Classroom routines, assuming they are reasonable and well thought out, can help students and teachers alike.

Today’s post begins a short series in which educators share those ones that work best in their classrooms and why.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources On The Value Of Classroom Routines.

Routines Need ‘to Go Beyond Compliance’

Melanie Desmuke-Battles is the founder of Scholars for the Soul: An Educational Solutions Firm LLC. She is an educational consultant, keynote speaker, and leadership coach specializing in culturally responsive teaching and instructional equity:

Routines should not just manage behavior—they should speak to the humanity of students and foster ownership, resilience, and wellness.

Routines as Foundations for Learning

Classroom routines are a vital part of building a classroom community that helps students self-regulate in ways that optimize learning and capacity building. One thing every educator must keep at the center is that students do not come into our classrooms as empty slates. They arrive as beautiful young souls full of experiences and knowledge, often called funds of knowledge. Centering this asset-based lens allows us to prioritize the value each student brings to the learning space—even if learning gaps need our attention.

The learning brain relies on a degree of predictability to feel safe, stabilizing the nervous system so that challenging content can be learned more naturally. Establishing classroom routines helps the brain settle, but if routines are centered only on the needs of the teacher and not the student, we risk creating a “you vs. them” environment where authority overshadows collaboration. While teachers hold authority, passive engagement and compliance diminish the value of co-creating spaces where student agency is amplified.

Agreements That Cultivate Safety and Belonging

One routine I always use with students is co-creating agreements that address our basic human needs for safety, belonging, and value. When students have a voice in the construction of their classroom, they are more invested in their capacity building and better able to take intentional ownership of their learning and growth. This aligns with how our brains and bodies thrive in spaces designed to honor the human learning experience.

Speaking to the Soul of Students

Another important routine I establish at the start of the year is speaking to the soul of my students. In addition to teaching them how the brain learns, I highlight the importance of their humanity and the value of prioritizing both individual and collective wellness—what I call “soul work.”

Soul work engages students’ identities in ways that counter deficit-based thinking and negative messaging they may have internalized from home, community, or prior school experiences. Teachers cannot assume students enter with confidence or competence in their ability to learn challenging material. Often, disengagement or disruption masks negative self-perceptions shaped by past failures or narratives that left students believing they were inadequate. Soul work reclaims that narrative and builds resilience.

Beyond Compliance: Toward Belonging and Agency

The goal of classroom routines is not only to ease the stress of teaching but also to establish an environment where students experience genuine belonging and connection to peers and adults. Routines that engage with students’ core human needs go beyond compliance; they cultivate cooperation, agency, and the development of self-regulation.

Without soul work, routines may succeed in enforcing order but fail to foster ownership and empowerment.

A Practical First Step for Teachers

Educators often ask how to put all this into practice. Here’s a simple three-step activity to launch routines that honor student voice and agency:

Step 1: Co-Create Agreements Ask students: “What do we need from each other to feel safe, respected, and able to learn?” Record their responses visibly and refine them together into 3–5 community agreements.

Step 2: Connect Agreements to Action Guide students to translate agreements into behaviors. For example, if an agreement is “respect each other,” students might suggest listening without interrupting or encouraging peers during challenges.

Step 3: Revisit and Reflect Revisit the agreements weekly. Allow students to share moments when agreements were upheld or challenged. This reflection keeps routines alive and positions students as co-owners of the classroom culture.

When routines are established this way, they not only create predictability and safety but also empower students to regulate themselves, support each other, and pursue excellence with a sense of purpose.

Routines Help ‘Students Feel Safe’

Mary Beth Nicklaus is a teacher and interventionist in Minnesota:

Classroom routines create engagement and well-being for both students and teachers. It is a framework that helps stabilize lesson plans and supports student learning. The predictability provides students with a sense of safety and gives rise to meaningful learning as much as it provides teachers with a solid structure to encompass creative and effective teaching. I like to use three principal types of routines in my classroom:

• Bell ringers at the beginning of class: When students sit down, the fun starts. We do a variety of activities including brainteasers, Wordles, riddles, and/or practice for what we are learning that day. When teaching reading-intervention classes, I may give them handwriting practice by providing journals to copy down brainteasers and different answers. (Research shows that practice of writing by hand primes the learning and academic skills’ areas of the brain.)

  Many times, different students shine in different areas, which gives them a sense of pride. This inspires other students to be brave about putting themselves out there to contribute answers. Bell ringers set the tone for light-hearted mood and an excitement for taking part in the rest of the class.
  

• Rotations: One of my most memorable school years was when I attended kindergarten. The use of rotations and the transitions from each rotation made each activity clear and compartmentalized. We had art station, “playing house” station, library station, and language station. We learned what was expected of us in each station, and that taught us how to regulate our behavior. When it was time to transition from one rotation to another, our teacher would play the notes “c, d, e” on the classroom piano, and it was a peaceful way for us to switch.

