Routines: Teach All, Reach Each
Routines: Teach All, Reach Each
Routines make up a large part of our lives. The morning scramble. The drive to work. And making dinner. We run so many of them that it’s easy to forget how many we actually use every day.
A Routine Doesn’t Replace Expertise. It Protects It.
Just like in our home lives, routines are essential in professional roles. For example, surgeons train for years on procedures they'll go on to perform hundreds, even thousands, of times. You'd think that kind of expertise would make any kind of written script or routine unnecessary. And yet, it doesn't. When surgeons use a checklist during surgery, post-operative infections dropped by 35% and post-surgery deaths dropped by close to half (Gawande, 2009). The checklist doesn't replace the surgeon's expertise. It protects it, meaning that not every decision has to be made from scratch and in the moment. The ones that can be decided in advance are simply followed, freeing the surgeon's attention for the decisions that genuinely require it. And, it ensures that those evidence-based moves are followed each and every time, regardless of the surgeon, the patient, and the operating room.
Routines in Reading Lessons
The teaching profession is similar. In a single reading lesson, a teacher is making countless small decisions. Most of them can be planned ahead of time (which skill to teach, examples to use, error correction procedure to follow). Others, can only be made in the moment, such as when to implement an error correction routine, and when a group is ready to move to the next part of a lesson.
What a Good Routine Accomplishes
So the what and the how, the skill being taught and the way it's being taught, belong in the routine. Build them into a clear, repeatable path once, and there's no need to reinvent them every time a teacher plans a lesson.
These routines have significant benefits, including:
Language is controlled. Only essential language is included.
Every child is guaranteed the evidence-based instructional practices
New teachers are immediately supported (while every teacher benefits from the routines)
Students don’t have to relearn how to learn each day. The format is familiar, so their attention is able to focus on the content.
And, the teacher's attention can go toward monitoring student responses during instruction and identifying next step instructional moves.
Objections to Routines
Another interesting thing about surgeons is that many reported they didn’t need checklists, with 20% reporting they thought the checklist hadn’t improved care and felt their professionalism was being questioned with the routine (Gawande, 2009). However, when asked if they were having a surgery, if they’d want the surgeon to use a checklist, 93% said yes. Viewing checklists, scripts, and routines as the professional supports they are, rather than considering them as criticisms of our professionalism, can both empower us as educators and better accelerate student learning.
Considerations
Routines for Reading Results provides teachers with both the properties behind successfully-designed routines, as well as many routines across early reading skills. They're designed to map onto the curricular materials teachers are already using to improve reading outcomes when teachers have groups of students, across any tier, that aren’t making enough reading growth.
Checklists, scripts, and routines aren’t a critique of teachers’ professionalism. They’re the support structure that ensures every student benefits from that expertise in every lesson, every day.
Reference:
Gawande, A. (2009). The checklist manifesto. Metropolitan Books
