Repeatable Instructional Routines that Matter

But really, before we can buy another resource, before we can rewrite our literacy block or laminate another center, um, we-- before we, like, even start panicking about next year, I think there's one really important thing that teachers, myself included, need to do first, and I've been trying really hard to, um, take this advice myself, and that is to reflect, not in a guilt-filled way, not in a everything-I-did-was-wrong kind of way, but in a really honest, instructional way.

I think teachers move into the next year so quickly that we never stop long enough to ask things like, "What actually worked? What actually helped my students grow? What routines stuck for them? What routines stuck for me? What consistently fell apart? What created overwhelm? What created consistency? What felt sustainable?" Right? Because I, for one, am someone who will start in August with so much energy and so many ideas and so many things that I want to do, and then by November, nothing was really sustainable, right? So we, we wanna think about, like, what only worked on one random Tuesday in October, right? Those questions matter because I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is trying to completely reinvent instruction every single year instead of identifying the systems that actually supported student learning, identifying what did we do well instructionally that moved the needle forward for our students.

And this is one of the biggest mindset shifts I have made over the year, and it's realizing that sometimes the answer is not do more.

Sometimes the answer is simply what already worked.

That realization changed so much for me because for years I thought stronger instruction meant more activities, more centers, more rotations, more differentiation, more everything, and it left me feeling exhausted.

So I remember feeling like every single week I had somehow-- had to somehow, like, create this brand-new, exciting literacy experience for my students, or I was failing them.

That pressure became so unsustainable [chuckles] really quickly, especially when I'm trying to manage all the things, right? It's not just reading small groups.

It's looking at our science, our social studies, our math, our behavior, assessments, progress monitoring, communicating with parents, meetings, actual life outside the classroom.

Yeah, we should have that too, right? So I think many teachers are just carrying instructional systems that are just too heavy, and it's not because we are bad teachers, but it's because the system, uh, the systems themselves are too complicated to sustain consistently.

So one thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is how much cognitive energy both teachers and students spend trying to navigate disconnected systems.

Sometimes students are not only trying to learn an actual reading skill, they're trying to figure it out.

They're trying to figure out the routine, the prompts, the structure, and how the teacher wants them to do.

That's exhausting for struggling readers.

Julia Lindsey says, "It is often the students who struggle the most that experience the most chaos" because we want students to thrive, and we know that they thrive when instruction feels predictable.

The same is true for teachers.

I think many teachers are drowning in too many programs, too many materials, uh, too many disconnected pieces, and the system just feels complicated.

So strong instruction cannot stay sustainable when the system itself is overwhelming, and that's one of the biggest reasons I've become so passionate about repeatable instructional routines and systems.The strongest literacy blocks are usually not the most complicated.

They are the most intentional and consistent.

When I look back at the strong parts of my literacy instruction, it honestly was not like the cutest activity or the fanciest lesson or the most creative center.

It was the things that students could predict.

Those were things like the routines, repeated language, lesson structures, instructional flow.

Students thrive when instruction feels predictable.

So when we think about this, especially our struggling readers, our struggling readers are the ones that really need it to feel predictable for them because when students know what happens first, what happens next, what materials to grab, what routines sound like, what is expected of them, they can focus more fully on learning instead of constantly trying to figure out w- how to function inside instruction.

Um, and I think that that matters a lot.