05 Mar 3 Reasons Your Daily Routines Aren’t Working and What to Do About It: Part 1

No matter what curriculum you use to help teach your state standards, the National Council of Mathematics recommends and suggests that every classroom have mathematical daily routines in place.  So, whatever routines you are using, below you will find simple, helpful, and transformative tips to keep you (and your students) engaged in meaningful counting and reasoning strategies.   

The following tips and explanations closely align with 2011, 2013 or 2015 copyrights of Math Expressions as well as to the Kindergarten 2018 copyright. If you are a 1st or 2nd-grade teacher in the 2018 version (like my MN friends), many of these tips will still apply to you. The biggest change in 2018 is the routines change every unit instead of lasting nearly all year. There will be more to follow for those users, and please post in our FB User Group or comment below with any specific questions!

As I set out to write this, I thought it would be just one post with three reasons. But each reason turned into its own big topic. So, hang in there with me. We will discuss the following three obstacles over the course of the next three weeks. Keep coming back! You don’t want to miss the videos and freebies each week.
3-6 grade teacher? Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you. Routines/tips for your grades will be coming soon and many of these tips apply to you and to your students during your Quick Practice time.

Reason #1: My kids are Bored!

Oh boy, do I hear this ALL. THE. TIME.

By Google’s definition, a routine is:

“A customary or regular course of a procedure. commonplace tasks, chores, or duties as must be done regularly or at specified intervals; typical or everyday activity: the routine of an office. regular, unvarying, habitual, unimaginative, or rote procedure.”

So, almost by definition, routines will be boring.  They should be so NORMAL and habitual that students can do them without thinking, which is sort of the point. We need them to know and understand counting and patterns in base ten SO well, that they can do it during more demanding mathematical tasks. 

Doing anything over and over will soon become a bit boring.  Who gets excited brushing their teeth anymore?  When my children first started getting teeth, it was the highlight of their  (& mine) evening and morning to brush the one or two little friends. Those little teeth were so cute and their appearance opened a whole new world to us, beyond tooth brushing (yay for solid food!).   It was new, exciting and a rite of passage.  We knew brushing was to become a life long routine.  Now, 9-11 years later, it’s not so fun.  But, doing it every day, the same time, the same way made it a HABIT or a ROUTINE.  It’s the habit I needed them to have.  Now they can brush their teeth without even thinking about it.   We’ve spiced it up over the years with timers, electric toothbrushes, pump toothpaste (I know, I’m so adventurous), design your own toothbrush, etc.   Doing these small things brought renewed energy to the routine.  We knew the routine shouldn’t change, but the way we did the routine could be spiced up every now and then.

Moving onto your daily routines and the obstacle of them being boring.  

This sounds like a management problem, not a routine problem. ANYTHING can be boring if not managed well.
You are a creative, an innovator, a spark ignitor! You make the mundane exciting daily. Somehow nouns are fun, map skills rock and vowels are walking and talking. C’mon, you can spice up your routines. The important part is to keep the main thing, the main thing: building number sense.   Number sense is built with time.  It’s not a one and done activity and then they have it sort of deal ( but you already know that).

Routines:

• Reinforce tens and ones—visually through making the ten stick and hundreds square.
• Ensure we have rote counting (forward by ones and tens)  and rational counting
• Build subitizing skills
• Enforce ‘make a ten’ strategy
• Practice expanded form and base ten number strings
• Build the concepts of new groups (regrouping) tens
• Build addition strategies (number path routine)

Make ‘em Engaging:

Choral Responses: One and done, cold calling is so one room school house. Students figure out quickly that you call on the hands raised or maybe you do a ‘stick’ system, either way, their odds are good that you won’t call on them, therefore, they can check out. Every time a question is asked, have students think (see below for thumbs in heart boxes), then respond in unison. Give students signals so class knows when to say the answer. Remember, if students aren’t doing it well and are yelling out answers, aren’t in unison, etc., that is a MANAGEMENT issue. Train your student leader to have students try again. Train ‘em right and they’ll do it right. Half train ‘em and they’ll half do it right.

Think Time: waving hands are distracting. I like to have student leaders ask the class each question such as, “What’s today’s number?” Instead of calling on a single waving hand, I have students put a thumbs up in their ‘heart box’ (a pretend box right at their heart). This way the student leader and I can see who’s ready, but the rest of the students aren’t distracted.

Pacing: If you or your student leader moves slowly, it’ll be the death of the routines. Keep it moving! That may mean you continue to coach side by side your student leader, or perhaps you trade off. Your student leader does one part of the routine, you do the next. Or, have a different student leader per ‘part.’ Either way, keep the routines to 10 minutes TOTAL.