  Years later, my own reading classes involve practice in both reading and writing, explicit instruction, and independent reading. I have a different area for each activity. While I may not have an old clunky upright piano to signal the end of rotations, I do have a timer from YouTube that calmly brings students to the end of each time period. “Calmly” is an operative word here because my autistic and ADHD students have difficulty with sudden, jarring transitions.
  

• Procedures: I spend two weeks at the beginning of each school year on classroom procedures. Depending on the age of the students and the work, I have students practice procedures for most classroom activities. This is when we practice transitions, handling laptops, processes for rotations, entering and exiting the classroom, and how to complete exit activities.

  We even may work on such mundane things as going up to the tissue box and sharpening pencils. (As a first-year teacher, I learned the value of mundane procedures when students loudly sharpened pencils or snorted into tissues to get other students to laugh while I tried to teach.)

When we teach within the confines of predictability and student expectations, misbehavior is almost completely taken out of the equation. We can spend more time concentrating on making each student feel successful. Routines afford more of a family-type atmosphere where students feel safe and included.

‘Routines Give Students a Sense of Responsibility’

Laleh Ghotbi teaches all 4th grade academic subjects at Mountain View Elementary in Salt Lake City. She began her teaching career over 30 years ago, working with middle and high school students in Iran:

Classroom routines, including a clearly posted daily schedule, are essential for creating a successful and effective learning environment. Predictability and structure help all students thrive, especially those with behavior challenges or individualized education programs. Routines support teachers in staying on track and help students feel secure and prepared for what’s coming next.

To establish consistency, I revised a set of printable schedule strips that a generous colleague shared with me over eight years ago. I personalized them by adding relevant visuals and clear expectations for what each activity should look like. For example, for small-group time, the visual shows students sitting together, fully engaged. I also intentionally included images of diverse students to reflect and honor the rich cultural backgrounds of my own students, because representation matters, and I want every child to feel seen and valued.

I laminated the strips and added magnets to the back, so I can easily post them on the whiteboard at the beginning of the year, writing the corresponding times next to them. The schedule begins with breakfast in the classroom and ends with clean-up and dismissal. When there’s a special event like a guest speaker or field trip, I simply add a new strip with updated information.

Beyond the daily schedule, we have routines for nearly every part of the day: classroom jobs, recess procedures (such as when and how students may take out sports equipment), restroom and tissue breaks, pencil sharpening, and how we distribute certificates for completing online programs. These procedures help reduce unnecessary movement around the room, support classroom management, and save valuable instructional time.

To conclude, when students are familiar with routines, they become active participants in maintaining them, even reminding me what comes next if I forget. These routines give students a sense of responsibility and ownership, contributing to a calmer, more organized, and inclusive classroom environment. They also make it easier for substitute teachers or visitors to quickly understand what’s happening at any given time.

‘Routines Provide a Predictable Structure’

Lela Horne, Ph.D., has 25 years of teaching experience in a variety of subjects in K-8 grades. She is also a past president of Georgia TESOL:

Classroom routines are the repeatable procedures that students use to complete a task. These routines provide a predictable structure so that students know what to do and what to expect. Routines allow students to focus on the content and increase their time on task.

My top three routines involve classroom format, getting supplies, and leaving the room.

First, our daily agenda and lesson objectives are posted to communicate our goals. Next, if a student needs a pencil, then they need to be taught when it is appropriate (i.e., when they enter the classroom, after direct instruction, or when groups are engaged) to leave their seat and get what they need. Last, if a restroom pass is needed, then students raise two fingers, and I respond with a nod for permission to leave with the pass. However, if I need them to wait, then I respond by raising my index finger. These routines save time and do not interrupt the flow of instruction. That’s really the key to an effective routine. It allows students to focus on content and does not interfere with the flow of instruction.

In order to create your own classroom routines, think of how time is wasted in a classroom and then observe other teachers to determine how they address the issue. Perhaps you might think of the number of times different students ask the same question and then you can create a classroom routine to address the task.

Another method would be to review the research on this topic. John Hattie updates his comprehensive list of effective classroom-management strategies in Visible Learning: The Sequel. He uses a metric called effect size to measure the effectiveness of a strategy on student achievement.

For example, listing the learning goal has an effect size of .68, which means it will have a moderately high impact on student achievement. Teachers should strive to implement strategies that can make a difference in academic outcomes, behavior management, or aid a positive classroom culture. For more tips on classroom-management routines from prominent practitioners and researchers, read the works of Lemov, Marzano, or Wong.

Thanks to Melanie, Mary Beth, Laleh, and Lela for contributing their thoughts.

Responders today answered this question:

What is the value of classroom routines, and which ones do you use with your students?

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

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