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  • Support for early career teachers
  • Education Development Trust
  • Year 1: First half-term: establishing a positive climate for learning
    • Autumn week 2

    Mentor materials

    Establishing and reinforcing routines

    Intended outcomes

    The intended outcomes of this topic are for Early Career Teachers to:

    Learn that:

    • Establishing and reinforcing routines, including through positive reinforcement, can help create an effective learning environment

    Learn how to establish effective routines and expectations by:

    • Creating and explicitly teaching routines in line with the school ethos that maximise time for learning (e.g. setting and reinforcing expectations about key transition points)
    • Reinforcing routines (e.g. by articulating the link between time on task and success)

    Activities

    Using routines (15 minutes)

    Pupils need to be taught what is expected of them in the classroom, and it is the teacher’s responsibility to do this.

    Discuss the implications for this for the ECT. Have they been able to do this up to now? What has worked well? What have been the challenges?

    Together, compile a list of the key moments in a lesson when a routine is useful in teaching pupils how to behave.

    These may include:

    • Entering the classroom
    • Starts and ends of lessons
    • Starting and finishing work -Transitions between activities or places in the learning environment
    • Taking out and putting away resources
    • Whole class teaching and discussion
    • Undertaking common classroom activities

    Mentors should choose one of these, explain the routine they use in their teaching, and describe how they establish, reinforce and remind pupils of the routine.

    Establishing effective routines (30 minutes)

    Handout 1.2 is about praising positive behaviour. Use this to work through what the ECT can do in their own teaching to establish effective routines. It will be helpful for mentors to describe the types of things they do in their classrooms.

    To support the ECT in choosing an appropriate routine to focus on use the following questions as prompts:

    • What’s the purpose of this routine?
    • Why does this routine matter to you and to your pupils?
    • How will this routine lead to improved learning?

    Together, write and practise a script for establishing this routine in the classroom.

    Planning for action

    Agree with the ECT:

    • When they will teach the routine scripted in this topic.
    • Who they will observe with a focus on ‘Establishing routines’. Decide when this will happen and what they will look for.