3 Predictable routines

Predictable routines: A set of actions that students are expected to do everyday in the same sequence, with similar utensils, and in similar locations. If you do the same every single day, the student will start the day with the positive feeling that they were able to succeed at starting the day. If the first day you held the backpack for them, and the second day probably did too, the third day they may know where to place their backpacks, and where to take a seat. See (Avery, & Ehrlich, 2011).

The benefits of explicit routines

• Help learners know what’s going on, just because everyday happens the same thing
• Relieve the student from having to understand directions during transitions
• Provide a sense of security and confidence on what’s expected from them
• Help with repetition of things you want students to memorize
• Help newcomers learn words to greet and say goodbye, as well as manners in the American culture
• Make transitions smoother for all children, but especially for those who may take longer while having to process directions in a different language

The following are ideas that I have developed from my experience in using routines in my Spanish classroom to support diversity at a College, starting 2021.

Routine sequence

In my experience, regardless of which routines to choose it’s a good idea to think about three common stages in routine sequence:

Introductory routines:

Routines that happen right at the beginning of a new activity.

• Signal beginning of school day: check-in, greeting, hugging each other, unpacking, eating breakfast, brief song, circle time, dice game.
• Signal beginning of new course block: teacher greets and claps, choir repetition of class material, rearrangement of chairs for lab…
• Signal beginning of an after-school activity: check-in, greeting, unpacking, getting water bottles, standing in line.

Core routines:

Routines that lead to the acquisition of new knowledge. There are usually two big parts of core routines, which you may microsegment in others in your classroom:

• Presentation of the material: This is when the teacher provides new information or model a new skill with the student. Ways to present the material include lecture, video, songs, theater performance, read alouds, among others. Students are most commonly silent during the presentation of the material.
• Students’ practice: This is when the students perform their own work with the new information, or practice the new skill. Ways for students to practice include drawing, writing, solving problems, building something, doing a craft, socializing around a new concept, performing a game, among others.

Finalization routines:

Routines that signal the end of a specific activity.

• Signal the end of a class: Good-bye song, students submit work, clean up sites, pick up toys, or get out of the classroom if applicable.
• Signal the end of a school day: Pack water bottles, load backpack, say good bye, stand in line, parent’s pick up.

Transitional routines

Transitional routines are brief actions that happen in between routines to signal a change of activity. It’s never easy for any person to interrupt the flow of their minds. The mind needs to start slowing down gradually in order to allow itself for a closure. Bilinguals may need slower transitions because their minds are always dealing with more information coming from two cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Before moving to closure routines, you should announce your kids around five minutes prior to closure that the activity is about to end, so they can make choices with respect to their unfinished work. Some will decide to do two fast final fast strokes on their drawings, others may decide not to start that new page of exercises, others may remain looking at the work to think what they will do next, others pack two colors on their pockets to finish later.

In my Spanish classes, I transition my routine by playing a song on the computer. Once the song starts playing, students know that there will be a change in the activity. Some students accelerate their note-taking, others write a question mark to remind themselves to ask me something, others take a brief look at their cell-phones. At the very end of finalization routines, I usually do a loud clapping while saying “Good job” or “You need to review this” or some reminder about the homework. Students know after my clapping that they are allowed to go.

Carreiro, & Townsend (1987) compile papers about routines in education focusing on children with disabilities. It is important to take into account that neurotypical bilingual children may benefit from predictable routines for similar or different reasons than children with certain disability. Students with no disability or bilingual backgrounds still benefit from predictable routines. Teachers also benefit from predictable routines since this saves energy in directing students toward a different activity.

Sa’ah Naaghái Bik’eh Hózhóón

The usage of predictable routines may follow four stages for indigenous students: Nitsáhákees (Thinking), Nahat’á (Planning), Iiná (Living) and Sihasin (Assuring) (Benally, 1994; Diaz-Collazos, 2024, Fowler, 2022; Nez, 2018; Secatero, 2009). This is a way to organize life, seasons, geography, physical and mental healing, rituals, and social interaction in the Diné culture. I have used it to organize the time/space of my College courses. Each class follows a four quadrant model, which mirrors the four worlds of creation (see my summary here):

