Technique 47: Threshold and strong start - Procedures and routines

Teach like a champion 3.0: 63 techniques that put students on the path to college - Lemov Doug 2021

Technique 47: Threshold and strong start
Procedures and routines

I wish everyone could have seen Sam DeLuke and Meghan Hurley's second-grade classroom at Troy Prep Elementary School on the day I visited recently. When I first walked in, I found Sam sitting in one corner, listening in on five students discussing a chapter book. As I inched closer, I overheard students making sophisticated statements like “I think you missed one piece of evidence, Zariah” and “I agree with David's point and want to develop it” (see technique 44, Habits of Discussion). In another corner, Meghan read a book about ants aloud to ten students who hung on every word. In the center of the room, six students sat engrossed in the pages of their independent reading, while another group had hunkered down to draft paragraphs explaining the theme of a story they had read.

A few minutes later, on Sam's cue, one of the groups from the center put their things away, stood, and walked quietly to Meghan's corner. Others, who did not transition, kept working away. Later, with a subtle gesture and without ever interrupting her instruction, she prompted a student to distribute books to peers who didn't have them.

Students in Sam and Meghan's class worked in an atmosphere of independence and self-management. Executive function is usually described as including the following sorts of skills:

· Paying attention

· Organizing, planning, and prioritizing

· Starting tasks and staying focused on them to completion

· Understanding different points of view

· Regulating emotions

· Self-monitoring (keeping track of what you're doing)

Students paced themselves and managed their own time. They listened carefully and drew out the best from their classmates when they worked together. The room seemed to run itself.

Paradoxically, the autonomy and self-management that were so much a part of the student experience were the products of structure and planning; students had made habits of a series of procedures Sam and Meghan had designed—how to work at your desk; how to manage materials; how to move from place to place in the room; how to ask for help if you were confused and the teacher was busy teaching others—and it was this very structure and planning, ironically, that allowed for greater autonomy. The moments when a brief reminder from Sam initiated a perfectly orchestrated transition were not in contrast to the moments when students worked at their desks with independence; they allowed them, fostered them, and made them productive.

Sam and Meghan had invested heavily in their procedures, which provide students with explicit guidance on how to execute recurring tasks such as working independently, transitioning between small groups, and answering questions in class. During the first few weeks of the year, they relied on constant practice to reinforce expectations. If you'd seen them then, you might not have understood where it was all leading—Why all the structure? Why all the “just so” with every little piece? Why so much focus on the process for moving from place to place or participating in discussion? But each of those “just so” pieces took its place within a system, a network of procedures that allowed Sam and Meghan to teach students habits that ultimately led to more independence. Over time, these procedures became automatic, or routine—students could, for the most part, execute them on their own. From that point, Sam and Meghan could afford to give their students autonomy because students knew how to manage it productively and because teachers could initiate it, adjust it, or correct it with a single word or gesture.

This is an idea that is not unique to the classroom. Classroom procedures and routines like Sam and Meghan's represent essentially the intentional internalization of shared classroom habits.

And habits, it is worth noting, have a profound influence on our lives. They become keystones. You develop a healthy positive habit in your life like reading or working out and it's more likely to result in your developing others. “Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change,” Charles Duhigg writes in The Power of Habit. This sort of behavior looks like self-discipline—well, it is self-discipline, but self-discipline made easy. Productive habits make it easy to be productive. And this is important for students because studies find that self-discipline predicts academic performance “more robustly than … IQ,” Duhigg writes, and has a “bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.”

This chapter is the study of the way we develop shared positive habits in the classroom. That discussion can benefit from definitions of some key terms:

· Procedure: the design a teacher establishes for the way she and her students will efficiently and productively execute a recurring task or action in the classroom.

· System: a network of related procedures that help teachers accomplish end goals: help students maintain an organized binder, manage behavior, move materials, participate successfully in a discussion, and so on.

· Routine: a procedure or system that has become automatic, which students do either without much oversight, without intentional cognition (in other words, as a habit), and/or of their own volition and without teacher prompting (for example, note-taking while reading).

