Back To School Challenge: Routines and Structures

Building a 21st Century Culture is more than just teaching the technology, it requires reflection on the behind the scenes routines and structures of a classroom. Developing these routines and structures is the framing for your house. When you are teaching throughout the year you will forget about these routines, but without them we are unable to build our house.

Why make this investment?

When integrating technology there is a lot of room for wasted time, distraction and chaos. If we want technology to enhance the learning, not distract from it, we need to establish routines and structures for success. Consistency and practice on the routines and structures created is critical to making technology easily integrated into the classroom. If it takes 30 minutes to get out devices, you will be less inclined to pull out devices when those perfect opportunities for technology integration arise. 

Questions to ask yourself?

Where/How will my devices be stored and organized? How will students get out the devices quickly and quietly? How will my students return the devices? How will I get my students attention when they are using devices? What basic agreements do we need to have about the care and use of the devices? How will I store and make accessible peripherals, such as headphones? What will be the ways in which we trouble shoot issues in our classroom? What rules will we have about how students will support one another?

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Challenge: Take a few minutes to answer the questions above and build your frame for technology integration. Being intentional about these little decisions will give you the freedom later to focus on THINKING!
More Information about How you Can teach this? What it will look like? and Follow Up? for Routines and Structures

Back To School Challenge: Focus on your 21st Century Classroom Culture

It is that time of year when teachers are diligently working to set up the perfect learning environment for their students. They are thinking about those first learning activities and long term units, classroom seating, parent communication, making copies and so much more. It is also the perfect time to REMEMBER what is most important; creating CLASSROOM CULTURES where thinking is VALUED, VISIBLE  and ACTIVELY PROMOTED. 

I thought I would offer a break from the name tag writing and the class list posting (you know you are going to get a new student anyway) and ask two questions…

  1. How can we INVEST in developing a 21st Century Culture?
  2. What MESSAGES are we sending to our students about what we VALUE?

For the next 8 days,  I will share thoughts through the lens of the 8 Cultural Forces from Ron Ritchhart’s book Intellectual Character. Hopefully during this hectic time we can support each other in staying focused on the big picture and the reason we went into this profession…to impact student thinking!

Tomorrow…Establishing 21st Century Routines and Stuctures