an active reader’s thought process sounds like.

     So why not also use modeling when it comes to behavioral expectations in the classroom? Perhaps, sometimes, students’ inappropriate behaviors are a result of students needing to know what it looks like and feels like to behave appropriately.

     I’ve been doing some reading on muscle memory, thanks to the famous sister authors of The Daily 5 and CAFÉ books, written to promote classroom structures that enhance elementary students’ literacy independence. These are great reads, in my opinion, for both elementary and secondary educators alike, so don’t be surprised if they are the subjects for future blog posts.

     But, for now, I want to zoom in on what the sisters have to say about muscle memory and its connection to behavior in the classroom. Some students, particularly those who are kinesthetic learners, learn best by experiencing the same physical task over and over until it becomes an ingrained way of being because it has become a part of their muscle memory. We’ve all experienced this, actually. Take driving a car, for example. As adult drivers, we no longer have to concentrate on each physical aspect of driving a car; we don’t consciously think, “Now I put the car key in the ignition, now I turn the key clockwise until the car starts, etc.” But we probably did need to think through these steps much more consciously when we were first learning to drive. The difference now is that, through much repeated practice and experience, these tasks have been ingrained in our muscle memory.

     A student in our classroom who is learning a new behavioral expectation from us (how to behave during a mini-lesson, for example, or how to behave when the teacher is busy conferencing with a small group of students) may just well need two things: 1) he or she may need to experience a model of the behavior so he or she knows just what is expected, and 2) he or she may need to practice the appropriate behavior repeatedly until it is part of his or her muscle memories. Muscle memory does not happen overnight, or even after three practice runs (again, think of the driving analogy).

     A great suggestion from the sister authors is to include the students in the behavior modeling. They suggest beginning by discussing with the whole class what student behavior should be during a particular activity, brainstorming a list of behavioral criteria. Then, the sisters ask for a student volunteer to model for the class what this behavior looks like. While the student models the correct behavior (which could include sitting correctly, listening, nodding along in agreement, taking notes, etc.), the teacher points out to the rest of the class how the model student is doing everything on the previously-created brainstormed list of expected behaviors.

     But – wait for it! – here’s my favorite part. The sisters don’t stop there. They then call on a student whom they know will find it challenging to display these appropriate behaviors. They ask this student to model for the class the incorrect way to behave. As they insist – and I’m sure most of us can relate to – “Remember, give that student an audience now, or he or she will certainly take it later!” (from The Daily 5, 2006, p. 88). Modeling incorrect behavior typically results in some laughs from the crowd, and this student has now received the attention he or she typically craves.

     But – wait for it! – here’s my actual favorite part!!! The sisters then have this same student model the correct way to behave. I tried this out just the other day in a classroom I’ve been working in as an instructional coach and I can testify to its effectiveness. After modeling the incorrect behavior and getting some laughs, the student was able to completely shift gears and model the correct behaviors, giving him a chance to further instill these behaviors in his muscle memory, and also proving to himself and to his teacher that he does, in fact, know how to behave correctly and is, in fact, capable of doing so. This modeling exercise provides the teacher with great evidence to bring up with this student should he slip away from the expected behavior later on.

     I do feel I’ve oversimplified the concept slightly. The sisters do get into a lot of stamina-building practices that are very conducive towards building muscle memory that I haven’t talked about here. But I hope, readers, you’ll walk away from this post thinking about one more thing that could – and should – be modeled for students. Even if they are secondary students, they are still in your classroom for the first time and may need to learn your expectations for behavior during certain activities.

     Modeling. If it works for writing assignments, algebra problems, and thought processes, then why not for behavior, too?

     Bye, readers! I’m off to the gym. Gotta work on that muscle memory!