How to Teach Classroom Procedures – Part 2

Today we pick up at Step 4. If you need to review the previous steps please click here.

If you or your friends are parents, this idea would work at home too. So feel free to share this blog with anybody you know that has children at home that may benefit from this as well.

How to Teach Classroom Procedures

1. Define what procedures need to be taught
2. Brainstorm the steps of the procedure
3. Break the process down into as many steps as needed by asking yourself questions 
4. Answer the questions by thinking through how you want the procedure to go
5. Explain the importance of the procedure
6. Determine age-appropriate ways to teach the procedure–use the model, practice, review approach
7. Practice until you feel comfortable with students’ understanding of the procedure

Answer the questions by thinking through how you want the procedure to go

Step four is answering the questions you just came up with, and thinking through each part of the procedure. Using the lining up example again, I knew that I wanted them to put their materials away, push their chairs in, and I knew exactly how I wanted them to walk in the line. I wanted it to be something that was very smooth, no pushing, no shoving, no racing to the front, walking very calmly and in control on a certain path to line up only after being sure their materials were picked up properly and their chair was pushed in if they were sitting in their seats. 

**Side note– Most of the ideas I share with you are not completely original to me. That’s one of the things that good teachers do – They seek out advice and help from other teachers.
Blogs and social media have really made a huge impact in this area. It’s the whole reason I am writing this post (and probably why you are reading it!) – to share ideas to make teaching easier and more efficient. Teaching how to line up is one of my favorite procedures to teach because of Leslie at the blog Kindergarten Works. She has a great idea for teaching this particular topic that I used and just tweaked and made it my own, like we all do. We get the idea from someone, but then we make the necessary changes to make it work in our own classroom. And it just worked like a charm.

And so once I had defined for myself the exact steps I wanted them to follow, I had to think about how to teach it to the kids. And this is where Leslie’s idea came in. She uses a great analogy of the drive-thru. And the best thing about using the drive-thru example is that almost every kid has experienced this. Even for those beginning kindergartners I was teaching, most of them at some point had gone through a drive-thru somewhere to be able to have some background knowledge for what you’re talking about. 

Explain the importance of the procedure

Then what you need to do for step five, (and this is key for student buy-in)  is to explain the importance of the procedure, aka why do they need to know this? So, if I’m talking about lining up, I need to let them know that it’s important that they do it this way for safety reasons and so that we all can get to where we’re going in the most timely and efficient manner possible.

This same idea holds true at home. If you’re teaching a bedtime routine, you want to tell them that it’s important for them to understand this so that they don’t forget something and then have to get up, which would interrupt their sleep. Getting a good night’s sleep is so important for children to function well the next day.

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If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at michelle@yourteachingmentor.com or send me a DM on Instagram @yourteachingmentor.