How A Simple, First-Week-Of-School Classroom Procedure Can Inspire Excellence In Your Students

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. ~Colin Powell

Classroom procedures are critical to classroom management success. They save loads time and energy, reduce stress and misbehavior, and make your teaching life a lot easier.

The best part, though, is that when done in a certain way, they transfer excellence from the basic and routine…to the advanced and academic.

In other words, by requiring excellence from your students for everyday procedures, like lining up to leave your classroom, you’re ingraining habits that make them better students.

The opposite is also true.

If your line is noisy, pushy, and looks like Lombard Street, then you’ll struggle to manage your students during academic work as well.

A Culture of Excellence

Teaching fundamental classroom procedures, and then requiring your students to perform them as taught, is a great way to begin creating a culture of excellence in your classroom.

Lining up—for recess, lunch, dismissal, etc—is a good place to start because it’s simple, it needs to be done several times a day, and your students will take to it quickly. Also, once learned, other, more involved procedures will become easier to teach.

I recommend teaching your students how to line up during the first few days of school.

5 Simple Steps

Follow the five steps below, and your students will not only line up quickly, quietly, and without drama, but they’ll do everything else better too.

Step 1: Model what you want.

Few teachers actually show their students what they want. Good teaching, though, demands it. Start by sitting attentively at a student’s desk. Pretend you just heard the signal from the teacher to line up. Then simply line up at your door in the exact manner you wish from your students.

Step 2: Practice one student at a time.

Now choose a single student to model. Give your signal and observe closely as the student completes his or her walk to the door. Choose this first student wisely. Then select a few more to line up behind the leader.

Step 3: Model with a group.

Choose four or five students to line up with you, again on your signal. As you’re filing into a straight and comfortably spaced line, show them how to politely extend an arm and say, “After you,” as well as how to respond with a nod and a curt, “Thank you.”

Step 4: Practice one group at a time.

Pick a table group or a random four or five students to model lining up together, but without you. Again observe carefully, giving modest praise if they’re doing it correctly. If in any way it’s less than what you want, point out the error, and then have them to do it again.

Step 5: Practice with the entire class.

Give your signal and have the entire class line up as you watch from a distance. If it’s not perfect, then ask them to sit down and do it again. If you like what you see, then the lesson is over. As soon as they prove to you they can do it without reminders, there is no need to ask for another repetition.

Repeat Practice

The initial lesson should only take ten minutes or so. But it’s a good idea to revisit the procedure the next day—a quick five-minute refresher should be sufficient. And remember, repetition isn’t a bad word.

Do It Again

If at any time during the year you’re unhappy with how your students line up, ask them to sit back down, tell them plainly what they did wrong, and then have them do it again.

And if it makes them late for recess, so be it.

Simple Is Good

Good teachers don’t water down their curriculum. They don’t dumb down content. They don’t make school “easy” for their students.

But in all things they simplify.

When you break your lessons down to their most elemental parts, when you cut out the superfluous and make your instructions strikingly clear and doable, when you show your class exactly what you want and then let them practice and perfect their skills…

Students get it. School makes sense. Learning blossoms.

And excellence becomes a habit.

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