Maximizing Instructional Time Through Routines and Rehearsal

There is a lot of talk about chronic absenteeism. And rightly so. A recent Washington Post Op Ed cited that 24% of public school students nationally were deemed chronically absent, missing 10% or more of the school year, in 2024 This is a big deal…I don’t think I need to make the case that getting to school everyday is important. I also trust you know how difficult it is to address the root causes of chronic absenteeism, many of which have to do with factors outside of a teacher’s individual control.

But there is another form of chronic absenteeism that maybe you don’t as easily recognize, a kind that is so prevalent it can impact every child in your room: chronic disengagement.

In a 180-day school year:

• 2 minutes a day off task = 1 instructional day lost

• 10 minutes a day off task = 1 school week lost

• 36 minutes a day off task = enough time lost to be considered chronically absent

36 minutes can seem like a lot of time, but if you added up the time it takes to transition between subjects, to get from chair to carpet, to get out materials, to wait for the class to get quiet before speaking, to clean up and get ready for lunch/specials/recess, to pack up at the end of the day, etc. you’d be surprised how quickly 36 minutes can sneak up on you.

Time is our most precious resource. Each day, our students grow older, and the calendar moves forward. When our 180 days are up, we will send them off to the next class, whether we maximized our time with them or let it slip through our fingers.

Seeing as how 2 minutes a day equals an entire instructional day lost, we can also say that the opposite is true; any 2 minutes saved is a day gained to our year.

With all this in mind, I’d like to share with you some of the proactive steps I take at the start of each year to set my students and myself up for success so that we can use our time as wisely as possible each day.

Before I begin, I’d like to encourage you to watch the below brief clip from my classroom to give you a small glimpse into what instruction looks like in my room. This lesson, filmed in the last few weeks of the school year, will help showcase what my beginning of the year routines are building towards.

Hopefully, as you watched the above clip you noticed some of the ways my students and I are able to maximize time throughout instruction:

• All students are attending to the lesson. I do not need to stop to address off-task behavior

• Students know exactly where to sit, how to sit, and where to keep their materials.

• I have scripted call and responses along with certain directional phrases that if I say them, my students know exactly what to do.

• My students are quick to grab materials and put materials away.

• My students anticipate what comes next through each step of the lesson, eliminating the need for me to use up time explaining tasks

By day 180, all these things described above feel second nature to both my students and myself. It almost looks effortless, or like I must have slipped my principal $20 to make sure I got the best class roster. The reality of it is these are regular public-school title 1 kids, and I am a regular everyday kindergarten teacher, and it takes a lot of upfront effort to get instruction to be so effortless.

There are two main components to my efforts to maximize time and minimize wasted moments throughout the year, and I’ll be devoting the rest of this blog to both: routines and rehearsal. So, with it being summer break for most teachers across the northern hemisphere, let's kick back and enjoy a little R&R.

Routines:

The video you watched of my class was from day 177 of school. However, if you had popped into my room during days 38, 54, 96 or 135 you would have seen the same exact structure and routines taking place, only with different content being taught. Outside of special days like field trips, I never deviate from the script. Right down to the color of my slides for each activity and the words I say through each transition, nothing changes.

This high level of routines is beneficial for me as the teacher in many ways. For one, planning and preparation takes very little time for me each day. I can simply open my phonics guidebook, input the words I’ll be using to teach that day, and I’m good to go! Additionally, when I’m actively teaching, the task of giving the instruction takes up so little of my working memory that I’m able to focus on my students and their needs throughout the lesson. Lastly, I find it very easy when I have student-teachers in the room to train them to take over my routines, since they are so clearly defined and laid out.

These routines are also beneficial to my students in many ways. First, let me address the elephant in the room, and say my students never get bored of repeating the same structure day to day. In fact, I’d say they revel in it. The high level of predictability gives them an instant dose of success, because even when content is new, they always know how to do our different tasks. I also believe this consistency provides a sense of psychological safety for my students. They never have to wonder what is coming next or when the lesson will end. For young children who do not yet know how to read a clock, they can tell time based on what we are doing and know without asking how much more time until lunch, recess, specials, etc.

I also have clarity in what I am doing and why I am doing it, and I’ve built my routines in such a way as to fill all 30 minutes of my phonics instructional block. I never find myself wandering over to the computer to pull up a YouTube video to fill 5 minutes or struggling to find whatever materials I’ll need from a bin.

While my routines are consistent day to day, week to week, and month to month, year to year, I always take time to review my routines and make refinements for the next school year. This refinement leads me to my second R.

Rehearsal:

My wife is a trained dancer and has done countless shows throughout her life both as a performer and teacher. Something I’ve come to appreciate about her artform is the many hours of rehearsal required to get a 3-minute dance number to be exactly how you want it to look. When a dancer or dance group comes to the stage under-rehearsed, it is painfully obvious to everyone watching and performing in that moment. Rehearsal is the roadmap to success.

My first R is routines, and routines are crucial to the success my students experience. However, starting routines without rehearsing them is kind of like booking a tropical hotel without also getting some plane tickets; odds are you won’t make it very far. There is so much upfront work done at the start of every year to rehearse our instructional routines step by step, so that when we get into the full swing of instruction it can move flawlessly day after day.

Rehearsal is beneficial for all my students. It puts them each on an even footing, knowing exactly what my expectations are for them and how to perform each direction well. I rehearse each individual piece of routines that exist in my room individually, from how to transition from space to space to how to put away our materials.

The first time we rehearse a task, we repeat it however many times it takes until every child is able to complete it exactly as I’d like. Between each attempt, I provide corrective feedback to refine their understanding of the task, along with additional modeling of the task as needed. I’m constantly saying:, “we do it right, or we do it again.”

Once a routine is taught, it becomes my expectation. At any point during the year, if our routines begin to loosen, I’ll immediately call for us to rewind and perform the task again. If you allow a behavior once, be prepared to allow it a thousand times more. This consistency means beyond the first few weeks of school, I rarely have to call my students back to repeat a direction.

It can feel like a big time sink to commit so much time to hanging up backpacks or practicing standing and sitting, and it is extremely tempting to shortcut this time of the year so you can get to the instruction. However, through rehearsal we move slowly so we can go fast. Getting these routines rehearsed perfectly from the start is crucial so that no instructional time is wasted moving forward. Whatever time you save cutting corners at the start will be more than lost by the end of the year due to disruptions that come after.

Rehearsal is also important for me as the teacher. Before my students have entered the room in the fall, I will have stood in my classroom and rehearsed the phrases and directions I will give. I make sure that the wording I choose feels natural for me, that the placement of my materials is good for traffic flow, that my students have the space they need in all their work area, that the amount of time I give to each direction is appropriate. I’ll invite teammates and friends to come and listen to me in my empty room and give feedback on where I could sharpen my phrasing or clean up my procedures. In this way, instructional rehearsal reminds me of the dress rehearsal my wife will do before an empty audience before a big show. It’s crucial that I’m confident and clear minded by the time my students come before me on day 1. I want to have walked the path I’m about to lead them on, that way we get them through their own rehearsal as efficiently as possible.

Once we know our routines and we’ve rehearsed them to perfection, we are prepared to make the most of our time together as a class and ensure that this school year is time well spent towards our learning.

Thank you so much for reading this blog post on maximizing instruction time through routines and rehearsal. In future blogs, I may go over in more detail some of the individual routines I teach my students to follow in my classroom along with the ways we rehearse them.

In Solidarity,

Jacob Bennett