#159: The 5 routines that are non-negotiable for teachers wanting to reduce low-level disruptions and create a beautiful, calm, safe classroom environment.

In this episode, I’m giving you a front seat to the teaching assistants I’ve had in my classroom for years… except they’re not people. They’re systems. Predictable, powerful routines that quietly run the room so I can actually teach with FAR fewer low-level disruptions.

I’m walking you through the non-negotiable routines that have transformed my classroom from chaotic to calm, and how you can start implementing them immediately.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why routines are the purest form of proactive classroom management (you'll hear me nerd out about this A LOT)
• How a tight entry routine sets the tone before you say a word
• What makes a starter task actually reduce low-level disruption (and how to do it right)
• The early finisher routine that stops you from needing to be split into 10 different humans just to respond to the needs popping up
• How to fix the messy middle with visual transition slides
• Why exit tasks are more than reflection, they’re behaviour gold
• How “turn-it-in trays” help you triage learning without drowning in marking
• The exit routine that prevents the Black Friday stampede

🎉Looking for the link to my Routines Mega Bundle? You can find it here!

👂Have your ear on just ONE of the routines from today's episode? Check them out in my shop.

RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:

• Shop all resources
• Join The Behaviour Club
• My book! It’s Never Just About the Behaviour: A holistic approach to classroom behaviour management
• The Low-Level Behaviour Bootcamp
• Free guide: 'Chats that Create Change'

Connect with me:

• Follow on Instagram @the.unteachables
• Check out my website

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Why Routines Matter
• 1:05 The Case For Predictable Classrooms
• 2:32 Entry Routine That Sets The Tone
• 4:57 Starter Tasks That Bust Disruption
• 8:08 Early Finisher Systems That Work
• 13:28 Transition Slides For The Messy Middle
• 17:18 Exit Tasks With Purpose And Novelty
• 21:05 Triage With Turn‑It‑In Trays
• 23:36 Exit Routine: Row By Row We Go
• 27:15 Pick One Routine And Start