MOVE: 

• Stand up for the finger freeze. Sit back down.
• Use fingers to count as class counts on both posters.  Keep them involved by having them put up fingers for each one as they count.  I’ve also seen several teachers have students “write” numbers on the carpet as student leaders write the equations on the posters/flip chart/whiteboard.
• Clap when counting by tens.

Make it Fun:

• Different voices for counting (see FREEBIE). I usually have students do the counting on the 120 poster in their normal voices for several columns, but as I find some drifting off or our pacing slowing down, then I’ll choose a voice below. We will do a column of counting (ten numbers) then change our voices again. I’d only change voices up to three times a day. Let kids have fun, but keep it structured. It is important that students see each number as they count and aren’t so distracted by hand movements or voices that they aren’t counting correctly or attaching the visual to each number.
• Do a freeze dance move as you finger flash between tens and ones. Allow the student leader to choose the ‘move’ of the day.

Assign different students to different routines.

This will improve the pacing, engagement, and agency.

• Know the script, make it routine—say it the same every time. When you change the script daily. It is no longer a routine. Routines are done the same. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY, or at least as long as that routine exists. Try it different ways until you find something that feels like you or feels like what you could stick with each day. Rehearse it and do it again tomorrow.

Rockin’ the Daily Routines in First Grade

I know, I know. You’re thinking, if I did those “fun” things with my class we’d never recover, and the routines will take even longer. Try it, friends. Keep it structured, allow for some fun, but keep the main thing the main thing. Consider the glass half full. If it doesn’t work the first time, reflect, modify, try again. Find what works for you and your students.

What else do you do? C’mon, I know you’re doing great, inspiring, and creative things and we all want to hear about them. Please leave a comment and tell us what you’re doing that will help with engagement.

Voices: Here is my interpretation of each voice but ask your students. I’m confident they will come up with how these each sound and it will be way more entertaining. As I wrote this, I asked my family to count in these voices so I could help myself with describing them. I don’t know if anything will be as entertaining as what I endured tonight. My tribe cracks me up, I’m sure your students will crack you up too.  Of course, I created a freebie just for you so that your student leader can choose the ‘voice’ for the column.   I choose to count ‘normally’ for the first few tens.  Then, I throw in a new voice for a ten,  or two. It keeps everyone on their toes and it is FUN!!

Teacher Voice (umm… duh, this is your voice when the principal or a parent walks in and you turn into sweeter than pie Sally.)
Whisper Voice (shhhh…say it softly)
Ghost Voice (draw out each number like a ghost would if they added boooooo to each number: 32-ewwwwwww)
Monster Voice (make it deep, make it scary)
Cowboy Voice (think southern, Texan accent)
Mouse Voice (tiny, scratchy voice)
Surfer Voice (think Crush from Finding Nemo, totally dude)
German (think the guy from Frozen, “Yoohooo, Big Summer Blow Out!”—He’s supposedly Norwegian, but go with German/ Norwegian…you get the point. No offense intended)
Robot (make. It. Dis.joint.ed. Add. Your. Robotic. Hand. Movements.)
Rock Star (strum a guitar, do a head bang—think more Nine Inch Nails, less Taylor Swift)
Old Woman/Man Voice (get old, get creaky)
Singing Voice (just belt it, sister (or brother).)
Opera Singer (You get this one, but I’d keep it for the single digits if you’d like to have a voice the rest of the day.)
Karate Kid (karate chop with each abrupt count)
Football Player (hut hut, 41, hut hut 42, hut hut 43)
Cheerleader (give me a 33, give me a 34, — split class, go back and forth). Or, just use pom pom movements as you count.
Soldier (get the rhythm in your head first: hut 1, 2, 3, 4, hut 1, 2, 3, 4. Now do the other numbers in the same rhythmic structured tone).
Race Car (fast!)
Sleepy (count while yawning)
Sad (sniffle as you count)
Mad (huff and puff)

Do you feel empowered to give some of these a shot? I hope so. Go BE GREAT. Take your learning and GROW! Go brush your teeth and while you do so, think of ways to bring new energy to a very important part of your math block.  Let’s continue the conversation. Comment below and let me know how else you are keeping the important routine in place, by spicing it up a little.  YOU have so much to offer us.  Leave a comment and share!

Get your Silly Voice Cards Here

Get your “Cheat” Sheet for the Daily Routines Here

Daily Routines Part 2: https://empowerconsulting.org/seeing-is-believing-3-reasons-daily-routines-arent-working-part-2/

Daily Routines Part 3 AND Bonus Content! : https://empowerconsulting.org/3-reasons-the-daily-routines-arent-working-part-3-i-dont-have-time-and-bonus-content/