• Nitsáhákees (Thinking): The first part of the class is the lecture, where the teacher talks and the students listen. The teacher provides silent times for students to take notes. This is the first world, which is dark, where the late dreaming leads to early thinking of the day. The best thoughts of your day happening after waking up out of a good and smooth night sleep, when everything is still black. Nothing seem to happen here, and the moment seems empty, but everything is outlined at this moment.
• Nahat’á (Planning): Students receive a short exercise to plan for an active activity. This is time for passive activity. This is the second world, where everything starts showing up as possibility. At this time the sky turns blue. During your waking daytime, this is when you rehearse your to-do list, review the words you need memorized, recognize your potential in front of the mirror, clean up your space in way that that prepares for a busy day.  The insect people found nothing here. Nothing seems to happen here, and the moment seems empty, but everything is outlined and taking closer shape to its actions at this moment.
• Iiná (Living): Students perform a task, such as laboratory experiment, direct observation of nature, a math problem, conversational role play, field trip, a short theater performance, among any active experiential activity. This is the moment for active activity, when the light intensifies its yellowish shade, when there’s no clouds, which is most of the time in astonishing Southwest, even during winter time. Challenges arise and you take joy in the hard work as you see it in the largest context of the sa’ad naaghai bikeh hozhon.
• Sihasin (Assuring): Students receive feedback, are encouraged to keep trying hard, and are reminded of the homework. This is when the sky turns red during sunset. It’s time to let go of your activities and reflect on what went well and what went wrong. This is when the creation cycle gets completed as the first man and first woman created sun and stars, and enabled people to have children. If anything went wrong, tomorrow there will be a new cycle to complete. Then you move into an axis stage that links this cycle to a new cycle.

This four quadrant model fosters inclusion of indigenous students in a majoritarian Anglo-American institution, and helps all students be successful because it provides a predictable routine. I let students handle the Nitsáhákees and Nahat’á quadrants with some flexibility because the learners should be able to enact their own learning styles during the thinking and planning. While taking some notes is required for all students, some of them hold a brief discussion with their partners, others write down every detail from the board, others engage in random drawing, and those who finish the thinking and planning earlier are allowed to take a break. In my Spanish classroom, iiná involves active conversation, a role play game, and then a brief dancing and singing. At the end, I remind students of the homework and provide some general feedback about their performance. After careful thinking and planning, oral performance flows smoothly with little need for corrective feedback.

I used a four quadrant organization in four parts, each divided in three chapters, with a part title hidden to facilitate reading. At the end, forcing my ideas into 12 chapters resulted in a manageable way to present ideas and avoid unnecessary wording. The four quadrant model mirrors the four worlds of creation as outlined in Paul Zolbrod and summarized here.

Bibliography:

This bibliography guide is a work in progress. Feel free to email me at adiazcoll@gmail.com if you find any reference that requires citation.

Avery, P. G., & Ehrlich, T. (2011). 50 strategies for teaching English language learners (4th ed.). Pearson.

Benally, H. J. (1994). Diné Philosophy of Learning and Pedagogy. Journal of Diné Education, 12(1), 23-31.

Brisk, M., & Harrington, M. M. (2010). Literacy and bilingualism: A handbook for all teachers. Routledge. Pages 173-186.

Carreiro, P., & Townsend, S. (1987). Better ways to build educational routines. INSTITUTION Alberta Univ., Edmonton. Dept. of Educational Psychology. REPORT NO ISBN-0-88864-936-3 PUB DATE 88, 108.

Diaz-Collazos, A. M. (2024). The Post-Pandemic Achievement Gap in Indigenous Students in a First-Semester Mixed-Level Language Course. Critical Questions in Education, 15(2), 98-116. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1428980.pdf

Diné College. (n.d.). Educational Philosophy: Sa’ah Naaghai Bik’eh Hozhoo. Retrieved from https://www.dinecollege.edu/about_dc/educational-philosophy/

Fink, J., & Siedentop, D. (1989). The Development of Routines, Rules, and Expectations at the Start of the School Year. Journal of Teaching in physical Education, 8(3).

Fowler, H. (2022). Multicultural education: Teaching culturally relevant mathematics education. in Vallejo, P., & Werito, V. (Eds.). (2022). Transforming Diné Education: Innovations in Pedagogy and Practice (pp. 17-30). University of Arizona Press.

Nez, V. (2018). DinÉ epistemology: Sa’ah naaghÁi bik’eh hÓzhÓÓn teachings (Doctoral dissertation). University of New Mexico.

Secatero, S. L. (2009). Beneath our sacred minds, hands and hearts: Stories of persistence and success among American Indian graduate and professional students. The University of New Mexico. https://www.proquest.com/openview/3df71810a896fa1953e24ff6404fc73a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750

Zolbrod, P. G. (1984). Diné Bahane’: The Navajo Creation Story. UNM Press.