Routines

Routines (any classroom-related activity that is used frequently and facilitates the act of learning) are essential to developing a learning environment that is predictable, efficient, and preventative of problematic behaviors. Well-designed and maintained procedures (and routines) can literally save dozens of hours of instructional time over the course of a school year. Establishing, teaching, and reinforcing procedures is also an important component of a trauma-informed classroom, as predictability is important in helping students suffering from adverse childhood experiences to feel safe and to help with regulation of the limbic system. Effective teaching of routines includes the creation of visual representations of those routines, created for the use of students, and referred to when routines are enacted.