Classroom Routines – Yes, but how?

Routines, like any other item or activity in our repertoire, will succeed or fail according to how they are actually used in the classroom.  All the theory on why? is useful – without it, we would paddle around in linguistic puddles until the bell goes, with some routines working well, making waves, and others not, [...]

I Will Survive – Managing the workload as an NQT 2

So here we go with Round 2, starting where we left off having mapped out a half-term.  If you haven’t read the first post in this category, I suggest you read that first – this article will make much more sense if you do!  This article is not so much about lesson-planning as managing your [...]

I Will Survive! Managing the workload as an NQT 1

This is a hand-out from a course I have given to NQTs of which the last session of the day was an approach to managing the workload.  The PGCE year feels busy enough, but starting in a new school as an NQT, often at the same time as moving to a new town, means that [...]

Routines – why use them?

In my last article, when I discussed layers of language, the point was raised that of all the layers, content language is the one which is least concerned with routines, and so language teaching which is dominated by an exaggerated concern for topics and their associated vocabulary denies pupils a wide range of opportunities to [...]

Out of the Routine

Routines – What are they? Routines are “set pieces” of interaction, scripts, if you like, for pupils and the teacher to use in response to events and situations which occur regularly in the classroom, which play a key role in learners’ developing communicative competence.  Although the word routine can have negative connotations (humdrum, repetitive, mundane, [...]