Transcript

Welcome & Why Routines Matter

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi there, teachers. Welcome to the Unteachables Podcast. I'm your host, Claire English, and I am just a fellow teacher, a toddler mama, and a big old behaviour nerd on a mission to demystify and simplify that little thing called classroom management. The way we've all been taught to manage behaviour and classroom manage has left us playing crap control, which is not something I subscribe to because we're not dancers, we're teachers. So listen in as I walk you through the game-changing strategies and I've seen the things that we can actually do in action in our classrooms that will allow you to lean into your beautiful values as a compassionate educator and feel empowered to run your room with a little more calm and dare I say it, a lot less chaos. I will see you in the episode. Hi friends, I am so excited for this episode today because I am an absolute, total, unashamedly huge routine nerd. Routines, like classroom routines, like exit routines, entry routines, all the routines, right? I could talk about them all day. And it's because they are truly like the purest form of classroom management magic. They are the biggest thing that we can do in our classroom to minimize the low-level behaviors. It's like the foundations that we need in place to then build on forefelt safety, for community. Like everything is built upon this heartbeat, these routines in our classroom. It makes our classroom calm, safe, supportive. Like it's just everything, right? And the icing on the cake is that when it comes to classroom management, they are tangible, they are doable for every single teacher. They're not something that relies on us having a certain personality type or us being really cool and likable or, you know, us being stricter or, you know, too soft. It does not matter who you are because if you've got these routines working in your classroom, you're going to have a far easier time of classroom management and really getting on top of those challenging behaviors. They aren't relying on us just sitting back and hoping things will change. They're so actionable and tangible and they will make changes in your classroom. If you are struggling with classroom management, if you're struggling with those little low-level behaviors, if you are struggling to get students into the room settled and learning and engaged, if you are struggling with the end of the lesson because students just want to run out, these are the routines that are going to actively improve the behaviors in your classroom. They're going to be the routines that will support students to engage positively in their learning. And they are the things that are going to help make your classroom management so much more effortless. They are the things that are going to make your life so much easier when you walk into that classroom. Routines are actually the things that are going to stop you from getting to school in the morning, going, oh my gosh, what am I doing today? Because things are going to be running so much easier. You'll kind of just have that consistency and that knowing. So these are the routines that I want to talk about today. I'll be talking through each one, telling you why I am absolutely obsessed with them and how you can start using them. So, entry routine, starter routine, transition routine for the messy middle, early finisher routines, exit routines, and a few break brain break routines. I'm not sure if I'll go into brain breaks today, but let's see. Those are like the core routines that are non-negotiables in my classroom because of how powerful they are and how it just reduces that immense stress and weight and pressure on my shoulders. I actually talk about them like they are teaching assistants in my room. I just have a bunch of different assistants in my room working for me to allow me the space and the time to teach, like to get back to teaching, which is so beautiful. So let's get started and go through a few of these routines. Why don't we? We will start with, of course, an entry routine because, right, smack bang at the start of the lesson. An entry routine will help you get students settled the second they enter the room. They will enter calmly. The entry routine will set the tone. Your students will be sitting down, getting themselves ready without uning to say anything, without chaos spilling in from the hallway. Without my entry routine, I would be screwed. So entry routines can be whatever you want it to be, whatever works for your context. I make sure students are lined up outside. I create that invisible barrier at the door, energetically sending them in, making sure I'm watching them sit down, getting settled. That is my entry routine. The second routine that is an absolute non-negotiable is thinking about what they are actually walking into. What is the thing that they're going to engage with the second they sit down? Because if we don't engage students with something from the moment they sit down, something else is going to get their attention and their engagement. We need to expect that of them from the second they walk in. Speaking of engaging students from the second they walk in, the next routine that is an absolute non-negotiable is a starter task. Because when done right, a solid, engaging starter task or do now or bell ring or whatever you want to call it, it will bust low-level disruption. It'll get students engaged in more ways than I could possibly speak about in one podcast episode, or really convey without showing you some starter tasks or like breaking them down properly. So there's more to every single one of these routines is much more nuanced and complex than I'm going to be able to go through in this podcast episode, obviously, but I'm I'm just giving you like the gist of it, right? The reason why they are so powerful is because the moment students walk in, they're going to know exactly what you expect. They're going to know exactly how to meet those expectations. It is predictable. It minimizes that wandering and chatting and delaying that, you know, students can do that can really derail those first five minutes. When done right, they engage students because it is like conceptual, it is real world, it is achievable for them. And for some of our students who really struggle with their learning, a starter task could actually be the only time during their day that they're like, you know what, I'm going to be able to nail this. I can be successful at this. And that is absolute gold for calming their amygdala, for, you know, making sure that they're walking in feeling regulated. It can just, you know, it can just be such gold for classroom management in so many ways. The next routine that I'm absolutely obsessed with is an early finisher routine. And in my opinion, this is probably one of the most important ones for keeping the lesson running smoothly and reinforcing expectations of students and the way they're engaging in tasks. Because some huge classroom management behavior challenges can arise when students are rushing through their work, they're finishing up early. You've got the other rest of the class trying to, you know, keep on track. Because that one student