How to Use Classroom Routines to Build Literacy Skills and Engagement
Is there anything more inspirational than when you walk into a classroom of young children and they are ALL engaged and doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing? You look around thinking, “How in the world are these 5 year olds working away, seemingly enjoying their work?!” Then the inevitable reasons/excuses pop into your head about why your students aren’t this engaged, be it Michael’s behaviour challenges, the number of students in your class or the fact you’re the Special Education teacher. Well my friend, you too can have one of these classrooms, but first you need to get one thing down pat: predictable and consistent routines and expectations.
A simple concept, yet one of the most underrated and underutilised strategies in education. I might be a bit obsessed with them, but what it comes down to is this. To thrive, children need a safe and predictable environment. When students know both what to expect from their school day and what is expected of them, they are able to focus on what really matters… learning. On the other hand, we teachers can focus on teaching rather than telling Brittney that she can find the pencils over there *as we gesture towards the bench* for the 50th time. Not to mention, it is a total time sucker to not have these routines in place.
There are multiple reasons why classroom routines and expectations are the best but today I want to convince you that routines can be the secret to some amazing literacy development. By capitalising on all of the goodness that routines offer us in addition to the effectiveness of repetition for skill development, you will be surprised at how much your students will grow after integrating some of the following routines into your day.
1. Morning Message
If I could scream from the rooftops about how much I love Morning Messages, I would. There is so much you can do with them, from sight word recognition, to fluency and building confidence with reading. They are also a great opportunity to give your students an overview and any special activities happening during the day. I have both printed these on the whiteboard and projected them with Boardmaker text depending on the needs of my students. It is an easy, non-threatening way to expose your students to meaningful print daily- especially for your “non-readers”. By using a familiar format each day, all students can chorally read along with you building their confidence as readers.
2. Morning Chat
In Early Education and Special Education in particular, oral language development is a huge focus. Be it vocabulary development, responding to who/what/where questions, confidence building or developing conversational skills, the Morning Chat is a great way to develop oral language. By dedicating time each morning for students to converse with one another and share information about themselves, you are building their confidence and also building a strong foundation for a community where the students feel honoured. A few months later, you will be amazed watching students who initially chose to pass, asking their peers questions and sharing all the exciting things they did the evening before.
3. Engaging Books on Chairs — Aiding Transitions
Transitions are hard. Reading is hard. Why on earth would I ever suggest putting these two things together!? Well, firstly because of the benefits of routines stated above and because one of the first things you should focus on when teaching struggling readers is engagement. For your students to become readers, they need to WANT to read and this becomes increasingly difficult with each year that a student has negative associations with reading. As a child feels less and less like they “can read”, picking up a book becomes a pretty stressful experience. So, each year before I expect a child to read to me, we first figure out what they love. We look through Scholastic book orders, talk about favourite movies, TV shows and games, see what animals/interests or topics they have then we source these books (*if your students are non-verbal than you can talk to the parents, previous teachers, give them choices, etc). The words and reading levels are not the focus here- rather it is to show children that all the things they love can be enjoyed in a book. Books are cool! Reading is fun! When the books arrive, each students chooses their special book and this book will be waiting for them on their chair as they transition into the classroom. I usually set a timer and they need to look quietly through their book for that amount of time without any other additional expectations. This routine makes differentiation easy, allows students time to enjoy and experience books in a non-threatening way and as the students get more comfortable and confident you can add in additional expectations- up to you J
The opportunities to integrate literacy in routines are endless: phonemic awareness games during transitions, word wall games when you have an extra few minutes to kill. Every minute counts when we are trying to close the gap between our readers and non-readers so get creative! These are some of my favourite ways and have worked in both Early Years and Secondary classrooms- what literacy routines have you found effective?