In the video Nikki Bowen: Stand Up, originally published in the book Great Habits, Great Readers by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo, Aja Settles, and Juliana Worrell, you can see Nikki's impressive system for students switching literacy groups. Not only does it maximize time for learning by making transitions fast, but it ensures that students arrive at each station with minds focused and ready to learn. Within seconds they're off and running. Among other things, this is a great example of how the terms system, procedure, and routine intersect. Nikki's system for transitions is actually made up of a series of separate component procedures. Once students learned the procedures, practiced them, and linked them together smoothly as habit, they became a routine. Separating the system into a series of procedures allowed Nikki to break the learning process into chunks (in consideration of students' working memory) and to apply the chunks in other classroom systems as well. All of her classroom transitions start with “Learner's Position”—that is, students showing they are attentive and ready—and the process of walking pathways is similar no matter where a student is walking within the room.

Schematic illustration of a tree diagram depicting literacy rotations.

My goal in this chapter is to pull back the curtain a bit and reveal the ways in which teachers like Nikki, Sam, and Meghan use procedures and routines to create rigorous, joyful, and orderly classrooms that grant students real independence. At the beginning of the chapter we'll look specifically at two familiar and important routines that are linked to form a system for the beginning of class: Threshold and Strong Start. After that, we'll study Habits of Attention, which is a routine for basic social interactions by and among students during learning. But of course a great classroom has far more procedures and routines than that, so afterwards, we'll explore the “how” behind designing and installing procedures and routines so that you can set up students for success in your classroom and beyond.

That said, it's also important to note how many examples of procedures and routines are described elsewhere in this book. Doing so can also help us glimpse the range in types of systems you can include in your classroom.

There are three broad categories of Procedures and Routines:

1. Academic Routines: Help students complete tasks they engage in as part of the learning process. Elsewhere in the book you will find myriad examples of such routines. Turn and Talk is essentially a routine for peer-to-peer conversations. Habits of Discussion are a set of procedures for use and adaptation during larger discussions. Silent Solo is a routine for making independent writing happen smoothly and universally among students. FASE Reading is a tool for making a productive routine out of student oral reading. Show Me is a routine—or a group of routines—that allow you to check student work simply and easily. All of these live and die by the effectiveness of implementation. So, in the end, all your Means of ParticipationCold Call, Show Call, and Call and Response—work if they are predictable routines in which when you call on students, they expect you might do it, understand the spirit in which it's done, and know how to respond.

2. Procedural Routines: Help students manage materials and get from one place to another while maximizing efficiency. There are a dozen routines you could install to make the mundane logistics of the classroom work more smoothly: lining up at the doorway, passing out and collecting papers, moving to the carpet for little ones, getting out materials. In this chapter I'll discuss two such routines: Threshold and Strong Start for beginning class. They may seem mundane, but after reading about them I hope you will see their profound importance. But there are more elsewhere—All Hands, in Chapter Six, for example.

3. Cultural Routines: Help students express shared values, norms, and aspirations. Perhaps you noticed in Jessica Bracey's or Denarius Frazier's classroom how students praise each other for effort or quality thinking, either when the teacher suggests it or of their own volition (see also the video John Bogard: Go to IP). Perhaps you are aware of how some teachers socialize their students to “send magic” to a peer who is temporarily stuck while trying to answer a question. In place of calling out, they make a gesture that says: I support you; I know you'll get it. The first among these by far is Habits of Attention and its importance is captured in this photograph:

Photo depicts Omar, answering her question about the protagonist's motivation in the novel they're reading.

This is Jessica's student, Omar, answering her question about the protagonist's motivation in the novel they're reading. He's a tiny bit nervous at first. Does he have it right? Has he said it well? Is it safe to share? But he answers at length—he keeps going, giving more detail and opinion and gathering confidence. In part he does this because of the social routine you can see here: his peers looking at him and affirming that they are listening and that his words matter.

It's worth noting also that teachers' own routines are a critical part of a successful classroom. Chapter Two is really a study of preparation procedures that hopefully become routine. How you circulate and observe for data are other examples of critical teacher-facing routines.

A word about the collective power of routines before we push on: Let's say everyone in your class had their own routine for getting their materials out and could complete the process in a few seconds. Would it be just as good as a shared routine where everyone does it the same way? Better even? Everyone accomplishing the same task in the same handful of seconds, each by doing it their own way sounds a lot more compelling. Why, this is to say, do routines have to be collective?

