heart of heartlands lessons

Do you sit on the same seat on the bus every day? Do you use the same mug for your tea? Do you have other routines which make you just a little bit happier? On the big screen, routine doesn’t make great plotlines (with notable exceptions like Groundhog Day and Girl on the train ). However in the classroom and around school routine can be powerful, exciting and liberating.

Human brains have to process a huge amount of information at once and routines can help put the energy in the right place. In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman describes two systems of thinking. System one (thinking fast) is unconscious, intuitive and effort free and system two (thinking slow) is conscious, uses reasoning and this is what we think we are using all the time but really we are using the first. There are some great examples he gives of experiments that show how our minds unconsciously fill in the gaps. Have a look at these examples including the invisible gorilla experiment. By using classroom routines we can allow children space to to think about the content of the material so they can use their brain power on the learning itself.

One example from the maths department at Heartlands is to have Year 7 students complete exit tickets at the end of every lesson. The tickets look the same but the problems are always different. Teachers mark the exit ticket with a red, amber or green bingo pen. The next lesson their exit ticket is returned and so their ‘Do Now’ activity is based at the level they are at. If their dot is red the ‘Do Now’ includes an example to copy and another to try. Green is an extension task. Keeping the routine the same each lesson means the thinking time goes on the problem not the task.

Doug Lemov’s observations of great teachers in schools that were closing the achievement gap are put together in his book, Teach Like a Champion. One of the techniques he noted was the routine of a DO NOW at the start of every lesson. The routine is the same. They work best when the format is the same, every lesson with only the content being different. Requiring no explanation means the students are self sufficient and focus on the learning not the rules for the activity. A Do Now should take no more than five minutes and require a written output so that students are held accountable.

Routines applied across the whole school can be even more powerful yet there is a natural tension between teachers being free thinking, creative people and having to follow routines. Rightly they question ‘Do I really need to follow this routine?’. But in this case I believe that everyone doing the same thing is better than everyone doing what they think is the best thing. The power of a whole school routine is that it supports all staff in holding students to account. If every child knows that they are expected to have 9 key pieces of equipment, that they follow the class entry routine and that homework has to be done and handed in on time then students expect it and they expect the follow up. One school routine that has been powerful at Heartlands is using what we call Focused Improvement Time or FIT. This is where time is planned into schemes of work and lessons for students to use green pen to correct, improve and redraft work. When this happens in every class it is much easier for every teacher to expect these improvements.

Students from lower income backgrounds often benefit most from structure and routine. Michael Wilshaw when he was head of Mossbourne Academy in Hackney put it this way ‘ A lot of our children come from unstructured, chaotic backgrounds; we need to build more structure into their lives, not less.’ Routine is there to create structure so young people can really think about the difficult stuff.

From Pythagorus and Picasso to Pankhurst and particles, routines in class and across the school are key to empowering young people to learn.