What are Instructional Routines?

Instructional Routines (IRs) are designed for interaction and invite all students to engage in the mathematics of each lesson. They provide opportunities for students to bring their personal experiences as well as their mathematical knowledge to problems and discussions. Instructional routines place value on the voices of students as they communicate their developing ideas, ask questions, justify their responses, and critique the reasoning of others.

A subset of these are the Mathematical Language Routines (MLRs), developed by the Stanford University UL/SCALE team, which are specifically designed to support English learners but benefit all students.