The first reason is that it makes them easy to support and manage. It's a long shot that everyone could find their own way to do that same thing—you'd be unlikely to get the outcome you wanted—but even if they did you'd be hard-pressed to help a student who struggled without steps to guide him through, even with the understanding that there was a right way to do it. You'll need to make sure your notebook is in your desk every morning when you unpack as opposed to asking, Well where do you usually like to keep your notebook, in your backpack or in your desk? As the epically disorganized child who was the one least likely to figure out the right way in middle school, I can also tell you that I was among the least likely to take anyone's guidance on how to be more productive. I didn't get it and so I didn't see the wisdom of, and was resistant to, what people were trying to tell me.

And of course group productivity requires coordination. You can move from chair to desk any way you want when you're the only one in the room. When thirty people are doing it at the same time, the only way to avoid unnecessary collisions or negotiated settlements over who will transition first down this row or that column is to organize it.

A second reason for coordination is that clear procedures and routines are extremely effective at norm setting: “When we are uncertain of how to behave,” Tom Bennett writes, “we look to other people as a safe guide of what to do. This is called social proof, a term coined by Cialdini in 1984. By seeing what others do, we have ’proof’ that it's the right thing.” A clear norm not only encourages people to follow, but often gives them comfort. It reduces the anxiety many students feel that they might do the wrong thing and look foolish. As the video Nicole Warren: Keystone reveals, Nicole's class is full of routines her students know well. This helps her create a sense of flow and momentum that enhances motivation. There's an unbroken flow of energy. But notice also how happy her students are to know exactly what to do, to see others around them doing the same, and to join with them. To return to a point I made in Chapter Seven, Zaretta Hammond calls the brain “a social organ,” and notes that it “has a ’contact’ urge, a ’desire to be with other people.’” This is often reflected in the universality and power of singing—in every culture in the world, singing together is a way of becoming a part of a unified group collective, literally and symbolically. We join our voices—in worship or otherwise—and the emotions of doing so are surprisingly profound. Part of it is the music and part of it is the certainty of belonging created by the coordination. It can be overdone and misused, of course, but it's also profound and elemental. Tom Bennett writes of the psychological benefits of the “collective sensation of being part of a large group sharing goals and activities.”1 It reminds students that they belong. Far from being militaristic and soulless, managed properly, executed with a pinch of happiness or even joy, and invested with meaning by a teacher, shared routines are often comforting.

A third reason collective routines are powerful is that, ironically, they help us focus our cognition where it is more useful. Having a habit for how to write a midstream response to a novel—what I call Stop and Jot in the Everybody Writes section—sets students free to write more and better since their minds are on the book and not where to write and whether to use pencil or pen. Similarly, making a habit of doing something productive makes it easy to do and lets you save willpower and self-discipline for other things. This is in part a hidden story of schooling. Success relies on a lot of things but one of them is getting all your tasks and assignments completed, on time and whether or not you particularly feel like it that day. When scientists analyze people who appear to have the greatest amounts of self-discipline, James Clear writes, it turns out they are actually better at “structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control.”2 They have better habits and make productive behaviors automatic. They don't need to draw on self-discipline to take care of daily habits because their routines and habits do that. Advising individuals in how to change their lives for the better, Clear essentially describes a high-performing classroom with strong procedures and routines. “One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior… . Your culture sets your expectations for what is ’normal.’ Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want… . You'll rise together.”3

Classroom procedures and routines, in other words, which are really shared habits, carefully designed by a loving adult, are critical to almost every goal we seek in schools.

Technique 47: Threshold and strong start

People constantly read environments and take social cues from them, and this process starts within seconds of entering a space. Less than that, actually. We form many of our impressions and opinions almost instantaneously, Jonathan Haidt explains in The Righteous Mind, often creating logical explanations for our responses only later. Like so much of our behavior, this process is hidden from us—we are not aware that we do it, but we do it just the same. The “we” in this statement includes your students.