that's finished early is either going to be going, sweet, I don't have to do anything now. So maybe they get their phone out, maybe they have a chit chat to someone around them or trying to get somebody else off task, or maybe they're genuinely like, oh, I'm done, like what now? So they've got their hand up, they're waiting for you specifically to direct them. And this is why I speak about routines like their teaching assistants in the room. Because if you have a really solid early finisher routine, you have a process in place that is automated, that is hardwired for students. They know exactly what to do, how to do it. So you're reducing the need for your direct input. You have got that early finisher task, that early finisher routine there, because students can then get on with that rather than having to have your direct input. So if five students are finishing that their work early, you don't want to have to be going individually to each of those students to look at their work, to get them to reflect or to say, you know, not strong enough, not good enough, not, you know, you haven't used the allotted time, you've rushed through this, or maybe like, actually, yeah, you've done a good job. Like, how about I talk you through something else that you can do? So an early finisher routine is made up of things like these are the things that I use in my early finisher routine. You can take these ideas and run with them. The first thing is a self-check slip to really embed that self-assessment. My one is called Are You Really Finished? And it's just got a series of like checklists, like it's just a checklist that they tick off. So really tangible, really clear. And it's like, this is my best work, you know, I've gone through it, you know, just little things like that. And then at the bottom of the are you really finished slip that I have. So by the way, I have dozens of these. I just print them out, cut them up, put them in a folder, so or a little tray. So students know that when they're finished, they can go and get that. Or I can give it to them. So instead of standing there and talking to them for even a minute and taking my attention away from really trying to manage the rest of the class, I can just put that slip on their desk, go for gold. If it turns out that they are finished, then I can give them a menu of early finisher tasks. This really empowers students with autonomy, purposeful choice that allows them to choose what they want to do next. So maybe it is, and this is totally up to you in your context. Maybe it is that they get on with some homework from the class, maybe they do an extension task, maybe they, you know, help another student. It's totally up to you, the task, whatever it is. Uh, or one of those things that I have as an option is an early finisher task to start. So the third thing I have with my early finisher routine is a folder full of tasks that are really achievable, that have a lot of buy-in, that don't require any input or explicit teaching from me, that they can just go through that folder and choose something that they would like to work on as an extension activity or as something else that might be like some of them are extension activities in English, depending on the year group. Some of them are like mindfulness activities, some of them are journaling tasks, some of them are like really fun kind of creative thinking or creative writing tasks. So it totally depends on you, your context, your students, the age, the weather, you know, everything involved. But having a folder there of early finisher tasks that you can just, you know, get students to choose from is the difference between having 10 students that have finished early and having a chit-chat, or 10 students that have finished early but are now getting on with something else. It's also a really good deterrent because if you have students who are like, I'm just gonna rush through this work and then sit here and do nothing, if those students know that you're like, no, I expect you to be working for the entire 60 minutes of this lesson or however long your lesson is, they're more likely to then over time really understand that the time spent on their actual task is going to be better spent. They're gonna have to do work anyway, so they might as well put the best that they can into that. Routines will communicate your expectations more than whatever expectations lesson you have sitting on the wall, like an expectations list you have sitting on the wall. The next routine are transition routines. The messy middle is where things can really take a turn for the worst in a lesson. You can combat this by using really clear visual cues that clearly and nonverbally communicate expectations around you what you want students to be doing, where they should be going, when they should be ready, like really timed and explicit by replacing any verbal instruction or like supplementing it with that, like you know, supporting your verbal instruction with a really clear visual, your transition routine is going to greatly improve. It's going to reduce any overwhelm for you. A good sign that you need a good transition slide or a visual is if you're constantly saying things like, come on, everybody, like, you know, we have to get back to our seats. Okay, packing up. Come on, everyone, back to your own seats. Finish up your group work, finish up your discussions, come on, everybody, like let's go quicker. Like, if you're constantly having to manage your transitions verbally and you feel like a broken record doing that, you definitely need these visuals in your life. Uh, it just it also just boosts predictability. Any anytime you can like boost the predictability and the consistency and the clarity in your classroom, the better it's going to be for your classroom management. And it is going to make your transitions smoother and faster and calmer and much less headache inducing for you. So, for example, I have things that are like transition slides, and my transition slides are for every part of the lesson. So, a let's get started slide with one, two, three like steps. I don't you I don't ever do more than three steps. I just do three really clear steps. So pack up your belongings, move back to your seats, be ready in three minutes, and then I'll have a little timer up. I have other transitions that are like a little bit more like novelty, um, you know, bring a little bit more novelty and fun. And that helps as well get buy-in for students to actually listen to what I'm asking them to do. Things like beat the song. So I will put a song on that I have on my class playlist, and I'll put my transition slide up saying beat the song, be ready before the music stops. Um, I've got other ones that are beat the clock, so be back ready at your tables by the time the timer runs out, and then I'll have like a little visual timer up on the board. Um, I've got other things like a one-minute warning slide. So you have 60 seconds to finish and tidy, beat the timer. Um so I'll put one minute up there and they have to scramble to get that stuff done. Uh, other three steps like reset and refocus, solo mode activated. So, you know, silent, focused, and independent work coming up. So all of these visuals. So I just have all