Their first impressions matter, not just on the first day of school, but every day, and so how class begins—and in fact how culture and expectations are communicated in the ambiguous and liminal time before class has begun—is critical in setting norms, communicating culture. How you choose to greet students when they cross the threshold of your doorway communicates to students what is likely to happen when they enter your classroom, and what people expect to happen is much more likely to come about. With culture, getting it right and keeping it right are much easier than fixing it once it goes wrong. Threshold ensures that you make a habit of getting it right at the start of each day.

Students' arrival in the classroom should result in their receiving the message that they belong; that their teacher is prepared and capable; and that as learners their time will be well spent. It's also important to offer a subtle reminder that expectations in your classroom are elevated over what they are in the hallway or any other space. What happens in your classroom is more important, and a subtle shift should happen when students enter, not unlike what the great majority of people do upon entering a church, mosque, or synagogue—they will drop their voices and change the tenor of their interactions to reflect the dignity of the space. Their actions say, What happens here is important. No one tells them to make this change. They read it in the cues offered by the environment and the way others around them act. A classroom is not a house of worship—we don't want a shift to the same culture you'd see there—what we want is a shift, a recognition that the students are entering a place of shared value and heightened importance.

With that in mind, watch the first moments in the classrooms of Sadie McCleary, Darren Hollingsworth, Trona Cenac, Steve Chiger, and Tamesha McGuire, all of which are different and yet in a way similar. Each communicates different cultures, but they communicate and reinforce culture clearly. They use different routines but signal that this place you are entering will be a productive learning space. We are watching teachers who are all culture shapers rather than culture takers.

Start with Darren Hollingsworth: Smart. Smart! How could you not start with Darren? We can't see him at the outset, but we can hear him greeting students in the hallway: “Look at this! Smart.4 Smart!” Describing his students generally and a few individuals, he says, “Super smart.” He's upbeat and irrepressible but also confident and absolutely clear in his mind on what is supposed to happen when students enter his room. He greets students by name, communicating that they are known and important, but as they enter there's a clear task to follow through on (“My group, go straight in. Equipment out, ladies and gents!”) and students follow along with clear expectations, setting the norm for a happy and productive start to class. This soon becomes routine. It's how class starts with Mr. Hollingsworth. Students will feel known and included and also expect to have their time well spent.

Note something that will become a theme. Darren is positioned at the point of entry where he can clearly see his room and also greet every student. There's no other way in, and this allows him to slow the flow into the room and if need be to remind students of elevated expectations. He does this, in fact, pausing the line briefly because it isn't tidy enough. He playfully calls it a rabble—it clearly isn't—but students fix their already productive behavior to make it even better. Joy, inclusion, and high expectations are successfully messaged.

In Sadie McCleary: Grab One of Each, Sadie is perhaps slightly less ebullient but no less warm, genuine, and gracious as she greets her students. There are little moments of dialogue—“Hi, N'Kaye. Nice to see you,” “Hi, Alexa,” and “I like your glasses”—and reminders about materials so everyone has what they need from the outset. “Grab one of each [there are two handouts by the door] and a calculator if you need one.” There are also minor reminders of elevated expectation: “Cell phones away, please,” she tells one student. Students take the Do Now from the basket, proceed to their desks, and start working. It's a topsy-turvy morning for Sadie because there are cameras recording the class and not everyone has signed a permission to be filmed, so during the Threshold she's also shuffling students around to put them in unfamiliar seats (with some out of view of the camera) but all of this goes remarkably smoothly because everyone knows what to do and because she appears at the door signaling organization and preparedness and expectation. Students feel seen and cared about but also get down to work quickly. The Threshold might seem like downtime, in other words, but it's not. One student lingers a little too long talking about something that's best dealt with later (“Let me come help you with that in a second,” Sadie says). This time is actually crucial in setting expectations. It's not downtime for Sadie.

Notice some of the similarities in Darren and Sadie's technique. They both stand in the doorway where they can control the flow of students into the room, even though Sadie's students arrive episodically and don't line up outside the door. She takes the opportunity to both set a warm, gracious tone and remind students in simple ways that when they enter the classroom the expectations are different, elevated—what we do here matters deeply. Great teachers often combine these minor resets and reminders with warm and gracious, “I see you” moments—“Love the new glasses,” “Good to see you,” “How'd the debate go?”—seizing on many opportunities to use students' names. All of this builds relationships by making students feel “known” (part of the safe, successful, and known recipe my colleague Dan Cotton framed).

Trona (Trona Cenac: It's Gonna Be Fine) is greeting her students at the beginning of the year. They've had various adventures and have much to tell her. There's excitement and good feeling, but she also channels this into the first tasks. The message is: It's great to see you; I care about you and also, we have a lot to do and here's how to get started. She's a little more explicit about the daily expectations because it's early in the year. Like Darren and Sadie, she's at the narrow point in the threshold so she can control the flow into the classroom. And Trona makes sure she can maintain her vision of the classroom as well as the hallway as students enter. You'll notice how much of the work she does outside the room. If you can do this, it's smart, because habits are powerful. It means that the classroom is your space and students never see it in any way other than as you wish it. Therefore the process of entering and shifting slightly in demeanor becomes a matter of habit.

Steve Chiger applies similar ideas (Steve Chiger: Knowing What to Do). He greets students warmly but simply by name and seems upbeat about the class, and even though students are very attentive, also pauses the process of entry ever so briefly because he “thought he heard something.” Afterwards you can see students productively engage in their entry routine. He's signaled expectations and elevated the importance of the space, and students react accordingly.

Tamesha McGuire shows a slightly different setting (Tamesha McGuire: Tuck Your Chair). She's already in the room chatting amiably and lovingly with her boys and getting ready for her lesson when the girls, who've been elsewhere, enter. She claps twice and shifts her tone to show that class has started now, and her girls know instantly that they've entered a space of elevated importance. She's actually not at the door, but it's a Threshold, nonetheless.

The themes thus far include greeting your students by standing in the physical threshold of the classroom when possible—astride the door, taking the opportunity to remind students where they are (they are with you now, and no matter what the expectations elsewhere, you will always expect their best), how you feel toward them (caring, warm, but also with a hint that strictness can emerge as needed), and what you will expect of them (excellence, scholarship, and effort). During this routine, each student who enters greets you, shakes your hand, looks you in the eye, and offers a civil and cordial greeting, and vice versa. It's a ritual of courtesy and caring.

You can use the greeting to engage students briefly and build rapport: “Loved your homework, David”; “Nice game last night, Shayna”; “Looking for great things from you today, Mr. Williams!”; “Your hair looks great, Shanice!” You won't have time to say something like this to every student, but you can pick a few each day, over time connecting with each student and reminding them all that you know them as individuals. You can also build rapport while reinforcing expectations for Threshold by warmly acknowledging students with strong greetings: “Nice strong shake, Jamal”; “I love the enthusiasm, Terry.”

You can also welcome students with a description of what's to come and a reminder of what's expected: “We have a quiz today. Better use that Do Now to get ready.” You should also use Threshold to set expectations by correcting weak handshakes, untidy attire, apathetic greetings, or poor eye contact. Fortunately, this is easy to do because Threshold has a built-in consequence. Get it wrong, and if necessary you go back and try it again.

When you stand at the doorway, position yourself to see both sides so that you can maintain visibility of students who have already entered your classroom as well as those you're greeting. Once they enter, narrate a bit of positive right to work”; “Good work, Jamila. Appreciate you getting that homework right out.” If you notice that several students in class are not meeting expectations, you can warmly remind them of what they should be doing: “Make sure those chairs are tucked in so that everyone can get by,” or “Remember, we enter with ’voices off.’”

If it's not possible for you to greet students at the door (either for school policy reasons or because you float to classrooms), invent another ritual to signify the start of something formal, as Tamesha does. What matters is that you use the power of ritual to help students see, from the moment they enter your classroom, that it is different from the other places they go.

For busy teachers, the time just after students have entered class—while they're walking in, getting seated, and hopefully working on a Do Now—can sometimes be a bit of an afterthought. Some use it to complete clerical tasks—stapling packets, organizing instructional materials, writing lesson objectives on the board, or briefly collecting their thoughts. In their eyes, the opening minutes of class are ideal for preparing for a lesson that won't begin until they start delivering new content.