of them in one single PowerPoint slides. Um, and I can kind of or Google slides and I can copy and paste them into my lesson slides because I'll know when the transitions are coming up and when I'll need to use them, or I'll just keep them there and I can pick from, you know, I'll just pick from one when I need it. But just having transition slides in your back pocket is so incredible for you feeling less overwhelmed when it comes to that messy middle. The next routine that for me is an absolute non-negotiable is a solid exit task. And you might call it different things. You might call it an exit slip, an exit ticket, like whatever you call it. It is just that task that you do at the end of the lesson. I actually get a lot of questions around this for especially um subjects that are a little bit more practical. Because yes, you can still do it. So I had an art teacher reach out to me and speak about exit tasks the other day, and she's like, Oh, I just don't know, like it takes me so long to pack up, and then students are like packing up and cleaning up and then like rushing out the door, and I just don't know if it's worth my time. I'm telling you, for practical subjects, it is even more worth your time than anything else because you have to create, especially when students are expected to clean up, pack up, and leave the room in a nice way. Uh, for art, especially when there's so many resources that you need to have packed away and cleaned, it is amazing to just have like a bit of a barrier between the cleanup and then the actual like leaving of the room. I say barrier, but maybe the buffer, buffer's a better word for it. So if you know that you have to get students to pack up by a certain time, they have to sit down and they do a three-minute, it doesn't have to be long, a three-minute exit task every lesson that then transitions into your exit routine, which I'll talk about after the exit task. If you can create that buffer, you won't be scrambling before the next class comes in to get those extra paintbrushes away or, you know, all those little bits and pieces that you need to do because things are going to be like your students will know that they are expected to do that. The time will run out, and before they leave the lesson, they need to be handing in their exit ticket or exit slip. So that is such a great way in those practical subjects to do that. I know it does take a little bit more time, but just bring it back five minutes. Five minutes can change everything at the end of the lesson. Uh anyway, so exit task. That was a big tangent. A consistent exit task, like really hardwires the expectations at the end of the lesson that they are going to reflect, that they're going to be expected to complete something. And if you do an exit task well, it is fantastic for so many different things, like in terms of like quality teaching and learning, classroom management, getting students to reflect, getting student like flagging to you if they're really struggling with something. There's a whole variety of ways that you can do exit tasks and approach them. Um, but I love using my exit doors or an exit ticket, exit slip. What I want to say about exit tasks is they can be done really, really badly. And if they're done badly, and if they're just us saying in like 20 different ways every single day, what did you learn today? It's going to get really old really quick. It's really important to have novelty in a successful exit task, whether that be the form that you present those exit tasks in, like sometimes they're on a slip. The actual like question itself needs to be interesting and engaging, not just like three things you learned today. Uh, sometimes it might be like a post note, like put this post note as you're leaving the room on, you know, what color you felt today. Like it can be anything as long as it's not just the same thing every single day. But that can be a lot of mental load for us as teachers. I speak about this a lot. Like an exit task, even though it is fantastic, it does take a lot of mental power, like to kind of come up with a lot of them. So I do have resources there if that's something you want to implement. Um, but you know, exit tasks bring novelty, get students excited to reflect. Like they are just brilliant. The next route, I wasn't actually gonna talk about this routine, but I'm going to now. Because it kind of leads on from exit tasks, and I do get a lot of questions about this. Like, do you grade each one? Do you read them? Do you give feedback on them? No, I don't. If I was doing that for every single thing, I would have no time in the day left. One thing I do in order to kind of triage how students have gone and their reflections and all that kind of stuff, I use turn it in trace. Turn it in trace. I feel like I talk really quickly as an as an Aussie, and I hope that my listeners in other parts of the world can understand me. So feel free to send me a message and say, Claire, can you please just slow it down a little bit? I think there is a function on PowerPoint on podcasts where you can slow it down, but that is not um, that's not what you want to do. So turn it in trays. If I won't ever turn it in trays, I'd forget my own name. I wouldn't be able to organize anything. I'm the kind of person that has like towers of paper on my desk. I find organizing things very, very challenging. When students leave, I get students to place their books or their exit tickets or whatever they have that I want to have a look at in different turn-it-in trays. In these trays, I've got different um labels on them. So you can use it, depends on the language you want to use. But I use like I've got this green, almost there, yellow, and oh, I'm struggling a little bit with red. So students can just pop their slip in one of those trays and that triages things for me. So I can just have a quick look at the red ones. I might have a look at the few of the yellow ones, I might have a look at a few of the green ones. Sometimes I won't look at any of them, right? The most important thing is that they're reflecting. You don't have to read every single thing that your students produce. I'm just thinking about a secondary teacher. We have like 200 students, we have like 180 students in any given day. Like it just depends on the day, but like you need to really make sure you're being clever with your time and uh not feeling guilty about not reading absolutely everything. But these turn it in trays. At a glance, I'm able to see who's struggling and what needs following up with. If I see a student in that red tray all week, I'm like, okay, maybe it's time to kind of step in to read some more of their work, to have a chat to them. It's a really great way to kind of just take the pulse of the lesson. Another thing that's kind of on the same wavelength as a turn it in tray are like posters that I can have up on the wall that do the same thing. Just say if I give students an exit task and I get them to write it on a post-it note, I'll say your exit ticket is write this on a post-it note. And as you're leaving the room, place that post-it note where you think it should go on the red, on the yellow, or on the green. You can give them different color post notes to do the