Of course there are times when you have to grab a minute to attend to some task, but it's important to recognize that every lesson begins as soon as students walk through the door. Two minutes at this point counts just as much in terms of potential learning as two minutes during the heart of your lesson and, of course, you and your classroom norms are still communicating to students Here's what to do here; here's what to expect.

So it's worth being intentional about the start of class, planning a most efficient right way for students to enter the classroom, complete the Do Now, get their learning materials ready, and transition to the heart of the lesson—and then making a consistent habit of it for every student. When that happens, once it's a routine, it's a win-win situation. Students are productive, you're productive, and with everything moving with tidy efficiency you're actually more likely to get time to review your lesson, tidy the room, catch up with individual students, and just maybe have a sip of coffee.

Strong Start

Strong Start is about designing the sequence of events in the classroom from the moment students enter the room, presumably after your Threshold, until the heart of the lesson begins. It’s critical for three reasons:

1. It sets the tone for everything that comes after. Classroom culture is not static from day to day. It is shaped by the opening minutes of a lesson—whether you intentionally engineer them or not.

2. From a pacing perspective, a strong, energetic start to your lesson builds momentum. It socializes students to work with discipline, urgency, and efficiency as soon as they walk through the door. Get off to a slow start, and you could find yourself spending the rest of your lesson fighting to rebuild momentum you lost and may never win back.

3. Strong Start usually includes a Do Now, which sets the table for mastery by efficiently previewing or reviewing high-quality content students need to master. It builds the academic habits students will need to succeed.

If you stepped inside a highly successful classroom shortly after the bell rang, you would probably find that you could divide the routine students use to start the lesson into three parts: (1) from door to Do Now, (2) Do Now, and (3) review of the Do Now.

The first component of Strong Start comprises how students get from the door to their Do Now. Unlike Threshold, which immediately precedes students' entry into the room and focuses on setting behavioral norms and expectations, from the door to Do Now is about making a habit out of what's efficient, productive, and scholarly as students take their seats.

A typical arrangement might look something like this: as soon as students cross the threshold of the classroom door, they pick up a packet of materials from a table or counter just inside as Sadie McCleary does. In some cases, especially at the elementary grades, packets might already be at students' desks. You can see that Christine Torres has done this at the outset of her lesson in the video Christine Torres: Silently to Your Seats.

A bit of warm and appreciative affirmation like Christine's lets students know you value their efforts. “Thanks for getting right to work, James,” “Lindsay is already answering question number one on the Do Now,” and the like). Discipline your narration so that it's pithy and precise, and quietly reinforces industrious behavior. Once the opening procedures become routine, use narration with diminished frequency. The goal is to get to a point where you need to say very little—if anything—to set your door to Do Now routine in motion. When Christine offers her appreciation, comments are carefully spaced and there's lots of quiet think time. She wants to avoid making her affirmations feel mechanical—this can happen if there are too many and they sound repetitive—and wants to be sure to create a working environment where students can be productive and not have their thinking interrupted.

A couple of key points maximize the effectiveness of the door to Do Now:

· It's more efficient to have students pick up their packets from a table than it is for you to try to hand the packets to them at the door. The latter approach slows you down and forces you to multitask when your mind should be on setting expectations and building relationships.

· Students should know where to sit. Time spent milling around, looking for a seat, deciding where to sit, or talking about deciding where to sit (“Can I sit next to him? Will he think I'm flirting?”) is a waste of learning time and energy. Assign seats or allow students to sign up for regular seats.

· Whatever students need to do with homework (put it in a basket, place it on the front left corner of their desk, pass it to a proctor), they should do the same way every day without prompting. This lets you collect it seamlessly, and collecting it at the start of every class tacitly underscores its importance.

· Put your Do Now (the second part of this routine) in the same place every day: on the board, on an interactive handout, or in the packet. The objectives for the lesson, the agenda, and the homework for the coming evening should be on the board already, also in the same predictable place every day.

As part of Strong Start, establishing the routine of the Do Now is critical. A Do Now enables you to maximize instructional time, build industrious habits, and make use of a discrete block of time when your students can practice and thus sustain and build their proficiency with skills they've already mastered. This issue—making sure students don't lose through disuse what they'd once mastered—is one of the hidden challenges of teaching.

I discuss the details of an effective Do Now in technique 20.