same thing. Totally up to you. But they're just really good ways of triaging like student works. It's just a great routine to get into. Also, if you're getting students to put their books in those trays, it means there's no books left behind. It means there's no books like, you know. Like on a desk piling up. It just gives you a little bit more control over that last bit of the lesson. Okay, final one. I'll try not to go off on too many tantas with this one. And this is my exit routine. Your exit routine will just swoop on in at the end there and make sure your room is clean, that your students are leaving in the calmest, safest, most orderly way possible. I used to feel like my exit routine, my all my the end of the lesson, I used to feel like I was a security guard standing at the door of a major shopping center on Black Friday morning where people are just like crowding around ready to go in. I've never actually been to a Black Friday sale, by the way, but this is how I envision it being. I remember being a kid watching it on the news, going, oh my gosh, are those people all right? Uh really scary. Like I don't, I don't like really big crowds, but I imagine it being like that, maybe in a smaller way. But standing by the door, you've got all of your students kind of like crowding around, just milling about. You can see that the bell's about to go. And as you get closer to the bell, your students edge forward more and more and more. And then the second that bell goes, they lick it. They are out of there. And that is exactly what this exit routine is trying to avoid happening. It is amazing. Like if it weren't for an exit routine like this, I'd be cleaning up after every single lesson because the students would just stampede out. The exit routine that I use, and you can use something different if that's your vibe, but I use one called row by row we go. So the first step is to pack up all of their belongings. You instruct them to do that, then get students to like check under their chairs, look for any rubbish, and then they'll be standing behind their chairs or sitting in their chairs or whatever it might be. Because when that bell goes, they're not moving. I will send them off row by row or table by table or student by student, depending on who's ready to go. Again, we're talking about buffers. Like this is a buffer because if it weren't for that little buffer, they would just be sprinting out. So row by row we go is a great routine. It's a routine because I do it every single lesson. It is consistent. It is something the students know exactly what's going to happen. And that is the most important thing. Um, and make sure you use some visuals for that. Like, especially when they're getting to learn the routine for the first time, have those three-step transition slides up so students know exactly what to expect. Have a little like note up on the board, first ready, first to go. Uh, it's just a great way to make sure that you're not then going around having to clean up all of the little scraps because the classroom environment, the students, the next students walk into actually sets the tone as well for how the classroom management will be in that next lesson. There's a huge knock-on effect for behavior when your classroom environment feels really disjointed. Well, that was my teaching assistant team. I hope you enjoyed hearing about them and learning a little bit about them. Uh, and I hope you enjoyed the last 25 minutes because I definitely, definitely did. Like I could sit with you with a coffee in my hand for hours and let that coffee go cold because I'd be too busy nattering away about routines because I love them and appreciate them and am such an advocate for them in every single way possible. Like these are the things that sprinkle, like I say a lot, sprinkling classroom management magic. Like these are the things that do just that. These are our best, most tangible, most actionable ways to get on top of the challenging behaviors in our classroom when we're consistent, when things are predictable, when there are clear expectations set and they're done so in this beautiful, like way that is supportive of our students, every single student, then like, why wouldn't we do this? You know, things really do just work when we have these going. But speaking about work, they are a lot of work to put together. So all of the things that I have described, you might be thinking, oh, there's a lot of resources here that I need to be considering. If you are really like all in and you want to make routines something that is an everyday consistent, like golden classroom management thing that you're doing, then I do have an epic routines bundle that you can grab. Uh, it has everything that I've discussed. It has every single, like this bundle you will be using every single day of your teaching career for the rest of your teaching career, like every single day. It is so like it's the cornerstone for so much of your classroom management. If you want to grab those resources all together and it will save you not just hours of prep time, but it will save you literal, like we it's taken me months to put together these resources in the way that I have that's suitable for so many teachers, so many students that are engaging, super amounts of novelty, like the whole shebang. You will find these inside of my epic routines bundle. I will drop the link to that in the show notes, uh, or you'll find it inside of the behavior club if you're one of my behavior clubbers, but I'm sure you know that because I bang on about them inside of the behavior club all the time as well. Okay, well, I'll pop the link there if you want to grab it. Uh, but just give it a go. Like, choose one of those routines. Think about like what you're struggling with in your classroom. Are you struggling with the start? Like, are you struggling with getting students getting in the classroom quietly and calmly and getting their bums on seats? Are you struggling with the transitions and the messy middle? Are you struggling with constantly having to like circulate around the class to all of the students who are finishing early and you're finding that you're not able to support the students who are still going on with their tasks? Are you struggling with the exit? Like, do you feel like I did where I feel like I'm kind of like, you know, holding the door on a Black Friday sale? Just focus on the one thing that's like your biggest struggle at the moment and put a routine in place. Like just put something together, be consistent, make it really predictable and explicit for students and see how things change. Because I would put a bet on that if you do that, then you will see some kind of improvement quite quickly. And that's super empowering after being told just to build a relationship and just to not take things personally for our whole careers. When we can find some tangible things that actually work, it makes us feel friggin' invincible in the classroom. I'm gonna end it there because as I said, I could talk about this for hours and hours and hours. But go and sprinkle that classroom management magic into everything you do, lovely teachers. And I will see you in the same place at the same time next week. Bye for now.